iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

We find that 🌳 demography is not uniform, even within a species’ range. Accounting for this mosaic of mortality can improve management & conservation of forests facing intensifying stressors, and stresses the crucial role of permanent plots across environmental gradients. @umramap.bsky.social 🧵8/9

110

🌎 Take-home message: To predict forest futures, we need to go beyond climate envelopes — including disturbances, pests, and ontogeny — if we want realistic models of mortality and carbon cycling. @ird-fr.bsky.social 🧵7/9

In contrast, in low-mortality years, competition was the main mortality agent, suggesting a prevalence of gap dynamics under low mortality years and regions. High-mortality patches, though, were dominated by disturbance agents like storms and insects. 🧵6/9

100

🔥 Pinus elliottii (slash pine) and P. palustris (longleaf pine) showed more localised spatial structures. Extreme weather events (storms, mostly) and fire dominated their high-mortality years (especially 2013–2023). 🧵5/9

100

🌳 Pinus taeda (loblolly pine) stood out: Its survival has clearly declined over the past two decades across its natural range. This pattern was spatially consistent and mostly linked to weather, insects, and competition. 🧵4/9

100

We found that mortality patterns form a mosaic across space and time — and change in nonlinear ways with tree size (ontogeny). 👉 Most interspecific differences appear in saplings (2.5 to 10 cm DBH) and near maximum tree size. 🧵3/9

100

David Bauman @davbauman.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

Tree mortality isn’t random — it depends on who you are, where you grow, and what happens to you. We analysed demographic data from ~130,000 trees across 14,500 plots (years 2003–2023), looking at mortality agents like competition, storms, fire, insects, and disease. 🧵2/9

110

This follows our earlier Ecology Letters study showing that dead trees can influence neighbours even more than living ones. Forests have long memories — the "ghosts" of trees past still shape who grows, survives, and coexists. 🌳🌱 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/ele.... [3/3]

doi.org

The unexpected influence of legacy conspecific density dependence

The presence of dead conspecific neighbours significantly decreased tree survival. Negative legacy conspecific effects proved nearly four times stronger than living conspecific density effects. The l...

020

David Bauman @davbauman.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

We’ve long known that young trees struggle near adults of the same species — this mechanism helps maintain diversity. But what if that effect doesn’t end when the adult tree dies? Turns out this "legacy effect" can last at least 5 years — even after the tree is dead 🌲 [2/3]

Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · 21/10/2025

Reposted by David Bauman

A study in Nature reports that a transition from carbon sink to source for the aboveground woody biomass of moist tropical Australian forests has occurred, driven by increasingly extreme climate anomalies. go.nature.com/4ndWLmg ⚒️ 🧪

This is figure 3, which shows Queensland rainforest plot locations, long-term climate, and causal diagram of the hypotheses relating climate variations over time to ΔAGB.

01510

David Bauman @davbauman.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Ahead of the EU Council meeting on 23 Oct., > 2178 scientists across Europe have signed an open letter urging heads of state and government to back a science-based 2040 climate target of > 90–95% domestic greenhouse gas reductions compared to the 1990s. doi.org/10.5281/zeno... @ird-fr.bsky.social

doi.org

Open letter by Scientists: Climate Neutrality is Europe's Greatest Economic Opportunity

The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change advised that a 90%–95% net domestic reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) until 2040 (compared to the 1990 baseline) is necessary in order to ach...

030

Reposted by David Bauman

IRD @ird-fr.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

🌳 Selon une nouvelle étude les forêts tropicales d’Australie seraient les premières au monde à émettre davantage de carbone dans l’atmosphère qu’elles n’en absorbent. ℹ️ www.ird.fr/les-forets-t...

ird.fr

Les forêts tropicales d’Australie, premières à basculer de puits de carbone à émettrices de CO2 | Site Web IRD

Selon une nouvelle étude, les forêts tropicales d’Australie seraient les premières au monde à émettre davantage de carbone dans l’atmosphère qu’elles n’en absorbent.

