English
 
Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT
Add to Basket
  Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released
Journal Article

Hysteresis of tropical forests in the 21st century

Authors

Staal,  Arie
External Organizations;

Fetzer,  Ingo
External Organizations;

Wang-Erlandsson,  Lan
External Organizations;

Bosmans,  Joyce H. C.
External Organizations;

Dekker,  Stefan C.
External Organizations;

van Nes,  Egbert H.
External Organizations;

/persons/resource/johan.rockstrom

Rockström,  Johan
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

Tuinenburg,  Obbe A.
External Organizations;

External Ressource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (public)

24891oa.pdf
(Publisher version), 2MB

Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Staal, A., Fetzer, I., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Bosmans, J. H. C., Dekker, S. C., van Nes, E. H., Rockström, J., Tuinenburg, O. A. (2020): Hysteresis of tropical forests in the 21st century. - Nature Communications, 11, 4978.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18728-7


Cite as: https://publications.pik-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_24891
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. Tropical rainforests partly create their own climatic conditions by promoting precipitation, therefore rainforest losses may trigger dramatic shifts. Here the authors combine remote sensing, hydrological modelling, and atmospheric moisture tracking simulations to assess forest-rainfall feedbacks in three major tropical rainforest regions on Earth and simulate potential changes under a severe climate change scenario.