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In this study, we quantified the contribution of forest-derived carbon (FDC) to the soil organic C (SOC) pool along a natural succession from savanna (S) to mixed Marantaceae forest (MMF) in the Lopè National Park, Gabon. Four 1-ha plots, corresponding to different stages along the natural succession, were used to determine the SOC stock and soil C isotope composition (δ13C) to derive the FDC contribution in different soil layers down to 1 m depth. Besides, to investigate changes in SOC stability, we determined the 14C concentration of SOC to 30 cm depth and derived turnover time (TT). Results indicated that SOC increased only at the end of the succession in the MMF stage, which stored 46% more SOC (41 Mg C ha−1) in the 0-30 cm depth than the S stage (28.8 Mg C ha−1). The FDC contribution increased along forest succession affecting mainly the top layers of the initial successional stages to 15 cm depth and reaching 70 cm depth in the MMF stage. The TT suggests a small increase in stability in the 0-5 cm layer from S (146 years) to MMF (157 years) stages. Below 5 cm, the increase in stability was high, suggesting that FDC can remain in soils for a much longer time than savanna-derived C. In conclusion, the natural succession toward Marantaceae forests can positively impact climate change resulting in large SOC stocks, which can be removed from the atmosphere and stored for a much longer time in forest soils compared to savanna soils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plants acquire carbon through photosynthesis to sustain biomass production, autotrophic respiration and production of non-structural compounds for multiple purposes. The fraction of photosynthetic production used for biomass production, the biomass production efficiency, is a key determinant of the conversion of solar energy to biomass. In forest ecosystems, biomass production efficiency was suggested to be related to site fertility. Here we present a database of biomass production efficiency from 131 sites compiled from individual studies using harvest, biometric, eddy covariance, or process-based model estimates of production. The database is global, but dominated by data from Europe and North America. We show that instead of site fertility, ecosystem management is the key factor that controls biomass production efficiency in terrestrial ecosystems. In addition, in natural forests, grasslands, tundra, boreal peatlands and marshes, biomass production efficiency is independent of vegetation, environmental and climatic drivers. This similarity of biomass production efficiency across natural ecosystem types suggests that the ratio of biomass production to gross primary productivity is constant across natural ecosystems. We suggest that plant adaptation results in similar growth efficiency in high- and low-fertility natural systems, but that nutrient influxes under managed conditions favour a shift to carbon investment from the belowground flux of non-structural compounds to aboveground biomass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Termites are frequently dominant invertebrate decomposers and bioturbators in lowland tropical forests and therefore strongly influence ecosystem processes favouring soil stability, porosity and nutrient retention. In this study, we provide the first spatially replicated dataset on termite assemblage composition, abundance and biomass in a Peruvian rainforest by sampling six separate plots. In addition, two alternative sampling methods (transect method-TM and quadrat method-QM), providing termite species density data, were compared among the plots. The relationships between a range of environmental and spatial variables and species composition were examined using canonical correspondence analysis variation partitioning. We found that the TM captured a higher proportion of the known species in the site (82 %) compared with the QM (66 %). In addition, 56 % of the species sampled by TM were common between the plots while only 18 % of species overlapped using the QM. The QM may therefore potentially have undersampled the species pool. Environmental variables were shown to explain a larger proportion of the species patterns than the spatial variables with elevation, soil temperature and distance to the river being the most important. We discuss the impacts of the environmental and spatial variables on termite species composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheric carbon dioxide records indicate that the land surface has acted as a strong global carbon sink over recent decades, with a substantial fraction of this sink probably located in the tropics, particularly in the Amazon. Nevertheless, it is unclear how the terrestrial carbon sink will evolve as climate and atmospheric composition continue to change. Here we analyse the historical evolution of the biomass dynamics of the Amazon rainforest over three decades using a distributed network of 321 plots. While this analysis confirms that Amazon forests have acted as a long-term net biomass sink, we find a long-term decreasing trend of carbon accumulation. Rates of net increase in above-ground biomass declined by one-third during the past decade compared to the 1990s. This is a consequence of growth rate increases levelling off recently, while