Long-term carbon sink in Borneo’s forests halted by drought and vulnerable to edge effects

Qie, Lan; Lewis, Simon L.; Sullivan, Martin J. P.; Lopez‐Gonzalez, Gabriela; Pickavance, Georgia; Sunderland, Terry; Ashton, Peter S.; Hubau, Wannes; Salim, Kamariah Abu; Aiba, Shin‐ichiro; Banin, Lindsay F.; Berry, Nicholas J.; Brearley, Francis Q.; Burslem, David F. R. P.; Dančák, Martin; Davies, Stuart J.; Fredriksson, Gabriella; Hamer, Keith C.; Hédl, Radim; Kho, Lip Khoon; Kitayama, Kanehiro; Krisnawati, Haruni; Lhota, Stanislav; Malhi, Yadvinder; Maycock, Colin R.; Metali, Faizah; Mirmanto, Edi; Nagy, László; Nilus, Reuben; Ong, Robert C.; Pendry, Colin A.; Poulsen, Axel Dalberg; Primack, Richard B.; Rutishauser, Ervan; Samsoedin, Ismayadi; Saragih, Bernaulus; Sist, Plínio; Slik, J. W. Ferry; Sukri, Rahayu Sukmaria; Svátek, Martin; Tan, Sylvester; Tjoa, Aiyen; Nieuwstadt, Mark van; Vernimmen, Ronald; Yassir, Ishak; Kidd, Petra; Fitriadi, Muhammad; Ideris, Nur Khalish Hafizhah; Serudin, Rafizah Mat; Lim, Layla Syaznie Abdullah; Saparudin, Muhammad Shahruney; Phillips, Oliver L.

doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01997-0

Cited by 140 publications

(165 citation statements)

References 77 publications

(120 reference statements)

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“…Site‐specific positive rates may occur in stands recovering from past disturbance and/or in response to global change processes such as changes in atmospheric CO 2 concentration or N deposition (Lewis, Malhi, & Phillips, ; Luo, ). Site‐specific negative rates may account for particular periods when biomass loss was higher than biomass gain due to stochastic processes such as tree mortality resulting from natural gap phase dynamics, or due to exceptional and/or repeated droughts and climate variability (Brienen et al, ; Feldpausch et al, ; Phillips et al, ; Qie et al, ). The plot‐to‐plot variability makes it clear that large sample sizes are needed in order to better constrain old‐growth ecosystem biomass trajectories.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In old‐growth and managed/logged forests, ∆AGB is monitored mainly through repeated measurements of permanent plots (Brienen et al, ; Chave et al, ; Lewis et al, ; Muller‐Landau, Detto, Chisholm, Hubbell, & Condit, ; Qie et al, ; Sist et al, ), while the study of ∆AGB in secondary forests relies mostly on chronosequences (Chazdon et al, , ; Poorter et al, ). A chronosequence consists of static measurements (i.e.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We compiled AGB (Mg/ha; linked with stand age) and ∆AGB (Mg ha −1 year −1 ) data from existing plot networks, databases and primary scientific literature on natural, as opposed to planted, forest stands (Anderson-Teixeira, Hermman, et al, 2018;Anderson-Teixeira, Wang, et al, 2018;Anderson-Teixeira et al, 2016;Brienen et al, 2015;Cook-Patton et al, under review;Lewis et al, 2009;Poorter et al, 2016;Qie et al, 2017;Rutishauser et al, 2015) in global tropical and subtropical ecological zones (hereafter referred to as ecozones) as defined by FAO (2012). Additional studies not present in these databases were obtained through a review of studies in the Web of Science (v.5.26.2).…”

Section: Data Compilationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Site-specific negative rates may account for particular periods when biomass loss was higher than biomass gain due to stochastic processes such as tree mortality resulting from natural gap phase dynamics, or due to exceptional and/or repeated droughts and climate variability (Brienen et al, 2015;Feldpausch et al, 2016;Phillips et al, 2009;Qie et al, 2017). The plot-to-plot variability makes it clear that large sample sizes are needed in order to better constrain oldgrowth ecosystem biomass trajectories.…”

Section: Old-growth and Managed/logged Forestsuse Of Permanent Plotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Estimating aboveground net biomass change for tropical and subtropical forests: Refinement of IPCC default rates using forest plot data

