J C Aleman, A Fayolle, C Favier, A C Staver, K G Dexter, C M Ryan, A F Azihou, D Bauman, M Te Beest, E N Chidumayo, J A Comiskey, J P G M Cromsigt, H Dessard, J-L Doucet, M Finckh, J-F Gillet, S Gourlet-Fleury, G P Hempson, R M Holdo, B Kirunda, F N Kouame, G Mahy, F Maiato P Gonçalves, I McNicol, P Nieto Quintano, A J Plumptre, R C Pritchard, R Revermann, C B Schmitt, A M Swemmer, H Talila, E Woollen, M D Swaine
The idea that tropical forest and savanna are alternative states is crucial to how we manage these biomes and predict their future under global change. Large-scale empirical evidence for alternative stable states is limited, however, and comes mostly from the multimodal distribution of structural aspects of vegetation. These approaches have been criticized, as structure alone cannot separate out wetter savannas from drier forests for example, and there are also technical challenges to mapping vegetation structure in unbiased ways...
October 27, 2020: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America