biomass mortality persistently increased throughout, leading to a shortening of carbon residence times. Potential drivers for the mortality increase include greater climate variability, and feedbacks of faster growth on mortality, resulting in shortened tree longevity. The observed decline of the Amazon sink diverges markedly from the recent increase in terrestrial carbon uptake at the global scale, and is contrary to expectations based on models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2005 and 2010 the Amazon basin experienced two strong droughts, driven by shifts in the tropical hydrological regime possibly associated with global climate change, as predicted by some global models. Tree mortality increased after the 2005 drought, and regional atmospheric inversion modelling showed basin-wide decreases in CO2 uptake in 2010 compared with 2011 (ref. 5). But the response of tropical forest carbon cycling to these droughts is not fully understood and there has been no detailed multi-site investigation in situ. Here we use several years of data from a network of thirteen 1-ha forest plots spread throughout South America, where each component of net primary production (NPP), autotrophic respiration and heterotrophic respiration is measured separately, to develop a better mechanistic understanding of the impact of the 2010 drought on the Amazon forest. We find that total NPP remained constant throughout the drought. However, towards the end of the drought, autotrophic respiration, especially in roots and stems, declined significantly compared with measurements in 2009 made in the absence of drought, with extended decreases in autotrophic respiration in the three driest plots. In the year after the drought, total NPP remained constant but the allocation of carbon shifted towards canopy NPP and away from fine-root NPP. Both leaf-level and plot-level measurements indicate that severe drought suppresses photosynthesis. Scaling these measurements to the entire Amazon basin with rainfall data, we estimate that drought suppressed Amazon-wide photosynthesis in 2010 by 0.38 petagrams of carbon (0.23-0.53 petagrams of carbon). Overall, we find that during this drought, instead of reducing total NPP, trees prioritized growth by reducing autotrophic respiration that was unrelated to growth. This suggests that trees decrease investment in tissue maintenance and defence, in line with eco-evolutionary theories that trees are competitively disadvantaged in the absence of growth. We propose that weakened maintenance and defence investment may, in turn, cause the increase in post-drought tree mortality observed at our plots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares different approaches to quantifying the carbon cycle in a temperate deciduous forest at Wytham Woods in England, which is unusual in its maritime climate and mixed age structure, reflecting low levels of past management. We tested whether eddy covariance and biometric measurements gave consistent estimates of woodland productivity and ecosystem respiration at monthly and annual timescales. Biometric methods estimated gross primary productivity (GPP) as 22.0 ± 1.6 Mg C ha y, close to the eddy covariance GPP value of 21.1 Mg C ha y. Annual ecosystem respiration ( R) was similar, at 20.3 ± 1.5 Mg C ha y for biometric and 19.8 Mg C ha yfor eddy covariance. The seasonal cycle of monthly biometric and eddy covariance R estimates also closely matched. Net primary productivity (NPP) was 7.0 ± 0.8 Mg C ha y, 37% of which was allocated below ground. Leaf fluxes were the greatest component of NPP and R. Ecosystem carbon-use efficiency (CUE = NPP/GPP) was 0.32 ± 0.04; low compared to many temperate broadleaved sites but close to values for old-growth sites. This may reflect the age of some trees, and/or the oceanic climate with relatively mild winters during which there can be substantial autotrophic maintenance respiration in winter but negligible growth. This study demonstrates that biometric measurements can provide robust estimates of site productivity and respiration and that eddy covariance and bottom-up measurements can be combined on seasonal and interannual timescales to enable a detailed understanding of the forest carbon cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forests strongly affect climate through the exchange of large amounts of atmospheric CO2 (ref. ). The main drivers of spatial variability in net ecosystem production (NEP) on a global scale are, however, poorly known. As increasing nutrient availability increases the production of biomass per unit of photosynthesis and reduces heterotrophic respiration in forests, we expected nutrients to determine carbon sequestration in forests. Our synthesis study of 92 forests in different climate zones revealed that nutrient availability indeed plays a crucial role in determining NEP and ecosystem carbon-use efficiency (CUEe; that is, the ratio of NEP to gross primary production (GPP)). Forests with high GPP exhibited high NEP only in nutrient-rich forests (CUEe = 33 ± 4%; mean ± s.e.m.). In nutrient-poor forests, a much larger proportion of GPP was released through ecosystem respiration, resulting in lower CUEe (6 ± 4%). Our finding that nutrient availability exerts a stronger control on NEP than on carbon input (GPP) conflicts with assumptions