气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): Carbon stocks in central African forests enhanced by elephant disturbance

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DOI	10.1038/s41561-019-0395-6
	Carbon stocks in central African forests enhanced by elephant disturbance
	Berzaghi F.; Longo M.; Ciais P.; Blake S.; Bretagnolle F.; Vieira S.; Scaranello M.; Scarascia-Mugnozza G.; Doughty C.E.
发表日期	2019
ISSN	17520894
卷号	12 期号:9
英文摘要	Large herbivores, such as elephants, can have important effects on ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles. Yet, the influence of elephants on the structure, productivity and carbon stocks in Africa’s rainforests remain largely unknown. Here, we quantify those effects by incorporating elephant disturbance in the Ecosystem Demography model, and verify the modelled effects by comparing them with forest inventory data from two lowland primary forests in Africa. We find that the reduction of forest stem density due to the presence of elephants leads to changes in the competition for light, water and space among trees. These changes favour the emergence of fewer and larger trees with higher wood density. Such a shift in African’s rainforest structure and species composition increases the long-term equilibrium of aboveground biomass. The shift also reduces the forest net primary productivity, given the trade-off between productivity and wood density. At a typical density of 0.5 to 1 animals per km2, elephant disturbances increase aboveground biomass by 26–60 t ha−1. Conversely, the extinction of forest elephants would result in a 7% decrease in the aboveground biomass in central African rainforests. These modelled results are confirmed by field inventory data. We speculate that the presence of forest elephants may have shaped the structure of Africa’s rainforests, which probably plays an important role in differentiating them from Amazonian rainforests. © 2019, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
语种	英语
scopus关键词	aboveground biomass; carbon sequestration; demography; elephant; forest ecosystem; forest inventory; herbivore; primary production; rainforest; vegetation structure; Animalia; Elephantidae
来源期刊	Nature Geoscience
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/124618
作者单位	Dipartimento per la Innovazione nei sistemi Biologici, Agroalimentari e Forestali, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy; Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, IPSL-LSCE CEA/CNRS/UVSQ, Gif-sur-Yvette, France; Biogéosciences, UMR 6282 CNRS, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Dijon, France; Embrapa Agricultural Informatics, Campinas, Brazil; NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States; Department of Biology, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, United States; Wildlife Conservation Society, New York, NY, United States; Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas Ambientais, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, Brazil; School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, United States
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Berzaghi F.,Longo M.,Ciais P.,et al. Carbon stocks in central African forests enhanced by elephant disturbance[J],2019,12(9).
APA	Berzaghi F..,Longo M..,Ciais P..,Blake S..,Bretagnolle F..,...&Doughty C.E..(2019).Carbon stocks in central African forests enhanced by elephant disturbance.Nature Geoscience,12(9).
MLA	Berzaghi F.,et al."Carbon stocks in central African forests enhanced by elephant disturbance".Nature Geoscience 12.9(2019).