Evidence map›Paper›PMID 27768811›Full record

ArticleThe New phytologist2017

The variation of productivity and its allocation along a tropical elevation gradient: a whole carbon budget perspective.

Yadvinder Malhi, Cécile A J Girardin, Gregory R Goldsmith, Christopher E Doughty, Norma Salinas, Daniel B Metcalfe, Walter Huaraca Huasco, Javier E Silva-Espejo, Jhon Del Aguilla-Pasquell, Filio Farfán Amézquita and 8 more

Erratum issuedAbstract read
PubMed Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in The New phytologist, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 23 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
23citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

23 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
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  4. Amazonian and Andean tree communities are not tracking current climate warming.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  5. Article
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  7. Toward a metabolic theory of catchments: Scaling of water and carbon fluxes with size.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024
    Article
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  11. Review
  12. Article
  13. Article
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  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Article
  20. ENSO Drives interannual variation of forest woody growth across the tropics.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

18 authors.

Yadvinder MalhiEnvironmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK.
Cécile A J GirardinEnvironmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK.
Gregory R GoldsmithEcosystem Fluxes Group, Laboratory for Atmospheric Chemistry, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen PSI, 5232, Switzerland.
Christopher E DoughtyEnvironmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK.
Norma SalinasEnvironmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK.
Daniel B MetcalfeDepartment of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University, SE 223 62, Lund, Sweden.
Walter Huaraca HuascoUniversidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco, Cusco, Peru.
Javier E Silva-EspejoUniversidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco, Cusco, Peru.
Jhon Del Aguilla-PasquellIIAP, Iquitos, Peru.
Filio Farfán AmézquitaUniversidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco, Cusco, Peru.
Luiz E O C AragãoRemote Sensing Division, National Institute for Space Research, Av. dos Astronautas, 1.758, São José dos Campos, SP, 12227-010, Brazil.
Rossella GuerrieriCentre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications, CREAF c/o Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Edificio C, 08290, Cerdanyola, Barcelona, Spain.
Françoise Yoko IshidaCollege of Marine and Environmental Sciences, Centre of Tropical Environmental and Sustainabilility Science, James Cook University, Cairns, Qld, 4870, Australia.
Nur H A BaharARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, Research School of Biology, Building 134, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia.
William Farfan-RiosDepartment of Biology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, 27109, USA.
Oliver L PhillipsSchool of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK.
Patrick MeirSchool of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9XP, UK.
Miles SilmanDepartment of Biology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, 27109, USA.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Why do forest productivity and biomass decline with elevation? To address this question, research to date generally has focused on correlative approaches describing changes in woody growth and biomass with elevation. We present a novel, mechanistic approach to this question by quantifying the autotrophic carbon budget in 16 forest plots along a 3300 m elevation transect in Peru. Low growth rates at high elevations appear primarily driven by low gross primary productivity (GPP), with little shift in either carbon use efficiency (CUE) or allocation of net primary productivity (NPP) between wood, fine roots and canopy. The lack of trend in CUE implies that the proportion of photosynthate allocated to autotrophic respiration is not sensitive to temperature. Rather than a gradual linear decline in productivity, there is some limited but nonconclusive evidence of a sharp transition in NPP between submontane and montane forests, which may be caused by cloud immersion effects within the cloud forest zone. Leaf-level photosynthetic parameters do not decline with elevation, implying that nutrient limitation does not restrict photosynthesis at high elevations. Our data demonstrate the potential of whole carbon budget perspectives to provide a deeper understanding of controls on ecosystem functioning and carbon cycling.

Indexed as

AltitudeForestsTropical ClimateAutotrophic ProcessesCarbonCarbon CyclePhotosynthesisCarbonclimatecloud forestGlobal Ecosystems Monitoring network (GEM)photosynthesisphysiologyRAINFORtemperature

Identifiers

PMID27768811

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.