News Releases

Print Friendly Version

Amazon and Andean Trees Can’t Keep Up with Changing Temperatures

Study incorporating 40 years of tree monitoring shows rising temperatures are outpacing tree response 

(ST. LOUIS) Tree species in the Amazon and Andes are not responding fast enough to keep up with warming temperatures, according to a recently published study by an international team including Missouri Botanical Garden scientists and collaborators. For some species, this could mean shrinking distributions or even extinction. 

The study, “Amazonian and Andean tree communities are not tracking current climate warming,” used data from more than 40 years of forest monitoring across the Amazon and the Andean mountains. Scientists found that while forests are responding to higher temperatures, they are changing slower than temperatures are rising. 

“These forests are simply not keeping up with climate change,” said lead author William Farfan-Rios of Wake Forest University. “The result is a growing climatic debt that threatens the integrity and functioning of the most diverse forests on Earth.” 

The project was part of Farfan-Rios' fellowship through the Living Earth Collaborative, a partnership between the Missouri Botanical Garden, Washington University, and the Saint Louis Zoo.  

Sebastian Tello, Director of the Garden’s Latin America program, and Jonathan Myers of Washington University served as Farfan-Rios' mentors and are co-authors on the paper. The authors also include Leslie Cayola, Alfredo Fuentes and Rodolfo Vásquez, researchers with the Garden’s locally-led partnerships in Bolivia and Peru. Much of the data from the project comes from the Madidi Project, a long-term collaboration between the Garden and the National Herbarium of La Paz in Bolivia.   

The key data for this study comes from a large network of forest plots, which is critical infrastructure for the long-term study of plant biodiversity. Some of the sites were so remote, it took researchers 16 hours of driving, followed by three days of walking, to reach. 

"They allow us to study unique, pristine forests and how both the trees and the forests as ecosystems are changing through time,” Tello said. 

Researchers used aluminum tags to mark and track the fate of trees within these plots over decades. This allowed them to see which trees had grown, which have died, and what new trees were growing in the area as the climate changed. They expected species that prefer warmer conditions to increase in abundance and species that prefer colder conditions to decline. 

“Ecosystem responses to climate change have been documented in different systems and many parts of the world, but in the Andes, we have not really understood how forests are responding,” Tello said. 

Researchers found that while some forests are changing, they are changing too slowly. 

“This result is bad news for species and biodiversity because it suggests that trees may not be able to shift their distributions fast enough to keep up,” Tello said, explaining this could change how their ecosystems function. 

More than 20 scientists from international institutions including Wake Forest University, the University of Miami, Oxford University, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Leeds, Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and the Missouri Botanical Garden, partnered on the paper. Numerous local institutions and conservation agencies in Peru and Bolivia partnered on the research as well. 

“This has been a major effort by the Missouri Botanical Garden working with the local botanical community, and it is truly a unique project in magnitude in the Andes, and one that also connects with similar efforts in mountain systems around the world,” Tello said.  

### 

The Missouri Botanical Garden is a global leader in science, conservation, horticulture, and education, whose mission is to discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment in order to preserve and enrich life. The Garden’s programs operate locally and throughout the world to address key challenges facing humanity by empowering stakeholders to manage, protect, and restore biodiversity sustainably.  

Founded in 1859 and located in St. Louis, Missouri, the Garden is one of the nation's oldest botanical institutions and a National Historic Landmark. The beautifully landscaped gardens, along with the satellite sites Shaw Nature Reserve and the Butterfly House, attract over 1 million visitors a year.