scholarly journals Effects of Tropical Deforestation on Global Hydroclimate: A Multimodel Ensemble Analysis

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 1124-1141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Hasler ◽  
David Werth ◽  
Roni Avissar
Keyword(s):  
Bootstrap Method ◽  
Tropical Deforestation ◽  
Tropical Rain Forests ◽  
Rain Forests ◽  
Climate System Model ◽  
Precipitation Response ◽  
Tropical Areas ◽  
Multimodel Ensembles ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Tropics

Abstract Two multimodel ensembles (MME) were produced with the GISS Model II (GM II), the GISS Atmosphere Model (AM), and the NCAR Community Climate System Model (CCSM) to evaluate the effects of tropical deforestation on the global hydroclimate. Each MME used the same 48-yr period but the two were differentiated by their land-cover types. In the “control” case, current vegetation was used, and in the “deforested” case, all tropical rain forests were converted to a mixture of shrubs and grassland. Globally, the control simulations produced with the three GCMs compared well to observations, both in the time mean and in the temporal variability, although various biases exist in the different tropical rain forests. The local precipitation response to deforestation is very strong. The remote effect in the tropics (away from the deforested tropical areas) is strong as well, but the effects at midlatitudes are weaker. In the MME, the impacts tend to be attenuated relative to the individual models. The significance of the geopotential and precipitation responses was evaluated with a bootstrap method, and results varied during the year. Tropical deforestation also produced anomalous fluxes in potential energy that were a direct response to the deforestation. These different analyses confirmed the existence of a teleconnection mechanism due to deforestation.

scholarly journals The Influence of Tropical Deforestation on the Northern Hemisphere Climate by Atmospheric Teleconnections

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter K. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Northern Hemisphere ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Storm Track ◽  
Lower Troposphere ◽  
Tropical Deforestation ◽  
Climate Response ◽  
Climate System Model ◽  
Climate Signal ◽  
The Tropics

Abstract Numerous studies have identified the regional-scale climate response to tropical deforestation through changes to water, energy, and momentum fluxes between the land surface and the atmosphere. There has been little research, however, on the role of tropical deforestation on the global climate. Previous studies have focused on the climate response in the extratropics with little analysis of the mechanisms responsible for propagating the signal out of the tropics. A climate modeling study is presented of the physical processes that are important in transmitting a deforestation signal out of the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere extratropics in boreal winter. Using the Community Climate System Model, version 3 Integrated Biosphere Simulator (CCM3–IBIS) climate model and by imposing an exaggerated land surface forcing of complete tropical forest removal, the thermodynamic and dynamical atmospheric response is evaluated regionally within the tropics, globally as the climate signal propagates to the Northern Hemisphere, and then regionally in Eurasia where land–atmosphere feedbacks contribute to amplifying the climate signal and warming the surface and lower troposphere by 1–4 K. Model results indicate that removal of the tropical forests causes weakening of deep tropical convection that excites a Rossby wave train emanating northeastward away from the South American continent. Changes in European storm-track activity cause an intensification and northward shift in the Ferrel cell that leads to anomalous adiabatic warming over a broad region of Eurasia. Regional-scale land–atmosphere feedbacks are found to amplify the warming. While hypothetical, this approach illustrates the atmospheric mechanisms linking the tropics with Eurasia that may otherwise not be detectable with more realistic land-use change simulations.

The Green Room: Conserving Tropical Rain Forests

2016 ◽  
Vol 083 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Beckrich
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Rain Forests ◽  
Rain Forests

Ants accelerate litter decomposition in a Costa Rican lowland tropical rain forest

2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 437-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrence P. McGlynn ◽  
Evan K. Poirson
Keyword(s):  
Mass Loss ◽  
Leaf Litter ◽  
Litter Decomposition ◽  
Rain Forest ◽  
Costa Rican ◽  
Tropical Rain Forests ◽  
Rain Forests ◽  
Food Web Structure ◽  
Litter Bags ◽  
Lowland Rain Forest

Abstract:The decomposition of leaf litter is governed, in part, by litter invertebrates. In tropical rain forests, ants are dominant predators in the leaf litter and may alter litter decomposition through the action of a top-down control of food web structure. The role of ants in litter decomposition was investigated in a Costa Rican lowland rain forest with two experiments. In a mesocosm experiment, we manipulated ant presence in 50 ambient leaf-litter mesocosms. In a litterbag gradient experiment, Cecropia obtusifolia litter was used to measure decomposition rate constants across gradients in nutrients, ant density and richness, with 27 separate litterbag treatments for total arthropod exclusion or partial arthropod exclusion. After 2 mo, mass loss in mesocosms containing ants was 30.9%, significantly greater than the 23.5% mass loss in mesocosms without ants. In the litter bags with all arthropods excluded, decomposition was best accounted by the carbon: phosphorus content of soil (r2 = 0.41). In litter bags permitting smaller arthropods but excluding ants, decomposition was best explained by the local biomass of ants in the vicinity of the litter bags (r2 = 0.50). Once the microarthropod prey of ants are permitted to enter litterbags, the biomass of ants near the litterbags overtakes soil chemistry as the regulator of decomposition. In concert, these results support a working hypothesis that litter-dwelling ants are responsible for accelerating litter decomposition in lowland tropical rain forests.