of nearly all global coupled carbon cycle-climate models, which assume that carbon inputs through photosynthesis drive biomass production and carbon sequestration. An improved global understanding of nutrient availability would therefore greatly improve carbon cycle modelling and should become a critical focus for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feedbacks between land carbon pools and climate provide one of the largest sources of uncertainty in our predictions of global climate. Estimates of the sensitivity of the terrestrial carbon budget to climate anomalies in the tropics and the identification of the mechanisms responsible for feedback effects remain uncertain. The Amazon basin stores a vast amount of carbon, and has experienced increasingly higher temperatures and more frequent floods and droughts over the past two decades. Here we report seasonal and annual carbon balances across the Amazon basin, based on carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide measurements for the anomalously dry and wet years 2010 and 2011, respectively. We find that the Amazon basin lost 0.48 ± 0.18 petagrams of carbon per year (Pg C yr−1) during the dry year but was carbon neutral (0.06 ± 0.1 Pg C yr−1) during the wet year. Taking into account carbon losses from fire by using carbon monoxide measurements, we derived the basin net biome exchange (that is, the carbon flux between the non-burned forest and the atmosphere) revealing that during the dry year, vegetation was carbon neutral. During the wet year, vegetation was a net carbon sink of 0.25 ± 0.14 Pg C yr−1, which is roughly consistent with the mean long-term intact-forest biomass sink of 0.39 ± 0.10 Pg C yr−1 previously estimated from forest censuses. Observations from Amazonian forest plots suggest the suppression of photosynthesis during drought as the primary cause for the 2010 sink neutralization. Overall, our results suggest that moisture has an important role in determining the Amazonian carbon balance. If the recent trend of increasing precipitation extremes persists, the Amazon may become an increasing carbon source as a result of both emissions from fires and the suppression of net biome exchange by drought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding climatic controls on tropical forest productivity is key to developing more reliable models for predicting how tropical biomes may respond to climate change. Currently there is no consensus on which factors control seasonal changes in tropical forest tree growth. This study reports the first comprehensive plot-level description of the seasonality of growth in a Peruvian tropical forest. We test whether seasonal and interannual variations in climate are correlated with changes in biomass increment, and whether such relationships differ among trees with different functional traits. We found that biomass increments, measured every 3 months on the two plots, were reduced by between 40 and 55 % in the peak dry season (July-September) relative to peak wet season (January-March). The seasonal patterns of biomass accumulation are significantly ( p < 0.01) associated with seasonal patterns of rainfall and soil water content; however, this may reflect a synchrony of seasonal cycles rather than direct physiological controls on tree growth rates. The strength of the growth seasonality response among trees is significantly correlated to functional traits: consistent with a hypothesised trade-off between maximum potential growth rate and hydraulic safety, tall and fast-growing trees with broad stems had the most strongly seasonal biomass accumulation, suggesting that they are more productive in the wet season, but more vulnerable to water limitation in the dry season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A land-surface model (MOSES) was tested against observed fluxes of heat, water vapour and carbon dioxide for two primary forest sites near Manaus, Brazil. Flux data from one site (called C14) were used to calibrate the model, and data from the other site (called K34) were used to validate the calibrated model. Long-term fluxes of water vapour at C14 and K34 simulated by the uncalibrated model were good, whereas modelled net ecosystem exchange (NEE) was poor. The uncalibrated model persistently underpredicted canopy conductance (gc) from mid-morning to mid-afternoon due to saturation of the response to solar radiation at low light levels. This in turn caused a poor simulation of the diurnal cycles of water vapour and carbon fluxes. Calibration of the stomatal conductance=photosynthesis sub-model of MOSES improved the simulated diurnal cycle of gc and increased the diurnal maximum NEE, but at the expense of degrading long-term water vapour fluxes. Seasonality in observed canopy conductance due to soil moisture change was not captured by the model. Introducing realistic depth-dependent soil parameters decreased the amount of moisture available for transpiration at each depth and led to the model experiencing soil moisture limitation on canopy conductance during the dry season. However, this limitation had only a limited effect on the seasonality in modelled NEE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experience of long term flux measurements over tall canopies during the last two decades has revealed that the eddy flux