Abstract
The productivity of rainforests growing on highly weathered tropical soils is expected to be limited by phosphorus availability1. Yet, controlled fertilization experiments have been unable to demonstrate a dominant role for phosphorus in controlling tropical forest net primary productivity. Recent syntheses have demonstrated that responses to nitrogen addition are as large as to phosphorus2, and adaptations to low phosphorus availability appear to enable net primary productivity to be maintained across major soil phosphorus gradients3. Thus, the extent to which phosphorus availability limits tropical forest productivity is highly uncertain. The majority of the Amazonia, however, is characterized by soils that are more depleted in phosphorus than those in which most tropical fertilization experiments have taken place2. Thus, we established a phosphorus, nitrogen and base cation addition experiment in an old growth Amazon rainforest, with a low soil phosphorus content that is representative of approximately 60% of the Amazon basin. Here we show that net primary productivity increased exclusively with phosphorus addition. After 2 years, strong responses were observed in fine root (+29%) and canopy productivity (+19%), but not stem growth. The direct evidence of phosphorus limitation of net primary productivity suggests that phosphorus availability may restrict Amazon forest responses to CO2fertilization4, with major implications for future carbon sequestration and forest resilience to climate change.
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Data availability
Data that support the findings of this study have been deposited in NERC Environmental Information Data Centre athttps://doi.org/10.5285/b3a55011-bf46-40f5-8850-86dc8bc4c85dfor root biomass,https://doi.org/10.5285/c2587e20-ba4a-4444-8ce9-ccdec15b0aa3for tree census,https://doi.org/10.5285/c0294ec9-45d6-464c-b543-ce9ece9fd968for litterfall production andhttps://doi.org/10.5285/6e70665f-b558-4949-b42a-49fbaec7e7ccfor LAI. The Global Wood Density Database can be requested fromhttps://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.234. Plot mean datasets for all response variables and AFEX plot treatment identifications are available athttps://github.com/kmander7/Paper-AFEX-NPP.
Code availability
The R code used to find the best model for each variable is available in theSupplementary Material. R scripts used to generate theSupplementary Materialare available athttps://github.com/kmander7/Paper-AFEX-NPP.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the late Paulo Apóstolo Assunção for the botanical identification of the trees and J. Cruz, A. dos Santos and B. S. da Silva for helping in field campaigns. The authors acknowledge funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), grant number NE/L007223/1. This is publication 850 in the technical series of the BDFFP. C.A.Q. acknowledges the grants from Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) CNPq/LBA 68/2013, CNPq/MCTI/FNDCT no. 18/2021 and his productivity grant. C.A.Q., H.F.V.C., F.D.S., I.A., L.F.L., E.O.M. and S.G. acknowledge the AmazonFACE programme for financial support in cooperation with Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) and the National Institute of Amazonian Research as part of the grants CAPES-INPA/88887.154643/2017-00 and 88881.154644/2017-01. T.F.D. acknowledges funds fromFundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo(FAPESP), grant 2015/50488-5, and the Partnership for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER) programme grant AID-OAA-A-11-00012. L.E.O.C.A. thanks CNPq (314416/2020-0).
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H.F.V.C., C.A.Q., I.P.H. and K.M.A. planned the study. H.F.V.C., R.D.P., A.M., M.P., J.S.R., B.B., A.L.C., S.D.C., S.T.d.S., F.A., L.S.S., G.R., R.L.d.A., A.C.S., B.T.T.P., A.C.M., L.F.L., E.O.M. and J.L.C. collected data and/or helped with project logistics. I.P.H., L.M.M., L.E.O.C.A., T.F.D., L.N., P.M. and C.A.Q. wrote the grants that funded this research. H.F.V.C., K.M.A. and I.A. organized the datasets. H.F.V.C., K.M.A., I.A. and A.M.M. conducted the statistical analyses. H.F.V.C., L.F.L., I.P.H., C.A.Q., L.M.M., S.G., I.A., K.M.A., F.D.S., T.F.D., A.L.C., P.M., R.D.P., R.L.d.A., L.E.O.C.A. and L.N. discussed the results and the structure of the paper and improved the manuscript.
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Extended data figures and tables
Extended Data Fig. 1 Nutrient addition effects on Leaf area index.
赖测量在四场活动treatments in a lowland forest in Central Amazon. Each panel represents mean ± 1SE LAI with (+) or without (−) the addition of specific nutrients (phosphorus addition (a); base cation addition (b); nitrogen addition (c)), based on the average LAI across the four field campaigns, n = 16 plots. No significant differences among the means were detected in linear mixed models for any of the nutrients. The dotted lines represent the mean values for the control plots (no nutrients added; n = 4 plots) for comparison purposes.
Extended Data Fig. 2 Nutrient addition effects on Leaf residence time (LRT).
Leaf residence time (yr) across treatments in a lowland forest in Central Amazon. Two separate measures of specific leaf area were used in the leaf residence time calculations based on: 1) fresh canopy leaves of common families represented across all plots sampled for a photosynthesis campaign (a-c); 2) composite leaf litter collected in the plots (d–f). Leaf residence time showed a decrease with P addition only (a,d) for both LRT estimates, with cations (b,e) and N (c,f) being shown for comparison. Means ± 1SE are presented, n = 16 plots. Linear mixed models were performed to evaluate responses in leaf residence time to added nutrients. The dotted lines represent the mean values for the control plots (no nutrients added; n = 4 plots) for comparison purposes.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Material
Contains supplementary information on methods, descriptive statistics, and results of linear mixed models for all response variables. Supplementary Tables 1–33.
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Cunha, H.F.V., Andersen, K.M., Lugli, L.F.et al.Direct evidence for phosphorus limitation on Amazon forest productivity.Nature608, 558–562 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05085-2
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DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05085-2
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