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Tropical forest carbon balance in a warmer world: a critical review spanning microbial‐ to ecosystem‐scale processes

Overview of attention for article published in Biological Reviews, May 2012
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (94th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (85th percentile)

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2 news outlets
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1 blog
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2 X users

Citations

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112 Dimensions

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214 Mendeley
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Title
Tropical forest carbon balance in a warmer world: a critical review spanning microbial‐ to ecosystem‐scale processes
Published in
Biological Reviews, May 2012
DOI 10.1111/j.1469-185x.2012.00232.x
Pubmed ID
Authors

Tana E. Wood, Molly A. Cavaleri, Sasha C. Reed

Abstract

Tropical forests play a major role in regulating global carbon (C) fluxes and stocks, and even small changes to C cycling in this productive biome could dramatically affect atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO(2) ) concentrations. Temperature is expected to increase over all land surfaces in the future, yet we have a surprisingly poor understanding of how tropical forests will respond to this significant climatic change. Here we present a contemporary synthesis of the existing data and what they suggest about how tropical forests will respond to increasing temperatures. Our goals were to: (i) determine whether there is enough evidence to support the conclusion that increased temperature will affect tropical forest C balance; (ii) if there is sufficient evidence, determine what direction this effect will take; and, (iii) establish what steps should to be taken to resolve the uncertainties surrounding tropical forest responses to increasing temperatures. We approach these questions from a mass-balance perspective and therefore focus primarily on the effects of temperature on inputs and outputs of C, spanning microbial- to ecosystem-scale responses. We found that, while there is the strong potential for temperature to affect processes related to C cycling and storage in tropical forests, a notable lack of data combined with the physical, biological and chemical diversity of the forests themselves make it difficult to resolve this issue with certainty. We suggest a variety of experimental approaches that could help elucidate how tropical forests will respond to warming, including large-scale in situ manipulation experiments, longer term field experiments, the incorporation of a range of scales in the investigation of warming effects (both spatial and temporal), as well as the inclusion of a diversity of tropical forest sites. Finally, we highlight areas of tropical forest research where notably few data are available, including temperature effects on: nutrient cycling, heterotrophic versus autotrophic respiration, thermal acclimation versus substrate limitation of plant and microbial communities, below-ground C allocation, species composition (plant and microbial), and the hydraulic architecture of roots. Whether or not tropical forests will become a source or a sink of C in a warmer world remains highly uncertain. Given the importance of these ecosystems to the global C budget, resolving this uncertainty is a primary research priority.

X Demographics

X Demographics

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 214 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 4 2%
United Kingdom 3 1%
Spain 1 <1%
Unknown 206 96%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 47 22%
Researcher 44 21%
Student > Master 25 12%
Student > Bachelor 24 11%
Student > Postgraduate 11 5%
Other 31 14%
Unknown 32 15%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 68 32%
Environmental Science 60 28%
Earth and Planetary Sciences 29 14%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 3 1%
Psychology 3 1%
Other 9 4%
Unknown 42 20%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 24. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 28 January 2015.
All research outputs
#1,542,302
of 24,712,008 outputs
Outputs from Biological Reviews
#395
of 1,526 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#8,754
of 167,833 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Biological Reviews
#1
of 7 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,712,008 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,526 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 28.9. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 74% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 167,833 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 7 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than all of them