Tropical forest dynamics in a changing world

Summary

Tropical forests are continuously exposed to changes in their environment. They are affected by different factors, like the weather, changes in land use, soil problems, and human-made climate change. These factors can disrupt the balance of the forests. Fortunately, forests have ways to deal with these changing conditions and can fix themselves whenever they are altered by those external conditions, like when our body heals when we get sick. This process is called "autogenic regulation".

The continuous interplay between external factors and forests’ autogenic regulation is what determines how tropical forests behave over time, which is known as “forest dynamics” in ecology.

Rodrigo Muñoz explores the impact that some of these external factors have on tropical forests in his doctoral thesis, especially climate conditions and soil properties. He also analyses to what extent and how quickly forests can “heal” from the impacts that humans and climatic extremes cause on them.