Degradation and deforestation increase the sensitivity of the Amazon Forest to climate extremes

作者：Marcos Longo, Michael Keller, Lara M. Kueppers, K. W. Bowman, Ovidiu Csillik, António Ferraz, Paul M Moorcroft, Jean Pierre Ometto, Britaldo Soares‐Filho, Xiangtao Xu, Mauro Assis, Eric Bastos Görgens, Erik J. L. Larson, Jessica Needham, Elsa M. Ordway, Francisca R. S. Pereira, Ekena Rangel Pinagé, Luciane Sato, Liang Xu, Sassan Saatchi · 发表于：Environmental Research Letters · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1088/1748-9326/adc58c · 被引用次数：7 · 研究领域：Forest ecology and management、Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics、Remote Sensing in Agriculture

Abstract About 40% of the Brazilian Amazon has been deforested or suffered changes in forest structure through degradation (selective logging, fires, and fragmentation). The impact of forest degradation on the forest’s sensitivity to climate extremes has not been fully explored because of a lack of data and the complex interplay of forest structure and climate drivers. Here, we combined forest structure data from 545 airborne lidar transects (375 ha each) across the Brazilian Amazon with the Ecosystem Demography Model (ED2). We explore the forest’s functional response to near-present (1981–2019) climate extremes under observed forest structure from lidar ( Control ) and two forest structure change scenarios: (1) forest recovery by excluding all future deforestation and degradation ( Recovery ) and (2) expansion of selective logging and deforestation ( Degradation ). Using the Control simulation, we found a close and positive association between local forest aboveground biomass and the predicted gross primary productivity (GPP) and evapotranspiration (ET). Moreover, both GPP and ET respond negatively to extremes in vapor pressure deficit and downwelling shortwave irradiance in degraded forests in Eastern and Southern Amazon, indicating high sensitivity to droughts. Locally high-biomass forest patches showed little or no negative response of GPP and ET to extreme drought conditions whereas low-biomass forest patches in the same locations—typically degraded forest canopies—respo...