of sensible plus latent heat is typically 30% smaller than the available radiant energy flux. This failure to close the energy balance is less common close to the surface over short roughness but is still sometimes seen, especially in complex topography. These observations cast doubt on the results obtained from long term flux studies where daily and annual net ecosystem exchange is usually the small difference between large positive and negative fluxes over 24 h. In this paper we investigate this problem by examining some fundamental assumptions entailed in analysis of surface exchange by the eddy flux method. In particular, we clarify the form and use of the scalar conservation equation that underlies this analysis and we examine the links between averaging period and rotation of coordinates in the situation where coordinates are aligned with the wind vector. We show that rotating coordinates so that the x axis is aligned with the mean wind vector has the effect of high pass filtering the scalar covariance, wc, such that contributions to the aerodynamic flux from atmospheric motions with periods longer than the averaging period are lost while those of shorter period are distorted. We compare the effect of computing surface exchange by averaging many short periods, in each of which the coordinates are rotated so that the mean vertical velocity is zero (the method currently adopted in most long-term flux studies), with analysis in long-term coordinates and show a systematic underestimation of surface exchange in the former case. This is illustrated with data from three long-term forest field sites where underestimations of sensible and latent heat fluxes of 10–15% averaged over many days are seen. Crucial factors determining the loss of flux are the averaging period T, the measurement height and the content of the scalar cospectrum at periods longer than T. The properties of this cospectrum over tall canopies in both homogeneous and complex terrain are illustrated by measurements at our three sites and we see that over tall canopies on flat ground in convective conditions, or on hilly sites in near neutral flow, the scalar cospectra have much more low frequency content than classical surface-layer spectral forms would predict. We believe that the filtering of this low frequency covariance by the averaging-rotation operations in common use is a large contributory factor to the failure to close the energy balance over tall canopies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The turbulence structure in two Amazon rain forests was characterised for a range of above-canopy stability conditions, and the results compared with previous studies in other forest canopies and recent theory for the generation of turbulent eddies just above forest canopies. Three-dimensional wind speed and temperature fluctuation data were collected simultaneously at up to five levels inside and above two canopies of 30–40 m tall forests, during three separate periods. We analysed hourly statistics, joint probability distributions, length scales, spatial correlations and coherence, as well as power spectra of vertical and horizontal wind speed. The daytime results show a sharp attenuation of turbulence in the top third of the canopies, resulting in very little movement, and almost Gaussian probability distributions of wind speeds, in the lower canopy. This contrasts with strongly skewed and kurtotic distributions in the upper canopy. At night, attenuation was even stronger and skewness vanished even in the upper canopy. Power spectral peaks in the lower canopy are shifted to lower frequencies relative to the upper canopy, and spatial correlations and coherences were low throughout the canopy. Integral length scales of vertical wind speed at the top of the canopy were small, about 0.15 h compared to a value of 0.28 h expected from the shear length scale at the canopy top, based on the hypothesis that the upper canopy air behaves as a plane mixing layer. All this suggests that, although exchange is not totally inhibited, tropical rain forest canopies differ from other forests in that rapid, coherent downward sweeps do not penetrate into the lower canopy, and that length scales are suppressed. This is associated with a persistent inversion of stability in that region compared to above-canopy conditions. The inversion is likely to be maintained by strong heat absorption in the leaves concentrated near the canopy top, with the generally weak turbulence being unable to destroy the temperature gradients over the large canopy depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response form the author for two articles including one related to effects of nutrient availability on carbon balance of global forest and another on data quality and role of nutrients in carbon-use efficiency of forest, which appeared in a previous issue is presented.

A correction to the article "Nutrient availability as the key regulator of global forest carbon balance," that was published in the April 6, 2014 issue is presented.

A correction to the article "Nutrient availability as the key regulator of global forest carbon balance" by S. Vicca, I. A. Janssens, J. Sardans and colleagues that was published in the previous issue is presented that inadvertently failed to include some texts of the acknowledgement section.

