Abstract
Tropical forests act as atmospheric carbon sinks, helping to slow the effects of climate change. In an atmosphere enriched in carbon dioxide, photosynthesis should be more efficient at storing carbon, but the storage capacity of plants has both physical and biological limits. Tropical forests are also vibrant ecosystems, with matter and energy flows controlled by a myriad of biotic interactions and metabolic reactions involving organisms whose mass spans twenty orders of magnitude. This mosaic of life has a long evolutionary history, and the future of these interactions is uncertain. What recent advances have been made in scientific research into the response of tropical forests to global warming? What consequences can we foresee for living communities in a warmer world subject to extreme climatic conditions? What inspiration can we draw from tropical forests? The answers to these questions lie in long-term research collaborations, field observations combined with cutting-edge analytical methods, and observation-based models.
Jérôme Chave
Jérôme Chave is a CNRS research director and a member of the Académie des Sciences. He is deputy director of the Centre de Recherche sur la Biodiversité et l'Environnement unit in Toulouse, and head of the Centre d'étude de la biodiversité amazonienne (French Guiana) laboratory of excellence. Drawing on a vast network of international collaborations, his team studies the coexistence of tree species in tropical forests. The aim of this research is to reveal how forests persist in the face of global change, and the risks that changes in land use pose to tropical biodiversity.
