ALBERT

Description: In evergreen tropical forests, the extent, magnitude, and controls on photosynthetic seasonality are poorly resolved and inadequately represented in Earth system models. Combining camera observations with ecosystem carbon dioxide fluxes at forests across rainfall gradients in Amazonia, we show that aggregate canopy phenology, not seasonality of climate drivers, is the primary cause of photosynthetic seasonality in these forests. Specifically, synchronization of new leaf growth with dry season litterfall shifts canopy composition toward younger, more light-use efficient leaves, explaining large seasonal increases (~27%) in ecosystem photosynthesis. Coordinated leaf development and demography thus reconcile seemingly disparate observations at different scales and indicate that accounting for leaf-level phenology is critical for accurately simulating ecosystem-scale responses to climate change.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Wu, Jin -- Albert, Loren P -- Lopes, Aline P -- Restrepo-Coupe, Natalia -- Hayek, Matthew -- Wiedemann, Kenia T -- Guan, Kaiyu -- Stark, Scott C -- Christoffersen, Bradley -- Prohaska, Neill -- Tavares, Julia V -- Marostica, Suelen -- Kobayashi, Hideki -- Ferreira, Mauricio L -- Campos, Kleber Silva -- da Silva, Rodrigo -- Brando, Paulo M -- Dye, Dennis G -- Huxman, Travis E -- Huete, Alfredo R -- Nelson, Bruce W -- Saleska, Scott R -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2016 Feb 26;351(6276):972-6. doi: 10.1126/science.aad5068.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. jinwu@email.arizona.edu saleska@email.arizona.edu. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. ; Brazil's National Institute for Amazon Research (INPA), Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. Plant Functional Biology and Climate Change Cluster, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia. ; John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. ; Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Urbana, IL 61081, USA. Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94025, USA. ; Department of Forestry, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Lab, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA. ; Department of Environmental Geochemical Cycle Research, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama, Japan. ; Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura, University of Sao Paulo, Piracicaba, SP, Brazil. Smart and Intelligent Cities Programme, University Nove de Julho, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil. ; Department of Environmental Physics, University of Western Para (UFOPA), Santarem, Para, Brazil. ; Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia (IPAM), Belem, Para, Brazil. Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA 02450, USA. ; Western Geographic Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA. ; Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Center for Environmental Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92629, USA. ; Plant Functional Biology and Climate Change Cluster, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26917771" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