Patrick Meir
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View article: Tropical Montane Cloud Forests Have High Resilience to Five Years of Severe Soil Drought
Tropical Montane Cloud Forests Have High Resilience to Five Years of Severe Soil Drought Open
Tropical montane cloud forests (TMCFs) are globally important ecosystems, acting as large carbon sinks and supporting exceptional biodiversity. However, climate‐driven declines in rainfall threaten these forests, but their responses to lon…
View article: Contributions of height allometry and within-species trait variation to uncertainty in estimates of tropical forest carbon stocks
Contributions of height allometry and within-species trait variation to uncertainty in estimates of tropical forest carbon stocks Open
Tropical forests host globally significant carbon stocks, which are relied on to help mitigate the effects of human-induced climate change. Characterizing the uncertainty around carbon stock estimates is thus essential to inform the carbon…
View article: Linking leaf traits to growth responses under climate warming in tropical trees
Linking leaf traits to growth responses under climate warming in tropical trees Open
Climate warming is affecting the composition and distribution of Andean tropical montane forests (TMFs), resulting in varied growth responses among tree species. However, the underlying mechanisms driving these growth responses to climate …
View article: Microbial death in the Andes: necromass declines despite growth and carbon-use-efficiency increases with decadal soil warming
Microbial death in the Andes: necromass declines despite growth and carbon-use-efficiency increases with decadal soil warming Open
The growth and death of soil microbes are important drivers of soil carbon formation. A warming climate is predicted to affect both the production of microbial biomass and the stability of microbial residues (necromass) held in soils. Howe…
View article: Rapid increase of climate extremes across northern Amazonia
Rapid increase of climate extremes across northern Amazonia Open
Amazonia’s exceptional biodiversity, cultural significance, and ecosystem services make it pivotal to global and regional sustainability. However, the region is increasingly threatened by climate extremes, which exacerbate the effects of l…
View article: Photosynthesis of tropical Andean tree species: Insights from mechanistic modelling and sensitivity analysis
Photosynthesis of tropical Andean tree species: Insights from mechanistic modelling and sensitivity analysis Open
Andean tropical montane forests are highly biodiverse ecosystems with a carbon storage capacity comparable to lowland forests. However, their response to climate change remains uncertain, as species photosynthesis depends on their thermal …
View article: Realistic virtual forests for understanding forest disturbances and recovery from space
Realistic virtual forests for understanding forest disturbances and recovery from space Open
Forests worldwide are undergoing large-scale and unprecedented changes in terms of structure and composition due to land use change and natural disturbances. We have some understanding of how disturbances impact forest structure. Still, we…
View article: Unexpected Large Photosynthetic Thermal Plasticity of Montane Andean Trees
Unexpected Large Photosynthetic Thermal Plasticity of Montane Andean Trees Open
Tropical forests play a significant role in global carbon sequestration. However, our understanding of how tropical tree species adjust to climate warming remains limited to studies on seedlings grown in pots and highly controlled growth c…
View article: Plasticity in leaf-to-sapwood area ratio enables saplings to increase growth under long-term drought in Amazon
Plasticity in leaf-to-sapwood area ratio enables saplings to increase growth under long-term drought in Amazon Open
Frequent and severe drought events in the Amazon threaten the carbon sink capacity of the world’s largest tropical rainforest. However, the extent to which trees can buffer the impacts of drought by adjusting their physiology to sust…
View article: The fate of Amazon rain forests under drought: collapse or stabilisation? 
The fate of Amazon rain forests under drought: collapse or stabilisation?  Open
Drought-induced mortality is expected to cause substantial biomass loss in the Amazon Basin. However, responses by rain forest to prolonged drought remain largely unknown. Critically, how drought impacts individual trees over decades, whil…
View article: Data for Photosynthetic responses to temperature across the tropics: a meta-analytic approach
Data for Photosynthetic responses to temperature across the tropics: a meta-analytic approach Open
This data package contains raw data, data output, and code of photosynthetic temperature response curves from tropical forests. Data are used in "Photosynthetic responses to temperature across the tropics: a meta-analytic approach". The re…
View article: Photosynthetic responses to temperature across the tropics: a meta-analytic approach
Photosynthetic responses to temperature across the tropics: a meta-analytic approach Open
Background and Aims Tropical forests exchange more carbon dioxide (CO2) with the atmosphere than any other terrestrial biome. Yet, uncertainty in the projected carbon balance over the next century is roughly three times greater for the tro…
View article: Leaf nonstructural carbohydrate residence time, not concentration, correlates with leaf functional traits following the leaf economic spectrum in woody plants
Leaf nonstructural carbohydrate residence time, not concentration, correlates with leaf functional traits following the leaf economic spectrum in woody plants Open
Summary Nonstructural carbohydrate (NSC) concentrations might reflect the strategies described in the leaf economic spectrum (LES) due to their dependence on photosynthesis and respiration. We examined if NSC concentrations correlate with …
