After more than a decade of soil moisture deficit, tropical rainforest trees maintain photosynthetic capacity, despite increased leaf respiration.

ABSTRACT: Determining climate change feedbacks from tropical rainforests requires an understanding of how carbon gain through photosynthesis and loss through respiration will be altered. One of the key changes that tropical rainforests may experience under future climate change scenarios is reduced soil moisture availability. In this study we examine if and how both leaf photosynthesis and leaf dark respiration acclimate following more than 12 years of experimental soil moisture deficit, via a through-fall exclusion experiment (TFE) in an eastern Amazonian rainforest. We find that experimentally drought-stressed trees and taxa maintain the same maximum leaf photosynthetic capacity as trees in corresponding control forest, independent of their susceptibility to drought-induced mortality. We hypothesi

SUBMITTER: Rowland L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4989466 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature