Spatiotemporal analysis of wildfires and their relationship with climate and land use in the Gran Chaco and Pantanal ecoregions.

The Gran Chaco and Pantanal ecoregions are the largest remaining dry forest areas in South America. Supporting diverse savanna, woodland and wetland ecosystems, these ecoregions are experiencing rapid changes in land use and fire occurrence with implications for ecosystem integrity. Our study characterizes the spatiotemporal patterns of wildfires in the Gran Chaco and Pantanal, and then examines the relationship between patterns of fire occurrence and climatic and anthropogenic drivers.

Global distribution and climate sensitivity of the tropical montane forest nitrogen cycle.

Tropical forests are pivotal to global climate and biogeochemical cycles, yet the geographic distribution of nutrient limitation to plants and microbes across the biome is unresolved. One long-standing generalization is that tropical montane forests are nitrogen (N)-limited whereas lowland forests tend to be N-rich. However, empirical tests of this hypothesis have yielded equivocal results.

The greening of the Northern Great Plains and its biogeochemical precursors.

Vegetation greenness has increased across much of the global land surface over recent decades. This trend is projected to continue-particularly in northern latitudes-but future greening may be constrained by nutrient availability needed for plant carbon (C) assimilation in response to CO enrichment (eCO ). eCO impacts foliar chemistry and function, yet the relative strengths of these effects versus climate in driving patterns of vegetative greening remain uncertain.

Symbiotic N fixation is sufficient to support net aboveground biomass accumulation in a humid tropical forest.

Symbiotic nitrogen (N) fixation has been shown to support carbon storage in young regenerating tropical forests, but N-fixing trees can also be strong competitors with non-fixing trees, making it unclear which mechanism drives long term patterns in biomass accretion. Many tropical forests have excess N, but factors such as rising atmospheric CO or selective cutting practices might induce additional N demand. Here we combine decades of stem inventory data, in-situ measures of symbiotic N fixation, and simulations of N demand to evaluate demographic and biogeochemical controls on biomass dynamics in legume-rich lowland forests of Trinidad.

Correction: Landscape drivers of recent fire activity (2001-2017) in south-central Chile.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Landscape drivers of recent fire activity (2001-2017) in south-central Chile.

In recent decades large fires have affected communities throughout central and southern Chile with great social and ecological consequences. Despite this high fire activity, the controls and drivers and the spatiotemporal pattern of fires are not well understood. To identify the large-scale trends and drivers of recent fire activity across six regions in south-central Chile (~32-40° S Latitude) we evaluated MODIS satellite-derived fire detections and compared this data with Chilean Forest Service records for the period 2001-2017.