Suárez

Rozendaal

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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As countries advance in greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting for climate change mitigation, consistent estimates of aboveground net biomass change (∆AGB) are needed. Countries with limited forest monitoring capabilities in the tropics and subtropics rely on IPCC 2006 default ∆AGB rates, which are values per ecological zone, per continent. Similarly, research into forest biomass change at a large scale also makes use of these rates. IPCC 2006 default rates come from a handful of studies, provide no uncertainty indications and do not distinguish between older secondary forests and old‐growth forests. As part of the 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, we incorporate ∆AGB data available from 2006 onwards, comprising 176 chronosequences in secondary forests and 536 permanent plots in old‐growth and managed/logged forests located in 42 countries in Africa, North and South America and Asia. We generated ∆AGB rate estimates for younger secondary forests (≤20 years), older secondary forests (>20 years and up to 100 years) and old‐growth forests, and accounted for uncertainties in our estimates. In tropical rainforests, for which data availability was the highest, our ∆AGB rate estimates ranged from 3.4 (Asia) to 7.6 (Africa) Mg ha−1 year−1 in younger secondary forests, from 2.3 (North and South America) to 3.5 (Africa) Mg ha−1 year−1 in older secondary forests, and 0.7 (Asia) to 1.3 (Africa) Mg ha−1 year−1 in old‐growth forests. We provide a rigorous and traceable refinement of the IPCC 2006 default rates in tropical and subtropical ecological zones, and identify which areas require more research on ∆AGB. In this respect, this study should be considered as an important step towards quantifying the role of tropical and subtropical forests as carbon sinks with higher accuracy; our new rates can be used for large‐scale GHG accounting by governmental bodies, nongovernmental organizations and in scientific research.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Data Compilationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Old-growth and Managed/logged Forestsuse Of Permanent Plotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Estimating aboveground net biomass change for tropical and subtropical forests: Refinement of IPCC default rates using forest plot data

Suárez

Rozendaal

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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“…Pan‐tropical inventory data were collected by three networks of ecologists, working in South America (RAINFOR, Malhi et al., ), Africa (AfriTRON, Lewis et al., ) and Southeast Asia (T‐FORCES, Qie et al., ), with all following standardised protocols that include diameter measurement of all trees ≥10 cm D measured at 1.3 m or above buttresses. Data were curated in the ForestPlots.net database (Lopez‐Gonzalez, Lewis, Burkitt, & Phillips, ), and subject to identical quality control and quality assurance procedures.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Field methods for sampling tree height for tropical forest biomass estimation

et al. 2018

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Quantifying the relationship between tree diameter and height is a key component of efforts to estimate biomass and carbon stocks in tropical forests. Although substantial site‐to‐site variation in height–diameter allometries has been documented, the time consuming nature of measuring all tree heights in an inventory plot means that most studies do not include height, or else use generic pan‐tropical or regional allometric equations to estimate height.Using a pan‐tropical dataset of 73 plots where at least 150 trees had in‐field ground‐based height measurements, we examined how the number of trees sampled affects the performance of locally derived height–diameter allometries, and evaluated the performance of different methods for sampling trees for height measurement.Using cross‐validation, we found that allometries constructed with just 20 locally measured values could often predict tree height with lower error than regional or climate‐based allometries (mean reduction in prediction error = 0.46 m). The predictive performance of locally derived allometries improved with sample size, but with diminishing returns in performance gains when more than 40 trees were sampled. Estimates of stand‐level biomass produced using local allometries to estimate tree height show no over‐ or under‐estimation bias when compared with biomass estimates using field measured heights. We evaluated five strategies to sample trees for height measurement, and found that sampling strategies that included measuring the heights of the ten largest diameter trees in a plot outperformed (in terms of resulting in local height–diameter models with low height prediction error) entirely random or diameter size‐class stratified approaches.Our results indicate that even limited sampling of heights can be used to refine height–diameter allometries. We recommend aiming for a conservative threshold of sampling 50 trees per location for height measurement, and including the ten trees with the largest diameter in this sample.

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Expanding tropical forest monitoring into Dry Forests: The DRYFLOR protocol for permanent plots

Moonlight

Banda-R

Phillips

et al. 2020

Plants People Planet

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Long-term carbon sink in Borneo’s forests halted by drought and vulnerable to edge effects

Cited by 140 publications

References 77 publications

Estimating aboveground net biomass change for tropical and subtropical forests: Refinement of IPCC default rates using forest plot data

Estimating aboveground net biomass change for tropical and subtropical forests: Refinement of IPCC default rates using forest plot data

Field methods for sampling tree height for tropical forest biomass estimation

Expanding tropical forest monitoring into Dry Forests: The DRYFLOR protocol for permanent plots

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