What is it about?
Our Nature paper on the results of a 15-year-long experiment simulating drought in an Amazon rainforest (Rowland et al 2015) attracted much attention. In this publication we respond to some concerns expressed by those authors that our results may not have been representative of the response of tropical forests elsewhere. We state here that we were careful in how we had phrased our discussion in the Nature paper and we show that the re-analyses that these authors carried out of our results was not appropriate.
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Why is it important?
The general point is about whether or not results in Rowland et al (2015) are representative of other Amazonian forests. We need to remember that a) this is the only active drought experiment in the Amazon and the longest running in the tropics, and b) our study was the first to report physiological parameters of vulnerability of Amazonian tree species to drought. Future studies will clarify how representative our values are.
Perspectives
It is always hard to respond to criticisms, but it is a natural and healthy part of any scientific discussion. If we were not capable of accepting and debating our findings, we would not be good scientists. Here we felt that our paper was strong and significant enough that we should defend our findings from the criticisms advanced by these authors.
Prof Maurizio Mencuccini
University of Edinburgh
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Response to Torres-Ruiz et al., 2016, “Why do trees take more risks in the Amazon?” † , Journal of Plant Hydraulics, March 2016, Universite de Bordeaux,
DOI: 10.20870/jph.2016.e006.
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