Compositional Acclimation Can Lessen Tropical Forest Change in Response to Increasing Lightning Frequency: Insights From Simulation Modeling.

ABSTRACT: Lightning frequency in tropical forests has been increasing for decades and lightning is a major agent of forest biomass mortality, but the implications of increased lightning frequency are unclear. Here, we provide a species- and spatially explicit implementation of lightning in a mechanistic forest dynamics model. We evaluated the model's ability to reproduce current-day observations in a Panamanian tropical forest, and the sensitivity of model outputs to plausible changes in lightning frequency. The lightning-enabled model simulated aboveground biomass (AGB), carbon flux, and stem densities that were consistent with observations. As expected, AGB declined with increasing lightning frequency. However, the magnitude of AGB decline was greatly reduced when trees were assigned empirically d

SUBMITTER: Medvigy D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12683616 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature