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. 2023 Sep;29(17):4861-4879.
doi: 10.1111/gcb.16821. Epub 2023 Jun 30.

Giants of the Amazon: How does environmental variation drive the diversity patterns of large trees?

Robson Borges de Lima  1 Eric Bastos Görgens  2 Diego Armando S da Silva  3 Cinthia Pereira de Oliveira  1 Anderson Pedro B Batista  3 Rinaldo L Caraciolo Ferreira  4 Flavia R C Costa  5 Renato A Ferreira de Lima  6 Perseu da Silva Aparício  1 Jadson Coelho de Abreu  1 José Antônio Aleixo da Silva  4 Aretha Franklin Guimaraes  7 Philip M Fearnside  8 Thaiane R Sousa  9 Ricardo Perdiz  10 Niro Higuchi  11 Erika Berenguer  12   13 Angélica F Resende  14 Fernando Elias  15 Carolina Volkmer de Castilho  16 Marcelo Brilhante de Medeiros  17 João Ramos de Matos Filho  18 Maurício Alves Sardinha  19 Márcio André Furtado Freitas  3 José Jussian da Silva  3 Aldemir Pereira da Cunha  3 Renan Mendes Santos  1 Adriane Esquivel Muelbert  20 Marcelino Carneiro Guedes  21 Reinaldo Imbrózio  8 Carla Samara Campelo de Sousa  3 Wegliane Campelo da Silva Aparício  22 Breno Marques da Silva E Silva  23 Celice Alexandre Silva  24 Beatriz Schwantes Marimon  25 Ben Hur Marimon Junior  25 Paulo S Morandi  26 Danielle Storck-Tonon  27 Ima Célia Guimarães Vieira  28 Juliana Schietti  29 Fernanda Coelho  30 Danilo R Alves de Almeida  31 Wendeson Castro  32 Samuel P C Carvalho  33 Robson Dos Santos A da Silva  24 Juliana Silveira  13 José Luís Camargo  34 Karina Melgaço  35 Lucas Jose Mazzei de Freitas  14 Laura Vedovato  36 Maíra Benchimol  37 Gabriel de Oliveira de Almeida  32 Ghillean Prance  38 Alan Bernardes da Silveira  39 Marcelo Fragomeni Simon  15 Marcos Leandro Garcia  40 Marcos Silveira  41 Marcos Vital  42 Maryane B T Andrade  8 Natalino Silva  43 Raimunda Oliveira de Araújo  8 Larissa Cavalheiro  44 Rainiellen Carpanedo  45 Letícia Fernandes  46 Angelo Gilberto Manzatto  47 Ricardo T G de Andrade  48 William E Magnusson  8 Bill Laurance  49 Bruce Walker Nelson  8 Carlos Peres  50 Douglas C Daly  51 Domingos Rodrigues  52 Ana Paula Zopeletto  33 Edmar Almeida de Oliveira  24 Estelle Dugachard  53 Flávia Rodrigues Barbosa  44 Flavia Santana  8 Iêda Leão do Amaral  8 Leandro V Ferreira  28 Leandro S Charão  54 Joice Ferreira  14 Jos Barlow  13 Lilian Blanc  55 Luiz Aragão  56 Plinio Sist  57 Rafael de Paiva Salomão  28 Antônio Sérgio Lima da Silva  28 Susan Laurance  58 Ted R Feldpausch  59 Toby Gardner  60 Wagner Santiago  61 William Balee  62 William F Laurance  58 Yadvinder Malhi  12 Oliver L Phillips  35 Antônio Carlos da Silva Zanzini  63 Clarissa Rosa  5 Wagner Tadeu Oliveira  64 Lucas Pereira Zanzini  65 Ricardo José Silva  66 Ana Luisa Mangabeira Albernaz  67
Affiliations

Giants of the Amazon: How does environmental variation drive the diversity patterns of large trees?

Robson Borges de Lima et al. Glob Chang Biol. 2023 Sep.

Abstract

For more than three decades, major efforts in sampling and analyzing tree diversity in South America have focused almost exclusively on trees with stems of at least 10 and 2.5 cm diameter, showing highest species diversity in the wetter western and northern Amazon forests. By contrast, little attention has been paid to patterns and drivers of diversity in the largest canopy and emergent trees, which is surprising given these have dominant ecological functions. Here, we use a machine learning approach to quantify the importance of environmental factors and apply it to generate spatial predictions of the species diversity of all trees (dbh ≥ 10 cm) and for very large trees (dbh ≥ 70 cm) using data from 243 forest plots (108,450 trees and 2832 species) distributed across different forest types and biogeographic regions of the Brazilian Amazon. The diversity of large trees and of all trees was significantly associated with three environmental factors, but in contrasting ways across regions and forest types. Environmental variables associated with disturbances, for example, the lightning flash rate and wind speed, as well as the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation, tend to govern the diversity of large trees. Upland rainforests in the Guiana Shield and Roraima regions had a high diversity of large trees. By contrast, variables associated with resources tend to govern tree diversity in general. Places such as the province of Imeri and the northern portion of the province of Madeira stand out for their high diversity of species in general. Climatic and topographic stability and functional adaptation mechanisms promote ideal conditions for species diversity. Finally, we mapped general patterns of tree species diversity in the Brazilian Amazon, which differ substantially depending on size class.

Keywords: big trees; diversity map; forest ecology; forest inventory; remote sensing; species richness.

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