Floodplains as an Achilles’ heel of Amazonian forest resilience
Open accessAbstract
Significance: Climate change may alter the distribution of biomes in tropical regions with implications for biodiversity and ecosystem services. Here we reveal that if the Amazon region becomes drier as predicted, forests may collapse first on seasonally inundated areas due to their vulnerability to wildfires. The widespread distribution of floodplain forests at the western and central regions implies that fire-prone savannas may expand deep into this massive forest biome, threatening the resilience of the entire system. Our findings suggest the need for a strategic fire management plan to strengthen Amazonian forest resilience in the face of climate change.
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Other key heterogeneity factors include topography, which determines plant access to groundwater, and seasonal flooding, which increases forest vulnerability to wildfires.
“Other key heterogeneity factors (Extended Data Fig. 6) include topography, which determines plant access to groundwater64, and seasonal flooding, which increases forest vulnerability to wildfires65.”
From Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system (2024) · cites this paper as [65]
For floodplain ecosystems covering 14% of the forest biome, a different critical threshold has been estimated at 1,500 mm of annual rainfall, implying floodplain forests may be the first to collapse in a drier future.
“For floodplain ecosystems covering 14% of the forest biome, a different critical threshold has been estimated at 1,500 mm of annual rainfall65, implying that floodplain forests may be the first to collapse in a drier future.”
From Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system (2024) · cites this paper as [65]
Although these ecosystem transitions have been confirmed only in the Negro river basin, floodplain forests in other parts of the Amazon were shown to be particularly vulnerable to collapse.
“Although these ecosystem transitions have been confirmed only in the Negro river basin (central Amazon), floodplain forests in other parts of the Amazon were shown to be particularly vulnerable to collapse45,64,65.”
From Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system (2024) · cites this paper as [65]
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Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Carroll M, et al. (2011) MODIS vegetative cover conversion and vegetation continuous fields. Land Remote Sensing and Global Environmental Change (Springer, New York), pp 725-745.
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Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system
Flores, B. M., Montoya, E., Sakschewski, B., Nascimento, N., Staal, A., Betts, R. A., Levis, C., Lapola, D. M., Esquível-Muelbert, A., Jakovac, C., et al. (2024) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06970-0 · Cited by 607 · see citing works
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- Authors
- Flores, B. M., Holmgren, M., Xu, C., van Nes, E. H., Jakovac, C. C., Mesquita, R. C. G., & Scheffer, M.
- Affiliations
- Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (BR)
- Wageningen University & Research (NL)
- Nanjing University (CN)
- Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group, Environmental Science Department, Wageningen University, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands;
- Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (BR)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2017-04-10
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 17
- Pages
- 4442-4446
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5410816
- OpenAlex
- W2606698187
- Cited by
- 142
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 16 · 2017: 3
- FWCI
- 7.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling (acceptedVersion)
- LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (41271197)
- Netherlands Earth System Science Centre
- Wageningen University and Research
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Fire effects on ecosystems
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Ecosystem dynamics and resilience
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
- Keywords
- floodplain, Amazon rainforest, forest resilience, forest fires, drought, tree cover, soil fertility, carbon release, peatlands, forest structure
- MeSH terms
- Agriculture, Fires, Geological Phenomena, Floods, Climate Change, Forests
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