Environmental and physiological drivers of tree growth : a pan-tropical study of stable isotopes in tree rings

Forests in the wet tropics harbour an incredible biodiversity, provide many ecosystem services and regulate climatic conditions on regional scales. Tropical forests are also a major component of the global carbon cycle, storing 25% of the total terrestrial carbon and accounting for a third of net primary production. This means that changes in forest structure and forest cover in the wet tropics will not only affect biodiversity and ecosystem services, but also have implications for the global carbon cycle and – as a result – may speed up or slow down global warming. Deforestation rates are still high in the tropics and have profoundly affected the extent of forests in many countries. Additionally, there are indications that undisturbed and pristine tropical forests are changing. The most notable changes found by the monitoring of permanent forest plots are an increase of tree growth and forest biomass per unit of surface area over the last decades. If this is indeed the case, it would entail that the world’s tropical forests are potentially absorbing a significant fraction of human caused CO2emissions and as such are mitigating global warming. However, increased tree growth and forest biomass have not been found in all studies. Furthermore, it is unknown whether the observed changes in intact forests are part of a long-term change, or merely reflect decadal scale fluctuations. These uncertainties lead to an ongoing debate on whether tree growth and forest biomass have increased in tropical forests and – if so – to what extent. In addition, there is also a scientific discussion on the factor(s) that could underlie the potential changes in tree growth and forest biomass. Possibly, they are caused by an internal driver, like the lasting effect of large scale disturbances in the past, or by external drivers. Possible external factors affecting tropical forest dynamics are (1) climate change (temperature and precipitation), (2) increased nutrient depositions and (3) incr