Hysteresis of tropical forests in the 21st century

Arie Staal (), Ingo Fetzer, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Joyce H. C. Bosmans, Stefan C. Dekker, Egbert H. van Nes, Johan Rockström and Obbe A. Tuinenburg
Additional contact information
Arie Staal: Stockholm University
Ingo Fetzer: Stockholm University
Lan Wang-Erlandsson: Stockholm University
Joyce H. C. Bosmans: Radboud University
Stefan C. Dekker: Utrecht University
Egbert H. van Nes: Wageningen University
Johan Rockström: Stockholm University
Obbe A. Tuinenburg: Utrecht University

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Tropical forests modify the conditions they depend on through feedbacks at different spatial scales. These feedbacks shape the hysteresis (history-dependence) of tropical forests, thus controlling their resilience to deforestation and response to climate change. Here, we determine the emergent hysteresis from local-scale tipping points and regional-scale forest-rainfall feedbacks across the tropics under the recent climate and a severe climate-change scenario. By integrating remote sensing, a global hydrological model, and detailed atmospheric moisture tracking simulations, we find that forest-rainfall feedback expands the geographic range of possible forest distributions, especially in the Amazon. The Amazon forest could partially recover from complete deforestation, but may lose that resilience later this century. The Congo forest currently lacks resilience, but is predicted to gain it under climate change, whereas forests in Australasia are resilient under both current and future climates. Our results show how tropical forests shape their own distributions and create the climatic conditions that enable them.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18728-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-18728-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18728-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().