Land cover change alters seasonal photosynthetic activity and transpiration of Amazon forest and Cerrado

Bibliographic Data

ID15544837
AuthorsMaria del Rosario Uribe (0000-0001-9835-1615, Purdue University West Lafayette, corresponding author), Jeffrey S Dukes (0000-0001-9482-7743, Purdue University West Lafayette)
Year2021
Volume16
Issue5
Pages054013-054013
Publication date2021-04-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironmental Research Letters (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1748-9326 • E-ISSN: 1748-9326
PublisherIOP Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1088/1748-9326/abf60d
OpenAlexW3155363613
LanguageEN
References cited48

Tropical vegetation influences local, regional, and global climates, largely through its relationship with the atmosphere, including seasonal patterns of photosynthesis and transpiration. Removal and replacement of natural vegetation can alter both of these processes. In the Amazon, land use/land cover change (LULCC; e.g. deforestation) started decades ago and is expected to continue, with potentially strong effects on climate. However, long-term data on tropical photosynthetic activity and transpiration are scarce, limiting our ability to estimate large-scale effects of LULCC. Here, we use remote sensing data to analyze the impact of LULCC on seasonal patterns of photosynthetic activity and transpiration in the southern Amazon. This region, naturally dominated by forest and Cerrado, has seen high rates of LULCC. Within each of these two ecosystems, we compare estimates of photosynthetic activity (from GOME-2 and GOSIF solar induced fluorescence, SIF) and transpiration (from the Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model, GLEAM) in paired sites with high and low rates of LULCC. In forest-dominated regions, deforestation has reduced photosynthetic activity and transpiration, particularly during the dry season, and replaced dry season greening with dry season browning. The SIF datasets disagree on wet season responses; SIF increases with deforestation according to GOME-2, but decreases according to GOSIF. In Cerrado-dominated areas, LULCC has increased photosynthetic activity during the wet season. In both ecosystems, LULCC has resulted in a higher seasonal or annual range of photosynthetic activity levels. The observed effects are often stronger in regions with more extensive LULCC. We found large differences between the two SIF products in both forest- and Cerrado-dominated pixels, with GOME-2 consistently providing higher maximum SIF values. These discrepancies merit further consideration. This analysis broadly characterizes the effects of LULCC on photosynthetic activity and transpiration in this region, and can be used to validate model representations of these effects

Amazon rainforest · Atmospheric sciences · Biology · Botany · Deforestation (computer science · Dry season · Ecosystem · Land cover · Land use · Photosynthesis · Transpiration · Vegetation (pathology · Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics · Environmental Science · Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics · Remote Sensing in Agriculture · Ecology · Geology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access