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Item type:Publication, Mountain Ecosystems as Natural Laboratories for Climate Change Experiments(Frontiers Media S.A., 2020-03-31)Experimental studies are needed to empirically examine the effects of climate change on terrestrial organisms and to serve as the basis for predictions and management practices. As such, designing and implementing experimental systems that can simulate complex changes in the natural environment is currently a major area of interest of climate change science. Most climate change experiments (e.g., infrared heaters, open-top chambers) are typically performed within small, controlled environments and often manipulate just temperature and/or CO2 concentration. Other factors are more difficult to control (e.g., wind speed, soil moisture) or are frequently ignored (e.g., biotic interactions), leading to uncertainties in the results and limiting our ability to make realistic predictions about species’ responses to future environmental changes. We examined the natural variation of abiotic and biotic factors along mountain elevational gradients in order to highlight the potential for using these systems as natural laboratories for climate change research and experiments. The high variability of different abiotic and biotic factors along elevational gradients provides a good opportunity to carry out field transplant/translocation experiments aimed at answering some critical questions, including: How will new biotic assemblages affect key interactions and processes? What are the factors that influence species assemblages under novel climates? How do local abiotic factors influence the establishment of species migrating into novel and climatically suitable habitats? Based on empirical evidence, we strongly encourage researchers to take advantage of the natural environmental gradients found in mountains to study the potential direct and indirect impacts of climate change on species, communities and biodiversity as a whole. - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Amazonian and Andean tree communities are not tracking current climate warming(EarthArXiv, 2024-12-18)Climate change is shifting species distributions, leading to changes in community composition and novel species assemblages worldwide. However, the responses of tropical forests to climate change across large-scale environmental gradients remain largely unexplored. Using long-term data over 66,000 trees of more than 2,500 species occurring over 3,500 m elevation along the hyperdiverse Amazon-to-Andes elevational gradient, we assessed community-level shifts in species composition through a 44-year time span. We tested for the predicted increase in relative abundances of species from warmer climates (thermophilization) along the Amazon-to-Andes elevational gradients in Peru and Bolivia. Additionally, we examined the relative contributions of tree mortality, recruitment, and growth to observed compositional changes. Mean thermophilization rates across the Amazon-to-Andes gradient were slow relative to concordant changes in regional temperatures. Thermophilization rates were positive and more variable among Andean forest plots compared to Amazonian plots but were fastest at mid-elevations around the cloud base. Across all elevations, thermophilization rates were driven primarily by tree mortality and decreased growth of highland species rather than an influx of lowland species with higher thermal optima. Given the high variability of community-level responses to warming along the elevational gradients and the generally slower-than-warming rates of compositional change, we conclude that most tropical tree species, and especially Amazonian tree species, will not be able to escape current or future climate change through upward range shifts.1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Amazonian and Andean tree communities are not tracking current climate warming(National Academy of Sciences, 2025)Climate change is shifting species distributions, leading to changes in community composition and novel species assemblages worldwide. However, the responses of tropical forests to climate change across large-scale environmental gradients remain largely unexplored. Using long-term data over 66,000 trees of more than 2,500 species occurring over 3,500 m elevation along the hyperdiverse Amazon-to-Andes elevational gradients in Peru and Bolivia, we assessed community-level shifts in species composition over a 40+ y time span. We tested the thermophilization hypothesis, which predicts an increase in the relative abundances of species from warmer climates through time. Additionally, we examined the relative contributions of tree mortality, recruitment, and growth to the observed compositional changes. Mean thermophilization rates (TR) across the Amazon-to-Andes gradient were slow relative to regional temperature change. TR were positive and more variable among Andean forest plots compared to Amazonian plots but were highest at midelevations around the cloud base. Across all elevations, TR were driven primarily by tree mortality and decreased growth of highland (cool-adapted) species rather than an influx of lowland species with higher thermal optima. Given the high variability of community-level responses to warming along the elevational gradients, the high tree mortality, and the slower-than-warming rates of compositional change, we conclude that most tropical tree species, and especially lowland Amazonian tree species, will not be able to escape current or future climate change through upward range shifts, causing fundamental changes to composition and function in Earth’s highest diversity forests.2 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Microbial death in the Andes: necromass declines despite growth and carbon-use-efficiency increases with decadal soil warming(Elsevier, 2026)The growth and death of soil microbes are important drivers of soil carbon formation. A warming climate is predicted to affect both the production of microbial biomass and the stability of microbial residues (necromass) held in soils. However, we have very little information on how warming in tropical soils will affect these processes, and on the effect of temperature on microbial production and turnover over different time-scales. To address this, we studied temperature effects on microbial-mediated C cycling across two different time-scales, using a 20 ⁰C mean annual temperature gradient in the Peruvian Andes (long-term effects) and decadal experimental-warming via soil translocation (11-years of temperature effects). At long-term timescales, a legacy of warmer temperatures decreased microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE), microbial biomass C, and decreased fungal and bacterial necromass concentration in soils. At decadal timescales, experimental warming increased CUE, microbial production and microbial biomass concentration (likely the result of concomitant changes in substrate availability). However, this did not translate into increased microbial necromass concentration, which generally declined with warming across all temporal scales. Together, we show that warmer temperatures over decadal (11-year) timescales affect soil microbial processes to potentially increase their C input to soil (increased CUE, microbial production, and biomass) but we find no evidence that this C became stabilized as the necromass C pool decreased. Our results indicate that warming can alter microbial community metabolism to potentially increase necromass C inputs to soil, although we find no evidence to show that this offset overall soil C loss with warming.2