scholarly journals Resilience of tropical rain forests: tree community reassembly in secondary forests

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 385-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Norden ◽  
Robin L. Chazdon ◽  
Anne Chao ◽  
Yi-Huei Jiang ◽  
Braulio Vílchez-Alvarado
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Forests ◽  
Tropical Rain Forests ◽  
Rain Forests ◽  
Tree Community ◽  
Community Reassembly

Resource allocation to reproductive organs during masting in the tropical emergent tree, Dipterocarpus tempehes

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomoaki Ichie ◽  
Tanaka Kenta ◽  
Michiko Nakagawa ◽  
Kaori Sato ◽  
Tohru Nakashizuka
Keyword(s):  
Forest Ecosystems ◽  
Reproductive Organs ◽  
Nutrient Cycle ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Tropical Rain Forests ◽  
Rain Forests ◽  
Mass Flowering ◽  
Animal Populations ◽  
Dipterocarp Forests ◽  
Interspecific Synchronization

Some tree species exhibit large year-to-year variation in seed production, a phenomenon known as masting (Kelly 1994, Kelly & Sork 2002). Even in tropical rain forests, in which the climate is suitable for plant growth all year round with little seasonal variation (Whitmore 1998), there are many reports of masting (Appanah 1993, Hart 1995, Newbery et al. 1998, Newstrom et al. 1994, Wheelwright 1986). In particular, Dipterocarpaceae, the dominant family in lowland mixed dipterocarp forests in South-East Asia, undergo mast fruiting following mass-flowering with strong interspecific synchronization in aseasonal western Malesia (Appanah 1985, 1993; Ashton 1989, Ashton et al. 1988, Curran et al. 1999, Janzen 1974, Medway 1972, Sakai et al. 1999, Whitmore 1998, Wood 1956). In mixed-dipterocarp forests, dipterocarp species contribute more than 70% of the canopy biomass (Bruenig 1996, Curran & Leighton 2000). Masting of dipterocarp species is therefore likely to have a major impact on animal populations, and also on the nutrient cycle in such forest ecosystems by causing fluctuations in the availability of resources (Sakai 2002).

Parasitic infection and chronic energy deficiency in adults

Parasitology ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 107 (S1) ◽  
pp. S159-S167 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. S. Shetty ◽  
N. Shetty
Keyword(s):  
Nutritional Status ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
Parasitic Infection ◽  
Critical Determinant ◽  
Energy Deficiency ◽  
Chronic Energy Deficiency ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Tropics ◽  
Relationship Of

Interactions between infection and nutrition have been well recognized for several years now since they contribute directly to the health of individuals and communities. Malnourished individuals are specially prone to developing infections while infections themselves can lead to profound changes in the nutritional status of the individual. Health workers in developing countries in the tropics have long recognized the mutually aggravating interactions of malnutrition and infection. The importance of this synergistic relationship between infection and nu-tritional status has been studied extensively in the case of young children. The nutritional status of a young child is a critical determinant of both c morbidity and mortality resulting from a wide range of infections: bacterial, viral, or parasitic. Chandra (1983), in his review on the relationship of nutrition, immunity and infection has categorized the wide range of infectious agents (bacterial, viral, fungal and parasitic) into those that are definitely, variably or minimally influenced by the nutritional status of the child.

scholarly journals Community Global Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) Package (CGOP): Assessment and Validation of the OSSE System Using an OSSE–OSE Intercomparison of Summary Assessment Metrics

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (10) ◽  
pp. 2061-2078 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sid-Ahmed Boukabara ◽  
Kayo Ide ◽  
Yan Zhou ◽  
Narges Shahroudi ◽  
Ross N. Hoffman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
System Simulation ◽  
Weather Prediction ◽  
Real Data ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Forecast Performance ◽  
Individual System ◽  
Assessment Metrics ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Tropics ◽  
Observing System Simulation Experiment

AbstractObserving system simulation experiments (OSSEs) are used to simulate and assess the impacts of new observing systems planned for the future or the impacts of adopting new techniques for exploiting data or for forecasting. This study focuses on the impacts of satellite data on global numerical weather prediction (NWP) systems. Since OSSEs are based on simulations of nature and observations, reliable results require that the OSSE system be validated. This validation involves cycles of assessment and calibration of the individual system components, as well as the complete system, with the end goal of reproducing the behavior of real-data observing system experiments (OSEs). This study investigates the accuracy of the calibration of an OSSE system—here, the Community Global OSSE Package (CGOP) system—before any explicit tuning has been performed by performing an intercomparison of the OSSE summary assessment metrics (SAMs) with those obtained from parallel real-data OSEs. The main conclusion reached in this study is that, based on the SAMs, the CGOP is able to reproduce aspects of the analysis and forecast performance of parallel OSEs despite the simplifications employed in the OSSEs. This conclusion holds even when the SAMs are stratified by various subsets (the tropics only, temperature only, etc.).

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