View article: A Theoretical Framework to Quantify Ecosystem Pressure‐Volume Relationships
A Theoretical Framework to Quantify Ecosystem Pressure‐Volume Relationships Open
‘Water potential’ is the biophysically relevant measure of water status in vegetation relating to stomatal, canopy and hydraulic conductance, as well as mortality thresholds; yet, this cannot be directly related to measured and modelled fl…
View article: New tree height allometries derived from terrestrial laser scanning reveal substantial discrepancies with forest inventory methods in tropical rainforests
New tree height allometries derived from terrestrial laser scanning reveal substantial discrepancies with forest inventory methods in tropical rainforests Open
Tree allometric models, essential for monitoring and predicting terrestrial carbon stocks, are traditionally built on global databases with forest inventory measurements of stem diameter (D) and tree height (H). However, these databases of…
View article: Towards accurate monitoring of water content in woody tissue across tropical forests and other biomes
Towards accurate monitoring of water content in woody tissue across tropical forests and other biomes Open
Forest ecosystems face increasing drought exposure due to climate change, necessitating accurate measurements of vegetation water content to assess drought stress and tree mortality risks. Although Frequency Domain Reflectometry offers a v…
View article: Drought and radiation explain fluctuations in Amazon rainforest greenness during the 2015–2016 drought
Drought and radiation explain fluctuations in Amazon rainforest greenness during the 2015–2016 drought Open
The 2015–2016 Amazon drought was characterized by below-average regional precipitation for an entire year, which distinguishes it from the dry-season-only droughts in 2005 and 2010. Studies of vegetation indices (VIs) derived from optical …
View article: Burn Severity and Post‐Fire Weather Are Key to Predicting Time‐To‐Recover From Australian Forest Fires
Burn Severity and Post‐Fire Weather Are Key to Predicting Time‐To‐Recover From Australian Forest Fires Open
Climate change has accelerated the frequency of catastrophic wildfires; however, the drivers that control the time‐to‐recover of forests are poorly understood. We integrated remotely sensed data, climate records, and landscape features to …
View article: Drivers of soil carbon emission in warmed tropical soil
Drivers of soil carbon emission in warmed tropical soil Open
Soil microbes form some of the most diverse biological communities on Earth and are fundamental in regulating the terrestrial carbon cycle. Their response to climate warming could therefore have major consequences for future climate, parti…
View article: Serious errors impair an assessment of forest carbon projects: A rebuttal of West et al. (2023)
Serious errors impair an assessment of forest carbon projects: A rebuttal of West et al. (2023) Open
Independent retrospective analyses of the effectiveness of reducing deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) projects are vital to ensure climate change benefits are being delivered. A recent study in Science by West et al. (1) appeared…
View article: Variable thermal plasticity of leaf functional traits in Andean tropical montane forests
Variable thermal plasticity of leaf functional traits in Andean tropical montane forests Open
Tropical montane forests (TMFs) are biodiversity hotspots and provide vital ecosystem services, but they are disproportionately vulnerable to climate warming. In the Andes, cold‐affiliated species from high elevations are being displaced a…
View article: Rooting depth and xylem vulnerability are independent woody plant traits jointly selected by aridity, seasonality, and water table depth
Rooting depth and xylem vulnerability are independent woody plant traits jointly selected by aridity, seasonality, and water table depth Open
Summary Evolutionary radiations of woody taxa within arid environments were made possible by multiple trait innovations including deep roots and embolism‐resistant xylem, but little is known about how these traits have coevolved across the…
View article: Vapour pressure deficit modulates hydraulic function and structure of tropical rainforests under nonlimiting soil water supply
Vapour pressure deficit modulates hydraulic function and structure of tropical rainforests under nonlimiting soil water supply Open
Summary Atmospheric conditions are expected to become warmer and drier in the future, but little is known about how evaporative demand influences forest structure and function independently from soil moisture availability, and how fast‐res…
View article: Drought and radiation explain swings in Amazon rainforest greenness during the 2015–2016 drought
Drought and radiation explain swings in Amazon rainforest greenness during the 2015–2016 drought Open
The 2015/16 Amazon drought was characterized by below-average regional precipitation for an entire year, which distinguishes it from the dry-season only droughts in 2005 and 2010. Studies of vegetation indices (VI) derived from optical rem…
View article: Seedling growth declines in warmed tropical forest soils
Seedling growth declines in warmed tropical forest soils Open
The response of plants to a warming climate could have a large feedback on further climatic change. This feedback is especially important for tropical forests, where the global peak in plant productivity and biodiversity occurs. Here we te…
View article: Ghosts of dry seasons past: Legacy of severe drought enhances mangrove salinity tolerance through coordinated cellular osmotic and elastic adjustments
Ghosts of dry seasons past: Legacy of severe drought enhances mangrove salinity tolerance through coordinated cellular osmotic and elastic adjustments Open
The incidence and severity of global mangrove mortality due to drought is increasing. Yet, little is understood of the capacity of mangroves to show long‐term acclimation of leaf water relations to severe drought. We tested for differences…