Biochemical Ecology of Tropical Forests Under Climate Warming

Tropical forests are estimated to be the largest global terrestrial carbon sink, but this sink is highly sensitive to climate change variables including warming and altered precipitation patterns. Regional-scale tropical forest mortality events associated with high temperature and drought are increasing in the tropics, but the mechanisms by which tropical trees are negatively affected by these factors are under intense investigation. One emerging approach is the integration of volatile metabolomics at the forest-atmosphere interface with environmental metabolomics, genomics, and systems biology approaches.

If drought and temperature stress are extended over a certain  threshold,  the  antioxidant  systems in plants can  be overwhelmed resulting in extensive cellular damage including membrane peroxidation and the reduction of ecosystem net primary productivity (NPP), with a shift from sinks to sources of atmospheric CO2. Such a shift in tropical forest carbon balance would inhibit a critical ecosystem service and accelerate climate warming. Integration of these methods promises exciting new advances in not only our predictive understanding of terrestrial ecosystems, but also for agriculture, bioenergy feedstocks, and biomanufacturing.