Mapping native and non-native vegetation in the Brazilian Cerrado using freely available satellite products.

Native vegetation across the Brazilian Cerrado is highly heterogeneous and biodiverse and provides important ecosystem services, including carbon and water balance regulation, however, land-use changes have been extensive. Conservation and restoration of native vegetation is essential and could be facilitated by detailed landcover maps. Here, across a large case study region in Goiás State, Brazil (1.

Amazonia trees have limited capacity to acclimate plant hydraulic properties in response to long-term drought.

The fate of tropical forests under future climate change is dependent on the capacity of their trees to adjust to drier conditions. The capacity of trees to withstand drought is likely to be determined by traits associated with their hydraulic systems. However, data on whether tropical trees can adjust hydraulic traits when experiencing drought remain rare.

Modelling tropical forest responses to drought and El Niño with a stomatal optimization model based on xylem hydraulics.

The current generation of dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) lacks a mechanistic representation of vegetation responses to soil drought, impairing their ability to accurately predict Earth system responses to future climate scenarios and climatic anomalies, such as El Niño events. We propose a simple numerical approach to model plant responses to drought coupling stomatal optimality theory and plant hydraulics that can be used in dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs). The model is validated against stand-scale forest transpiration () observations from a long-term soil drought experiment and used to predict the response of three Amazonian forest sites to climatic anomalies during the twentieth century.

Xylem hydraulic safety and construction costs determine tropical tree growth.

Faster growth in tropical trees is usually associated with higher mortality rates, but the mechanisms underlying this relationship are poorly understood. In this study, we investigate how tree growth patterns are linked with environmental conditions and hydraulic traits, by monitoring the cambial growth of 9 tropical cloud forest tree species coupled with numerical simulations using an optimization model. We find that fast-growing trees have lower xylem safety margins than slow-growing trees and this pattern is not necessarily linked to differences in stomatal behaviour or environmental conditions when growth occurs.

Environmental drivers on leaf phenology of ironstone outcrops species under seasonal climate.

Banded iron formations (BIF) have a particular vegetation type and provide a good model system for testing theories related to leaf phenology, due to unique stressful environmental conditions. As a consequence of the stressful conditions of BIF environment, we hypothesize that most species would retain at least some significant canopy cover, even at the end of the dry season, independently of growth form - trees, shrubs, and sub-shrubs. Considering the strong seasonality, we also hypothesize that photoperiod and rainfall act as triggers for leaf fall and leaf flushing in these environments.

Plant pneumatics: stem air flow is related to embolism - new perspectives on methods in plant hydraulics.

Wood contains a large amount of air, even in functional xylem. Air embolisms in the xylem affect water transport and can determine plant growth and survival. Embolisms are usually estimated with laborious hydraulic methods, which can be prone to several artefacts.