003

With #COP30 next month in Belém 🇧🇷, we hope this will be a wake-up call: tropical forests are under growing pressure from climate change. Safeguarding them demands ambitious and fair climate action, including stronger support for countries that protect these vital ecosystems for us all. 🌳🌡️📈 [5/5]

A research volunteer admires a large tree at a long-term research site in Australia’s tropical rainforest.
Credit: Andrew Ford

130

Of course, this doesn’t mean these forests have lost all climate value ➡️ they remain immense carbon stores and irreplaceable biodiversity havens. But it shows that keeping global warming well below 1.5 °C is now even harder—and more urgent. 🌏 [4/5]

Aerial view of Australia’s relict tropical rainforests, one of the oldest rainforests in the world.
Credit: Alexander Shenkin

View through Australian old-growth tropical rainforest at a long-term research site, where individual trees are painted with identification numbers.
Credit: Andrew Ford

130

Tropical tree mortality has increased with rising atmospheric water stress - Nature

Context: in 2022, our @nature.com study found a long-term increase in tree mortality in these forests, likely due to rising atmospheric water stress. 🔗 nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04737-7 This new paper follows up: aboveground biomass is now a net carbon emitter — driven by #ClimateChange. [3/5]

nature.com

Over the past 35 years, annual tree mortality risk has increased in the moist tropical forests of Australia and is associated with increased atmospheric water stress.

Based on 50 yrs of data from ~11 000 trees, we found that the aboveground woody biomass—once absorbing C—now now releases nearly 1 tonne of C per hectare each year. The cause? Human-driven climate change: hotter extremes, droughts & cyclones are killing more trees than the forest regrow. 🌡️🌪️ [2/5]

Aerial view of Australia’s relict tropical rainforests. A 49-year study reveals that aboveground biomass in these forests has switched from being carbon sink to a carbon source.
Credit: Alexander Shenkin @shenkin.bsky.social

Aerial view of tropical rainforest canopy in Australia.
Credit: Alexander Shenkin @shenkin.bsky.social

UMR AMAP @umramap.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Reposted by David Bauman

Hello Bluesky! AMAP est une unité de recherche qui s'intéresse à la botanique et la modélisation de l'architecture des plantes et des végétations. AMAP regroupe des mathématiciens et informaticiens aux côtés de botanistes, agronomes & écologues 🌱🌿🌳🔬🛰️💻 amap.cirad.fr/fr/index.php #helloESR #botany

amap.cirad.fr

UMR AMAP

087

These findings show how #causality can be inferred from observational data in #Ecology. Habitat loss, fragmentation, edge effects, degradation, and the functional make-up of tree communities have interdependencies, and require a #CausalModel to disentangle #causation from spurious association! [4/5]

Figure 1 of the study: Artistic causal diagram (Directed Acyclic Graph, #DAG) used in the study (design and drawings by Jannah Oliveira; obrigadão Jannah!) to illustrate our causal assumptions as to how the data-generation process underlying region-level human disturbance pressures, and tree community functional traits. This causal model was used to logically inform the content of our statistical models, with the aim to allow causal interpretations of the effects of interest.
@ird-fr@bsky.social
@oxfordecosystems.bsky.social

151

➡️ Highlights urgent need to conserve / restore #TropicalForests, prevent degradation, and implement measures to protect / boost populations of the large-bodied birds (e.g. toucans) and mammals (e.g. spider monkeys) that disperse the seeds of 'losing' slow-growing large-seeded tree species. [3/5]

Recent #deforestation in an already deforested and degraded human-modified landscape in the #Amazon. Credit: Flavio Forner and Rede Amazônia Sustentável.

The hyper-fragmented landscape of the Serra Grande region in northeast Brazil, with forest fragments surrounded by sugar-cane plantations. Credit: Adriano Gambarini.

131

These 'winner-loser replacements' along these gradients of increasing human disruption are also likely to impact wildlife species adapted to consuming / dispersing the large seeds of tree species being lost in human-modified landscapes. [2/5]

An Agouti (Cutia sp.) carrying a large fruit of a Bertheletia excelsa (Brazil nut) in the Balbina region. Photo from a camera trap installed by Maíra Benchimol, one of the authors of the study.

A Tayra (Eira barbara) carrying a large fruit of a large-seeded Sapotaceae tree in the Balbina region. Photo from a camera trap installed by Maíra Benchimol, one of the authors of the study.

A logging patio helps demonstrate the extent of timber removal in the wider landscape in the Amazon. Credit: Flavio Forner and Rede Amazônia Sustentável.

141