During the 2023–2024 El Niño – the most severe drought ever recorded in the Amazon basin – tree emissions of sesquiterpenes surged. Unexpected emissions of sesquiterpene alcohols in the wet season after the drought, suggesting the forest’s stress-defense metabolism stays active long after the immediate stress has passed.
A new study shows that drought stress reorganizes soil carbon sources in Amazon white-sand forest soils, increasing ecosystem stress and affecting carbon and nutrient cycles.
The Amazon rainforest experienced unusually high temperatures and atmospheric dryness in 2023. Observations from ATTO and further data revealed that the vegetation’s uptake of carbon was above average early in the year, but drastically reduced during the drought season, leading from a carbon sink into a source.
New study by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry shows: The ratio of certain forest scent molecules provides precise insights into the stress state of the rainforest.
BVOC emissions in the Amazon have been studied for decades, but we still don’t fully understand when and under what conditions tree species or even individual trees emit more or fewer isoprenoids. To address this, Eliane Gomes Alves and her colleagues measured isoprenoid emission capacities of three Amazonian hyperdominant tree species.
