Size and frequency of natural forest disturbances and the Amazon forest carbon balance.

• Autor(a) principal: ESPÍRITO-SANTO, F. D. B.
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: GLOOR, M., KELLER, M., MALHI, Y., SAATCHI, S., NELSON, B., OLIVEIRA JUNIOR, R. C., PEREIRA, C., LLOYD, J., FROLKING, S., PALACE, M., SHIMABUKURO, Y. E., DUARTE, V., MONTEAGUDO MENDOZA, A., LÓPEZ-GONZÁLEZ, G., BAKER, T. R., FELDPAUSCH, T. R., BRIENEN, R. J. W., ASNER, G. P., BOYD, D. S., PHILLIPS, O. L.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da EMBRAPA (Repository Open Access to Scientific Information from EMBRAPA - Alice)
• Texto Completo: http://www.alice.cnptia.embrapa.br/alice/handle/doc/982675
• topic: Ciência da Terra; Carbono; Clima; Floresta; Amazonia

Forest inventory studies in the Amazon indicate a large terrestrial carbon sink. However, field plots may fail to represent forest mortality processes at landscape-scales of tropical forests. Here we characterize the frequency distribution of disturbance events in natural forests from 0.01ha to 2,651ha size throughout Amazonia using a novel combination of forest inventory, airborne lidar and satellite remote sensing data. We find that small-scale mortality events are responsible for aboveground biomass losses of ~1.7PgCy;1 over the entire Amazon region. We also find that intermediate-scale disturbances account for losses of ~0.2PgCy1, and that the largest-scale disturbances as a result of blow-downs only account for losses of ~0.004PgCy1. Simulation of growth and mortality indicates that even when all carbon losses from intermediate and large-scale disturbances are considered, these are outweighed by the net biomass accumulation by tree growth, supporting the inference of an Amazon carbon sink.