Cargando…
A theory of demographic optimality in forests
Carbon uptake by the land is a key determinant of future climate change. Unfortunately, Dynamic Global Vegetation Models have many unknown internal parameters which leads to significant uncertainty in projections of the future land carbon sink. By contrast, observed forest inventories in both Amazon...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2023
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10618179/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37907540 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-44860-7 |
_version_ | 1785129718346940416 |
---|---|
author | Moore, Jon Argles, Arthur Cox, Peter |
author_facet | Moore, Jon Argles, Arthur Cox, Peter |
author_sort | Moore, Jon |
collection | PubMed |
description | Carbon uptake by the land is a key determinant of future climate change. Unfortunately, Dynamic Global Vegetation Models have many unknown internal parameters which leads to significant uncertainty in projections of the future land carbon sink. By contrast, observed forest inventories in both Amazonia and the USA show strikingly common tree-size distributions, pointing to a simpler modelling paradigm. The curvature of these size-distributions is related to the ratio of mortality to growth in Demographic Equilibrium Theory (DET). We extend DET to include recruitment limited by competitive exclusion from existing trees. From this, we find simultaneous maxima of tree density and biomass in terms of respectively the ratio of mortality to growth and the proportion of primary productivity allocated to reproduction, an idea we call Demographic Optimality (DO). Combining DO with the ratio of mortality to growth common to the US and Amazon forests, results in the prediction that about an eighth of productivity should be allocated to reproduction, which is broadly consistent with observations. Another prediction of the model is that seed mortality should decrease with increasing seed size, such that the advantage of having many small seeds is nullified by the higher seed mortality. Demographic Optimality is therefore consistent with the common shape of tree-size distributions seen in very different forests, and an allocation to reproduction that is independent of seed size. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10618179 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-106181792023-11-02 A theory of demographic optimality in forests Moore, Jon Argles, Arthur Cox, Peter Sci Rep Article Carbon uptake by the land is a key determinant of future climate change. Unfortunately, Dynamic Global Vegetation Models have many unknown internal parameters which leads to significant uncertainty in projections of the future land carbon sink. By contrast, observed forest inventories in both Amazonia and the USA show strikingly common tree-size distributions, pointing to a simpler modelling paradigm. The curvature of these size-distributions is related to the ratio of mortality to growth in Demographic Equilibrium Theory (DET). We extend DET to include recruitment limited by competitive exclusion from existing trees. From this, we find simultaneous maxima of tree density and biomass in terms of respectively the ratio of mortality to growth and the proportion of primary productivity allocated to reproduction, an idea we call Demographic Optimality (DO). Combining DO with the ratio of mortality to growth common to the US and Amazon forests, results in the prediction that about an eighth of productivity should be allocated to reproduction, which is broadly consistent with observations. Another prediction of the model is that seed mortality should decrease with increasing seed size, such that the advantage of having many small seeds is nullified by the higher seed mortality. Demographic Optimality is therefore consistent with the common shape of tree-size distributions seen in very different forests, and an allocation to reproduction that is independent of seed size. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-10-31 /pmc/articles/PMC10618179/ /pubmed/37907540 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-44860-7 Text en © Crown 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Moore, Jon Argles, Arthur Cox, Peter A theory of demographic optimality in forests |
title | A theory of demographic optimality in forests |
title_full | A theory of demographic optimality in forests |
title_fullStr | A theory of demographic optimality in forests |
title_full_unstemmed | A theory of demographic optimality in forests |
title_short | A theory of demographic optimality in forests |
title_sort | theory of demographic optimality in forests |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10618179/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37907540 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-44860-7 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT moorejon atheoryofdemographicoptimalityinforests AT arglesarthur atheoryofdemographicoptimalityinforests AT coxpeter atheoryofdemographicoptimalityinforests AT moorejon theoryofdemographicoptimalityinforests AT arglesarthur theoryofdemographicoptimalityinforests AT coxpeter theoryofdemographicoptimalityinforests |