NSF Award
2213246
Tropical forests garner attention because they are home to exceptionally high levels of biodiveristy, and are dominant contributors to the global carbon budget. Ongoing changes in patterns of tree death in the tropics are endangering this biodiversity, and decreasing the ability of forests to accumulate carbon. This, in turn, will have an impact on global climate change. Recent work by this team has revealed that lightning could be one of the major factors disrupting tropical forests. This new phase of research will ask: how consistent are the effects of lightning strikes among forests, and how do they recover from the effects of damage by lightning? This project will quantify the short- and long-term effects of lightning among tropical forests through advances in ecology, atmospheric physics, and ecosystem science. Results of this study will examine the importance of lightning to tropical forests and, more broadly, its effects on carbon cycling, and the impact that has on global climate trends. The broader impacts of this research will train a postdoctoral researcher and offer international research experiences to undergraduate and graduate students. The project will also produce exhibits at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and at the airport and central bus terminal in Panama, to engage the public in the scientific process. Online, virtual tours of lightning strikes will be developed, and virtual resources will make professional development training available for underrepresented students to pursue graduate education. Tropical rainforests are the world's best classroom for studying biodiversity and ecosystem processes, and this project provides outstanding opportunities for students to gain valuable educational experiences in-person, via exhibits, and through online activities. <br/><br/>The principal goal of this study is to quantify the contributions of lightning strikes to tropical forest turnover and successional dynamics. The central hypothesis is that lightning strikes reduce forest carbon storage via their direct contributions to tree mortality and indirect effects on post-disturbance forest recovery. We will combine expertise in forest ecology, lightning physics, and remote sensing to address three core questions: (1) Does lightning trigger an alternative pathway of forest regeneration relative to windthrow?; (2) How do lightning disturbance characteristics vary with forest age and tree species composition?; and (3) How do lightning strikes regulate regional differences in forest structure and carbon dynamics? This project builds on recent results by this team of researchers, showing that the effects of lightning on tropical forest turnover have been grossly underestimated. Those findings were made by studying a single lowland forest. Broadly understanding the role of lightning in tropical forests requires applying this approach to a range of forest types. An advanced lightning location system will be developed to systematically quantify the effects of ca. 40,000 annual lightning strikes across ca. 8,000 km2 of tropical forest that encompass variation in composition, size structure, and age. A chronosequence approach will be used to determine how lightning influences tree community assembly and biomass accumulation during post-disturbance regeneration. Quantifying these cross-scale effects will help in the management tropical forests and the future of our planet. The outcomes of this work are expected to substantially improve scientific understanding of tropical forest ecosystems.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
