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Severe drought in a tropical forest ecosystem suppresses photosynthetic carbon uptake and plant maintenance respiration, but growth is maintained, suggesting that, overall, less carbon is available for tree tissue maintenance and defence, which may cause the subsequent observed increase in tree mortality. Effect of short-term drought on forest ecosytems The underlying mechanisms that determine the response of tropical forest ecosystems to drought remain poorly understood. Based on observations from a network of intensively measured forest plots in the Amazon basin, this study shows that severe drought suppresses photosynthetic carbon uptake and plant maintenance respiration. Plant growth is maintained however, suggesting that less carbon is available for tree tissue maintenance and defence — which may explain the observed increase in tree mortality that follows a drought. In 2005 and 2010 the Amazon basin experienced two strong droughts 1 , driven by shifts in the tropical hydrological regime 2 possibly associated with global climate change 3 , as predicted by some global models 3 . Tree mortality increased after the 2005 drought 4 , and regional atmospheric inversion modelling showed basin-wide decreases in CO 2 uptake in 2010 compared with 2011 (ref. 5 ). But the response of tropical forest carbon cycling to these droughts is not fully understood and there has been no detailed multi-site investigation in situ . Here we use several years of data from a network of thirteen 1-ha forest plots spread throughout South America, where each component of net primary production (NPP), autotrophic respiration and heterotrophic respiration is measured separately, to develop a better mechanistic understanding of the impact of the 2010 drought on the Amazon forest. We find that total NPP remained constant throughout the drought. However, towards the end of the drought, autotrophic respiration, especially in roots and stems, declined significantly compared with measurements in 2009 made in the absence of drought, with extended decreases in autotrophic respiration in the three driest plots. In the year after the drought, total NPP remained constant but the allocation of carbon shifted towards canopy NPP and away from fine-root NPP. Both leaf-level and plot-level measurements indicate that severe drought suppresses photosynthesis. Scaling these measurements to the entire Amazon basin with rainfall data, we estimate that drought suppressed Amazon-wide photosynthesis in 2010 by 0.38 petagrams of carbon (0.23–0.53 petagrams of carbon). Overall, we find that during this drought, instead of reducing total NPP, trees prioritized growth by reducing autotrophic respiration that was unrelated to growth. This suggests that trees decrease investment in tissue maintenance and defence, in line with eco-evolutionary theories that trees are competitively disadvantaged in the absence of growth 6 . We propose that weakened maintenance and defence investment may, in turn, cause the increase in post-drought tree mortality observed at our plots.

We aim to assess net primary productivity (NPP) and carbon cycling in Andean tropical alpine grasslands (puna) and compare it with NPP of tropical montane cloud forests. We ask the following questions: (1) how do NPP and soil respiration of grasslands vary over the seasonal cycle? (2) how do burning and grazing affect puna productivity? (3) if the montane forest expands into the puna, what will be the resulting change in productivity? The study sites are located at the South-eastern Peruvian Andes; one grassland site and the forest sites are in Wayqecha biological station, and another grassland site in Manu National Park. At each grassland site, we selected a burnt and an unburnt area, installed unfenced and fenced transects in each area, and monitored above-ground productivity (NPPAG), below-ground productivity (NPPBG) and soil respiration (Rs) for 2 yr. In the forest, we monitored NPPAG, NPPBG and Rs for 2-4 yr. Grassland NPP varied between 4.6 0.25 (disturbed areas) to 15.3 0.9 Mg C ha−1 yr−1 (undisturbed areas) and cloud forest NPP was between 7.05 0.39 and 8.0 0.47 Mg C ha−1 yr−1, while soil carbon stocks were in the range of 126 22 to 285 31 Mg C ha−1. There were no significant differences on NPP between the puna and forest sites. The most undisturbed site had significantly higher NPP than other grassland sites, but no differences were found when relating grazing and fire at other sites. There were lower residence times of above-ground biomass compared to below-ground biomass. There was a strong seasonal signal on grassland NPPAG and NPPBG, with a shift on allocation at the beginning of the austral summer. High elevation tropical grasslands can be as productive as adjacent cloud forests, but have very different carbon cycling and retention properties than cloud forests.

Solar irradiance and precipitation are the most likely drivers of the seasonal variation of net primary productivity (NPP) in tropical forests. Since their roles remain poorly understood, we use litter traps, dendrometer bands and census data collected from one hectare permanent plots to quantify the seasonality of above-ground NPP components and weather parameters in 13 sites distributed along a 2800-m altitudinal gradient ranging from lowland Amazonia to the high Andes. We combine canopy leaf area index and litterfall data to describe the seasonality of canopy production. We hypothesize that solar irradiance is the primary driver of canopy phenology in wetter sites, whereas precipitation drives phenology in drier systems. The seasonal rhythm of canopy NPP components is in synchrony with solar irradiance at all altitudes. Leaf litterfall peaks in the late dry season, both in lowland (averaging 0.54 ± 0.08 Mg C ha y−1, n = 5) and montane forests (averaging 0.29 ± 0.04 Mg C ha y−1, n = 8). Peaks in above-ground coarse woody NPP appears to be triggered by the onset of rainfall in seasonal lowland rain forests (averaging 0.26 ± 0.04 Mg C ha y−1, n = 5, in November), but not in montane cloud forests.

Meteorological extreme events such as El Niño events are expected to affect tropical forest net primary production (NPP) and woody growth, but there has been no large-scale empirical validation of this expectation. We collected a large high–temporal resolution dataset (for 1–13 years depending upon location) of more than 172 000 stem growth measurements using dendrometer bands from across 14 regions spanning Amazonia, Africa and Borneo in order to test how much month-to-month variation in stand-level woody growth of adult tree stems (NPPstem) can be explained by seasonal variation and interannual meteorological anomalies. A key finding is that woody growth responds differently to meteorological variation between tropical forests with a dry season (where monthly rainfall is less than 100 mm), and aseasonal wet forests lacking a consistent dry season. In seasonal tropical forests, a high degree of variation in woody growth can be predicted from seasonal variation in temperature, vapour pressure deficit, in addition to anomalies of soil water deficit and shortwave radiation. The variation of aseasonal wet forest woody growth is best predicted by the anomalies of vapour pressure deficit, water deficit and shortwave radiation. In total, we predict the total live woody production of the global tropical forest biome to be 2.16 Pg C yr⁻¹, with an interannual range 1.96–2.26 Pg C yr⁻¹ between 1996–2016, and with the sharpest declines during the strong El Niño events of 1997/8 and 2015/6. There is high geographical variation in hotspots of El Niño–associated impacts, with weak impacts in Africa, and strongly negative impacts in parts of Southeast Asia and extensive regions across central and eastern Amazonia. Overall, there is high correlation (r = -0.75) between the annual anomaly of tropical forest woody growth and the annual mean of the El Niño 3.4 index, driven mainly by strong correlations with anomalies of soil water deficit, vapour pressure deficit and shortwave radiation. This article is part of the discussion meeting issue 'The impact of the 2015/2016 El Niño on the terrestrial tropical carbon cycle: patterns, mechanisms and implications'.