The density of wood is a key indicator of the carbon investment strategies of trees, impacting productivity and carbon storage. Despite its importance, the global variation in wood density and its environmental controls remain poorly understood, preventing accurate predictions of global forest carbon stocks. Here we analyse information from 1.1 million forest inventory plots alongside wood density data from 10,703 tree species to create a spatially explicit understanding of the global wood density distribution and its drivers. Our findings reveal a pronounced latitudinal gradient, with wood in tropical forests being up to 30% denser than that in boreal forests. In both angiosperms and gymnosperms, hydrothermal conditions represented by annual mean temperature and soil moisture emerged as the primary factors influencing the variation in wood density globally. This indicates similar environmental filters and evolutionary adaptations among distinct plant groups, underscoring the essential role of abiotic factors in determining wood density in forest ecosystems. Additionally, our study highlights the prominent role of disturbance, such as human modification and fire risk, in influencing wood density at more local scales. Factoring in the spatial variation of wood density notably changes the estimates of forest carbon stocks, leading to differences of up to 21% within biomes. Therefore, our research contributes to a deeper understanding of terrestrial biomass distribution and how environmental changes and disturbances impact forest ecosystems., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Protected areas are an important tool for wildlife conservation; however, research is increasingly revealing both biases and inadequacies in the global protected area network. One common criticism is that protected areas are frequently located in remote, high-elevation regions, which may face fewer threats compared to more accessible locations. To explore the conservation implications of this issue, we consider a thought experiment with seven different counterfactual scenarios for the Sunda clouded leopard's conservation on Borneo. This allows us to examine two contrasting paradigms for conservation: "proactive conservation" which prioritises areas with high biodiversity and high risk of development, and "expedient conservation" which focusses on areas with the lowest development risk. We select clouded leopards as our focal species not only because of their emerging conservation importance, but also because, as top predators, they represent both keystone species and ambassadors for wider forest biodiversity. Furthermore, a published analysis of the likely impacts of forest loss in their habitat provides a benchmark for evaluating the modelled outcomes of alternative hypothetical conservation scenarios. We find that, across all metrics, expedient reserve design offered few benefits over the business-as-usual scenario, in contrast to the much greater conservation effectiveness of proactive protected area design. This paper sheds light on the challenging trade-offs between conservation goals and the competing land uses essential for the economic development and well-being of local communities., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Amazonia's floodplain system is the largest and most biodiverse on Earth. Although forests are crucial to the ecological integrity of floodplains, our understanding of their species composition and how this may differ from surrounding forest types is still far too limited, particularly as changing inundation regimes begin to reshape floodplain tree communities and the critical ecosystem functions they underpin. Here we address this gap by taking a spatially explicit look at Amazonia-wide patterns of tree-species turnover and ecological specialization of the region's floodplain forests. We show that the majority of Amazonian tree species can inhabit floodplains, and about a sixth of Amazonian tree diversity is ecologically specialized on floodplains. The degree of specialization in floodplain communities is driven by regional flood patterns, with the most compositionally differentiated floodplain forests located centrally within the fluvial network and contingent on the most extraordinary flood magnitudes regionally. Our results provide a spatially explicit view of ecological specialization of floodplain forest communities and expose the need for whole-basin hydrological integrity to protect the Amazon's tree diversity and its function., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Tropical forests are some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world, yet their functioning is threatened by anthropogenic disturbances and climate change. Global actions to conserve tropical forests could be enhanced by having local knowledge on the forests' functional diversity and functional redundancy as proxies for their capacity to respond to global environmental change. Here we create estimates of plant functional diversity and redundancy across the tropics by combining a dataset of 16 morphological, chemical and photosynthetic plant traits sampled from 2,461 individual trees from 74 sites distributed across four continents together with local climate data for the past half century. Our findings suggest a strong link between climate and functional diversity and redundancy with the three trait groups responding similarly across the tropics and climate gradient. We show that drier tropical forests are overall less functionally diverse than wetter forests and that functional redundancy declines with increasing soil water and vapour pressure deficits. Areas with high functional diversity and high functional redundancy tend to better maintain ecosystem functioning, such as aboveground biomass, after extreme weather events. Our predictions suggest that the lower functional diversity and lower functional redundancy of drier tropical forests, in comparison with wetter forests, may leave them more at risk of shifting towards alternative states in face of further declines in water availability across tropical regions., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

The forests of Amazonia are among the most biodiverse plant communities on Earth. Given the immediate threats posed by climate and land-use change, an improved understanding of how this extraordinary biodiversity is spatially organized is urgently required to develop effective conservation strategies. Most Amazonian tree species are extremely rare but a few are common across the region. Indeed, just 227 'hyperdominant' species account for >50% of all individuals >10 cm diameter at 1.3 m in height. Yet, the degree to which the phenomenon of hyperdominance is sensitive to tree size, the extent to which the composition of dominant species changes with size class and how evolutionary history constrains tree hyperdominance, all remain unknown. Here, we use a large floristic dataset to show that, while hyperdominance is a universal phenomenon across forest strata, different species dominate the forest understory, midstory and canopy. We further find that, although species belonging to a range of phylogenetically dispersed lineages have become hyperdominant in small size classes, hyperdominants in large size classes are restricted to a few lineages. Our results demonstrate that it is essential to consider all forest strata to understand regional patterns of dominance and composition in Amazonia. More generally, through the lens of 654 hyperdominant species, we outline a tractable pathway for understanding the functioning of half of Amazonian forests across vertical strata and geographical locations.

Higher levels of taxonomic and evolutionary diversity are expected to maximize ecosystem function, yet their relative importance in driving variation in ecosystem function at large scales in diverse forests is unknown. Using 90 inventory plots across intact, lowland, terra firme, Amazonian forests and a new phylogeny including 526 angiosperm genera, we investigated the association between taxonomic and evolutionary metrics of diversity and two key measures of ecosystem function: aboveground wood productivity and biomass storage. While taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity were not important predictors of variation in biomass, both emerged as independent predictors of wood productivity. Amazon forests that contain greater evolutionary diversity and a higher proportion of rare species have higher productivity. While climatic and edaphic variables are together the strongest predictors of productivity, our results show that the evolutionary diversity of tree species in diverse forest stands also influences productivity. As our models accounted for wood density and tree size, they also suggest that additional, unstudied, evolutionarily correlated traits have significant effects on ecosystem function in tropical forests. Overall, our pan-Amazonian analysis shows that greater phylogenetic diversity translates into higher levels of ecosystem function: tropical forest communities with more distantly related taxa have greater wood productivity.

Plant functional traits directly affect ecosystem functions. At the species level, trait combinations depend on trade-offs representing different ecological strategies, but at the community level trait combinations are expected to be decoupled from these trade-offs because different strategies can facilitate co-existence within communities. A key question is to what extent community-level trait composition is globally filtered and how well it is related to global versus local environmental drivers. Here, we perform a global, plot-level analysis of trait-environment relationships, using a database with more than 1.1 million vegetation plots and 26,632 plant species with trait information. Although we found a strong filtering of 17 functional traits, similar climate and soil conditions support communities differing greatly in mean trait values. The two main community trait axes that capture half of the global trait variation (plant stature and resource acquisitiveness) reflect the trade-offs at the species level but are weakly associated with climate and soil conditions at the global scale. Similarly, within-plot trait variation does not vary systematically with macro-environment. Our results indicate that, at fine spatial grain, macro-environmental drivers are much less important for functional trait composition than has been assumed from floristic analyses restricted to co-occurrence in large grid cells. Instead, trait combinations seem to be predominantly filtered by local-scale factors such as disturbance, fine-scale soil conditions, niche partitioning and biotic interactions.

Tropical forest leaf albedo (reflectance) greatly impacts how much energy the planet absorbs; however; little is known about how it might be impacted by climate change. Here, we measure leaf traits and leaf albedo at ten 1-ha plots along a 3,200-m elevation gradient in Peru. Leaf mass per area (LMA) decreased with warmer temperatures along the elevation gradient; the distribution of LMA was positively skewed at all sites indicating a shift in LMA towards a warmer climate and future reduced tropical LMA. Reduced LMA was significantly (P < 0.0001) correlated with reduced leaf near-infrared (NIR) albedo; community-weighted mean NIR albedo significantly (P < 0.01) decreased as temperature increased. A potential future 2 °C increase in tropical temperatures could reduce lowland tropical leaf LMA by 6-7 g m - 2 (5-6%) and reduce leaf NIR albedo by 0.0015-0.002 units. Reduced NIR albedo means that leaves are darker and absorb more of the Sun's energy. Climate simulations indicate this increased absorbed energy will warm tropical forests more at high CO 2 conditions with proportionately more energy going towards heating and less towards evapotranspiration and cloud formation.