ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Global tree-ring analysis reveals rapid decrease in tropical tree longevity with temperature.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 120 citations in OpenAlex.
- Encroachment diminishes herbaceous plant diversity in grassy ecosystems worldwide.Global change biology · 2022Pooled it
- Bedrock lithology determines forest demographic responses to drought.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Slow growth as a strategy for plant longevity.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Tree growth response and adaptation to climate change and climate extremes: From canopy to stem.Journal of integrative plant biology · 2026Review
- Latitudinal patterns and environmental correlates of plant root exudation.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Individual Trees Respond to 40 Years of Climate Change Through Leaf Functional Trait Acclimation.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Diagnosing Linearity Along the Carbon Cascade in Terrestrial Biosphere Models and Observations.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Overlooked considerations in prescribing green and blue infrastructure solutions for urban environments.Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.)) · 2026Review
- Contrasting pathways to tree longevity in gymnosperms and angiosperms.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Forest Age Rivals Climate to Explain Reproductive Allocation Patterns in Forest Ecosystems Globally.Ecology letters · 2025Review
- Raising the temperature: A critical geographical perspective on heat.Progress in environmental geography · 2025Article
- The long tail of tree maximum lifespan enriches the forest.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Leaf Temperatures in an Indian Tropical Forest Exceed Physiological Limits but Durations of Exposures Are Currently Not Sufficient to Cause Lasting Damage.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Tree ring isotopes reveal an intensification of the hydrological cycle in the Amazon.Communications earth & environment · 2025Article
- Superellipse Equation Describing the Geometries ofPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Tropical Trees Will Need to Acclimate to Rising Temperatures-But Can They?Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Human activities and species biological traits drive the long-term persistence of old trees in human-dominated landscapes.Nature plants · 2023Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Forests are the largest terrestrial biomass pool, with over half of this biomass stored in the highly productive tropical lowland forests. The future evolution of forest biomass depends critically on the response of tree longevity and growth rates to future climate. We present an analysis of the variation in tree longevity and growth rate using tree-ring data of 3,343 populations and 438 tree species and assess how climate controls growth and tree longevity across world biomes. Tropical trees grow, on average, two times faster compared to trees from temperate and boreal biomes and live significantly shorter, on average (186 ± 138 y compared to 322 ± 201 y outside the tropics). At the global scale, growth rates and longevity covary strongly with temperature. Within the warm tropical lowlands, where broadleaf species dominate the vegetation, we find consistent decreases in tree longevity with increasing aridity, as well as a pronounced reduction in longevity above mean annual temperatures of 25.4 °C. These independent effects of temperature and water availability on tree longevity in the tropics are consistent with theoretical predictions of increases in evaporative demands at the leaf level under a warmer and drier climate and could explain observed increases in tree mortality in tropical forests, including the Amazon, and shifts in forest composition in western Africa. Our results suggest that conditions supporting only lower tree longevity in the tropical lowlands are likely to expand under future drier and especially warmer climates.
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