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Abstract
Debate continues over the adequacy of existing field plots to sufficiently capture Amazon forest dynamics to estimate regional forest carbon balance. Tree mortality dynamics are particularly uncertain due to the difficulty of observing large, infrequent disturbances. Arecent paper (Chambers et al 2013 Proc. Natl Acad. Sci.110 3949–54) reported that Central Amazon plots missed 9–17% of tree mortality, and here we address ‘why’ by elucidating two distinct mortality components: (1)variation in annual landscape-scale average mortality and (2)the frequency distribution of the size of clustered mortality events. Using a stochastic-empirical tree growth model we show that a power law distribution of event size (based on merged plot and satellite data) is required to generate spatial clustering of mortality that is consistent with forest gap observations. We conclude that existing plots do not sufficiently capture losses because their placement, size, and longevity assume spatially random mortality, while mortality is actually distributed among differently sized events (clusters of dead trees) that determine the spatial structure of forest canopies.
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Details
1 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Earth Sciences Division, One Cyclotron Road, Mail Stop 84R0171, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
2 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Earth Sciences Division, One Cyclotron Road, Mail Stop 84R0171, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA
3 National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA), Manaus, AM, Brazil
4 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Earth Sciences Division, One Cyclotron Road, Mail Stop 84R0171, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA