Biology Commons^™

Individual-Based Modeling Of Amazon Forests Suggests That Climate Controls Productivity While Traits Control Demography, Sophie Fauset, Manuel Gloor, Nikolaos M. Fyllas, Oliver L. Phillips, Gregory P. Asner, Timothy R. Baker, Lisa Patrick Bentley, Roel J. W. Brienen, Bradley O. Christoffersen, John Del Aguila-Pasquel

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Climate, species composition, and soils are thought to control carbon cycling and forest structure in Amazonian forests. Here, we add a demographics scheme (tree recruitment, growth, and mortality) to a recently developed non-demographic model—the Trait-based Forest Simulator (TFS)—to explore the roles of climate and plant traits in controlling forest productivity and structure. We compared two sites with differing climates (seasonal vs. aseasonal precipitation) and plant traits. Through an initial validation simulation, we assessed whether the model converges on observed forest properties (productivity, demographic and structural variables) using datasets of functional traits, structure, and climate to model the carbon cycle at …