Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40030033›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025

Environmental drivers of spatial variation in tropical forest canopy height: Insights from NASA's GEDI spaceborne LiDAR.

Shaoqing Liu, Ovidiu Csillik, Elsa M Ordway, Li-Ling Chang, Marcos Longo, Michael Keller, Paul R Moorcroft

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing 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

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors.

Shaoqing LiuDepartment of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
Ovidiu CsillikJet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109.ORCID 0000-0002-4590-3807
Elsa M OrdwayDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095.ORCID 0000-0002-7720-1754
Li-Ling ChangDepartment of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
Marcos LongoClimate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720.ORCID 0000-0001-5062-6245
Michael KellerJet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109.ORCID 0000-0002-0253-3359
Paul R MoorcroftDepartment of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.ORCID 0000-0002-2876-4673

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Forest canopy height is a fundamental ecosystem property-influencing patterns of forest carbon storage and forest ecosystem responses to climate variability and change. Previous studies have analyzed environmental drivers influencing spatial variation in canopy height at landscape-to-regional scales; however, far less is known about the environmental determinants underlying regional and global scale variation in forest canopy height. Using the canopy height metrics products from Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI), a space-borne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) instrument specifically designed to characterize forest structure, we analyze the environmental correlates of spatial variation of global tropical forest canopy height. Our study demonstrates that climate, topography, and soil properties account for 75% of the variation in tropical forest canopy height. Elevation, dry season length, and solar radiation are the most important drivers in determining canopy height both locally and regionally. These results emphasize the vulnerability of tropical forest structure to ongoing changes in the earth's climate and provide a valuable empirical baseline for tropical forest management.

Indexed as

canopy heightGEDItropical forest

Identifiers

PMID40030033
PMCPMC11912454

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
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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.