Experimental warming and its legacy effects on root dynamics following two hurricane disturbances in a wet tropical forest.

ABSTRACT: Tropical forests are expected to experience unprecedented warming and increases in hurricane disturbances in the coming decades; yet, our understanding of how these productive systems, especially their belowground component, will respond to the combined effects of varied environmental changes remains empirically limited. Here we evaluated the responses of root dynamics (production, mortality, and biomass) to soil and understory warming (+4°C) and after two consecutive tropical hurricanes in our in situ warming experiment in a tropical forest of Puerto Rico: Tropical Responses to Altered Climate Experiment (TRACE). We collected minirhizotron images from three warmed plots and three control plots of 12 m² . Following Hurricanes Irma and María in September 2017, the infrared heater

SUBMITTER: Yaffar D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9293463 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature