Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests

Aguirre-Gutiérrez, Jesús, Rifai, Sami W., Deng, Xiongjie, ter Steege, Hans, Thomson, Eleanor, Corral-Rivas, Jose Javier, Guimaraes, Aretha Franklin, Muller, Sandra, Klipel, Joice, Fauset, Sophie, Resende, Angelica F., Wallin, Göran, Joly, Carlos A., Abernethy, Katharine, Adu-Bredu, Stephen, Alexandre Silva, Celice, de Oliveira, Edmar Almeida, Almeida, Danilo R.A., Alvarez-Davila, Esteban, Asner, Gregory P., Baker, Timothy R., Benchimol, Maíra, Bentley, Lisa Patrick, Berenguer, Erika, Blanc, Lilian, Bonal, Damien, Bordin, Kauane, Borges de Lima, Robson, Both, Sabine, Cabezas Duarte, Jaime, Cardoso, Domingos, de Lima, Haroldo C., Cavalheiro, Larissa, Cernusak, Lucas A., dos Santos Prestes, Nayane Cristina C., da Silva Zanzini, Antonio Carlos, da Silva, Ricardo José, dos Santos Alves da Silva, Robson, de Andrade Iguatemy, Mariana, De Sousa Oliveira, Tony César, Dechant, Benjamin, Derroire, Géraldine, Dexter, Kyle G., Rodrigues, Domingos J., Espírito-Santo, Mário, Silva, Letícia Fernandes, Domingues, Tomas Ferreira, Ferreira, Joice, Simon, Marcelo Fragomeni, Girardin, Cécile A.J., Hérault, Bruno, Jeffery, Kathryn J., Kalpuzha Ashtamoorthy, Sreejith, Kavidapadinjattathil Sivadasan, Arunkumar, Klitgaard, Bente, Laurance, William F., Dan, Maurício Lima, Magnusson, William E., Campos-Filho, Eduardo Malta, Manoel dos Santos, Rubens, Manzatto, Angelo Gilberto, Silveira, Marcos, Marimon-Junior, Ben Hur, Martin, Roberta E., Vieira, Daniel Luis Mascia, Metzker, Thiago, Milliken, William, Moonlight, Peter, Moraes de Seixas, Marina Maria, Morandi, Paulo S., Muscarella, Robert, Nava-Miranda, María Guadalupe, Nyirambangutse, Brigitte, Silva, Jhonathan Oliveira, Oliveras Menor, Imma, Francisco Pena Rodrigues, Pablo José, Pereira de Oliveira, Cinthia, Pereira Zanzini, Lucas, Peres, Carlos A., Punjayil, Vignesh, Quesada, Carlos A., Réjou-Méchain, Maxime, Riutta, Terhi, Rivas-Torres, Gonzalo, Rosa, Clarissa, Salinas, Norma, Bergamin, Rodrigo Scarton, Marimon, Beatriz Schwantes, Shenkin, Alexander, Silva Rodrigues, Priscyla Maria, Figueiredo, Axa Emanuelle Simões, Garcia, Queila Souza, Spósito, Tereza, Storck-Tonon, Danielle, Sullivan, Martin J.P., Svátek, Martin, Vieira Santiago, Wagner Tadeu, Arn Teh, Yit, Theruvil Parambil Sivan, Prasad, Nascimento, Marcelo Trindade, Veenendaal, Elmar, Zo-Bi, Irie Casimir, Dago, Marie Ruth, Traoré, Soulemane, Patacca, Marco, Badouard, Vincyane, de Padua Chaves e Carvalho, Samuel, White, Lee J.T., Zhang-Zheng, Huanyuan, Zibera, Etienne, Zwerts, Joeri Alexander, Burslem, David F.R.P., Silman, Miles, Chave, Jérôme, Enquist, Brian J., Barlow, Jos, Phillips, Oliver L., Coomes, David A. and Malhi, Yadvinder (2025) Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests. Nature, 641 (8061). pp. 129-136. ISSN 0028-0836

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Abstract

Tropical forest canopies are the biosphere’s most concentrated atmospheric interface for carbon, water and energy. However, in most Earth System Models, the diverse and heterogeneous tropical forest biome is represented as a largely uniform ecosystem with either a singular or a small number of fixed canopy ecophysiological properties. This situation arises, in part, from a lack of understanding about how and why the functional properties of tropical forest canopies vary geographically. Here, by combining field-collected data from more than 1,800 vegetation plots and tree traits with satellite remote-sensing, terrain, climate and soil data, we predict variation across 13 morphological, structural and chemical functional traits of trees, and use this to compute and map the functional diversity of tropical forests. Our findings reveal that the tropical Americas, Africa and Asia tend to occupy different portions of the total functional trait space available across tropical forests. Tropical American forests are predicted to have 40% greater functional richness than tropical African and Asian forests. Meanwhile, African forests have the highest functional divergence—32% and 7% higher than that of tropical American and Asian forests, respectively. An uncertainty analysis highlights priority regions for further data collection, which would refine and improve these maps. Our predictions represent a ground-based and remotely enabled global analysis of how and why the functional traits of tropical forest canopies vary across space.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data availability To comply with the original data owners’ requirements, the plant functional traits and vegetation census data that support the findings of this study are available from their sources: GEM31 at gem.tropicalforests.ox.ac.uk, ForestPlots32,59,60 (www.ForestPlots.net) and Diaz et al.33 Because of the data sovereignty from the original data owners, raw data on vegetation censuses and trait data are not publicly available, but can be requested by contacting all researchers through the ForestPlots32,59,60 data request protocol described at https://forestplots.net/en/join-forestplots/working-with-data. The processed maps with community-level trait predictions from this study are available as an app in GEE at https://pantropicalanalysis.users.earthengine.app/view/pantropical-traits-aguirre-gutierrez-2025. Other environmental and plant data are available from their original sources: BIEN (https://bien.nceas.ucsb.edu/bien), SoilGrids (https://soilgrids.org) and RESOLVE Ecoregions (https://ecoregions.appspot.com). Satellite data from Sentinel-2 are freely available from the GEE platform (https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog/COPERNICUS_S2_SR_HARMONIZED). Code availability R code for graphics and analyses is available on Zenodo at https://doi-org.uea.idm.oclc.org/10.5281/zenodo.14509493 (ref. 83).
Uncontrolled Keywords:	general,sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1000
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Biology
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	15 May 2026 14:19
Last Modified:	16 May 2026 12:43
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103044
DOI:	10.1038/s41586-025-08663-2

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