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Climate Change Will Cause Cloud Forests to Decrease in Size and Biodiversity

Cloud Forests

What are Cloud Forests?

  • Typically elevations of 600-3,000 m
  • Persistent cloud cover year-round
  • High humidity
  • Dense fog and mist
  • Average Temperatures ~12-24oC
  • Average Rainfall ~800-3400 mm/yr
  • Rare Ecosystem

Neotropical Cloud Forests

Map

(3)

1. Water evaporates off of the ocean or land --> water vapor

2. Warm water vapor is carried by wind until it hits the side of the mountain

3. Water vapor continues upward

4. It cools and condenses

5. Clouds form!!

How do they Work?

What do they look like?

Importance of Cloud Forests

Importance

  • Extremely high biodiversity
  • High levels of endemism
  • Ecosystem services to humans
  • Many negative effects if they are lost

Biodiversity

  • Among the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth
  • Trees
  • Epiphites: mosses, orchids, bromeliads, epiphytic trees, ferns, lichens, and liverworts
  • Greater plant diversity in Andes Cloud Forests than Amazon Rain forest
  • Birds
  • Amphibians
  • Insects
  • Mammals

(1)

Endemism

  • Species that do not exist anywhere else in the world
  • Usually specialists adapted to the high humidity, precise elevation, and specific tetmperature
  • Sensitive to climate change
  • Peru: more than 90 species of endemic frogs, birds, mammals, are found in the Cloud Forests
  • 1,300 endemic orchids found in Cloud Forests of Ecuador

(2)

Ecosystem Services

  • Help keep the ground stable and in place
  • Carbon sinks that help mitigate climate change
  • Supply water to streams and rivers --> used by cities
  • Help prevent severe floods downslope

(1)

Negative Effects

  • Local Extirpations
  • Extinctions
  • Loss of Ecosystem Services
  • More intense flooding
  • Increased landslides and erosion
  • Less freshwater available for cities and agriculture
  • Potentially increased climate change

Cloud Cover Predictions in the Next 25-65 Years

Cloud Cover

  • Rising air will travel further up mountains before it cools enough to form clouds
  • Decreased humidity and area
  • More suceptible to fire
  • Negative effects for species adapted to high humidity

Predictions

Findings

  • In <25-45 years, cloud immersion declines will shrink or dry ~60-80% of Neotropical Montane Cloud Forests
  • Increase to 86% in <45-65 years if the GHG emmisions continue to rise
  • Cloud immersion may increase for ~1% in very few places

(3)

Ecotone Research

Ecotone

  • Ecotone: abrupt change in species or plant functional types
  • Andes Ecotone studied: boundary between cloud forest and grassland; the timberline
  • Ecotones can respond differently than individual species to climate change
  • 80% of timberline stayed in place
  • Ecotone migration rates are 12.5-110X slower than observed species migration rates in forests
  • 5oC warming scenario: timberline would have to mirgate ~900 m upward to keep pace with CC
  • 18,000 years
  • Rates of migration in protected areas are faster than unprotected areas

(4)

Findings

  • Evapotranspiration: Process where water is transferred from the land or ocean to the atmosphere through evaporation and from plants through transpiration
  • Lower in cloud forests because of lower temperatures, fog and cloud cover, smaller leaves, and constant film of water on leaves
  • Decreases the water lost by vegetation

Hydroclimatic Research

Predictions

  • Cloud uplift
  • Decreased cloud immersion and fog cover
  • Increased evapotranspiration rates from warmer temperatures and less moisture in the air

(5)

Impacts of CC

Conclusion

  • Hypothesis: "Climate change will cause cloud forests to decrease in size and biodiversity."
  • Research leads to multiple predictions that support this hypothesis:
  • Decrerased cloud cover
  • Grassland-forest ecotone willl stay in place, acting as a barrier to migration
  • Increased evapotranspiration rates
  • Leads to dry conditions, drought-induced mortality, extinctions, and loss of area and biodiversity in cloud forests

1. "Andean Cloud Forest Conservation." Ceiba Foundation for Tropical Conservation, ND, ceiba.org/conservation/cloud-forests/.

2. "Andean Cloud Forest." Nature and Culture International, ND, www.natureandculture.org/ecosystems/andean-cloudforests/.

3. Helmer, E.H. et al. "Neotropical cloud forests and páramo to contract and dry from declines in cloud immersion and frost." PlosOne, 17 April, 2019, journals.plos.org/plosone/article/authors?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0213155.

4. Lutz, David A. et al. "Four Decades of Andean Timberline Migration and Implications for Biodiversity Loss with Climate Change." PlosOne, 11 Sept. 2013, journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0074496#s3.

5. Oliveira, Rafael S. et al. “The hydroclimatic and ecophysiological basis of cloud forest distributions under current and projected climates.” Annals of botany, vol. 113,6 (2014): 909-20. doi:10.1093/aob/mcu060

Citations

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