We show that the vegetation canopy of the Amazon rainforest is highly sensitive to changes in precipitation patterns and that reduction in rainfall since 2000 has diminished vegetation greenness across large parts of Amazonia. Large-scale directional declines in vegetation greenness may indicate decreases in carbon uptake and substantial changes in the energy balance of the Amazon. We use impro...

Goniorrhachis marginata Taub. (Leguminosae: Caesalpinioideae) is a tree species found in Brazilian tropical dry forests that retain their leaves during the dry season. That being, we addressed the following question: i) How do insect diversity (sap-sucking and chewing), leaf herbivory and defensive traits (tannin and leaf sclerophylly) vary on the evergreen tree species G. marginata between sea...

A field study was conducted to determine the microbial community structures of streambed sediments across diverse geographic and climatic areas. Sediment samples were collected from three adjacent headwater forest streams within three biomes, eastern deciduous (Pennsylvania), southeastern coniferous (New Jersey), and tropical evergreen (Guanacaste, Costa Rica), to assess whether there is biome ...

Warming during late winter and spring in recent decades has been credited with increasing high northern latitude CO2 uptake, but it is unclear how different species and plant functional types contribute to this response. To address this, we measured net ecosystem exchange (NEE) at a deciduous broadleaf (aspen and willow) forest and an evergreen conifer (black spruce) forest in interior Alaska o...

South Chilean forest ecosystems represent one of the largest areas of old-growth temperate rainforests remaining in the Southern hemisphere and have a high ecological value, but suffer from deforestation, invasion by exotic species, fragmentation, and increasing atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition. To support sustainable forest management, more knowledge is required on nutrient cycling of these...

Extreme climatic events can trigger gradual or abrupt shifts in forest ecosystems via the reduction or elimination of foundation species. However, the impacts of these events on foundation species' demography and forest dynamics remain poorly understood. Here we quantified dynamics for both evergreen and deciduous broad-leaved species groups, utilizing a monitoring permanent plot in a subtropic...

Rising atmospheric CO2 stimulates photosynthesis and productivity of forests, o setting CO2 emissions. Elevated CO2 experiments in temperate planted forests yielded ∼23% increases in productivity over the initial years. Whether similar CO2 stimulation occurs in mature evergreen broadleaved forests on low-phosphorus (P) soils is unknown, largely due to lack of experimental evidence. This knowled...