Publications by authors named "G Aymard"
Article Synopsis
- * Analysis of data from over 1 million forest plots and thousands of tree species shows that wood density varies significantly by latitude, being up to 30% denser in tropical forests compared to boreal forests, and is influenced mainly by temperature and soil moisture.
- * The research also finds that disturbances like human activity and fire alter wood density at local levels, affecting forest carbon stock estimates by up to 21%, emphasizing the importance of understanding environmental impacts on forest ecosystems.
Forests are a substantial terrestrial carbon sink, but anthropogenic changes in land use and climate have considerably reduced the scale of this system. Remote-sensing estimates to quantify carbon losses from global forests are characterized by considerable uncertainty and we lack a comprehensive ground-sourced evaluation to benchmark these estimates. Here we combine several ground-sourced and satellite-derived approaches to evaluate the scale of the global forest carbon potential outside agricultural and urban lands.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding what controls global leaf type variation in trees is crucial for comprehending their role in terrestrial ecosystems, including carbon, water and nutrient dynamics. Yet our understanding of the factors influencing forest leaf types remains incomplete, leaving us uncertain about the global proportions of needle-leaved, broadleaved, evergreen and deciduous trees. To address these gaps, we conducted a global, ground-sourced assessment of forest leaf-type variation by integrating forest inventory data with comprehensive leaf form (broadleaf vs needle-leaf) and habit (evergreen vs deciduous) records.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPremise: The Amazonian hyperdominant genus Eperua (Fabaceae) currently holds 20 described species and has two strongly different inflorescence and flower types, with corresponding different pollination syndrome. The evolution of these vastly different inflorescence types within this genus was unknown and the main topic in this study.
Methods: We constructed a molecular phylogeny, based on the full nuclear ribosomal DNA and partial plastome, using Bayesian inference and maximum likelihood methods, to test whether the genus is monophyletic, whether all species are monophyletic and if the shift from bat to bee pollination (or vice versa) occurred once in this genus.