Influence of climatic seasonality on anatomical properties and carbon stock in the growth layers of Cedrela sp. in the eastern Amazon.
Dendrochronology, Amazon rainforest, anatomical elements, climate change
Deforestation of tropical forests is a major factor in biodiversity loss and decay of important ecosystem services. Forest areas perform various environmental functions such as maintenance of the hydrological cycle, reservoirs and sources of mineral elements to biogeochemical cycles, soil conservation, habitat for plant and animal species, conservation of genetic material (germplasm bank), in addition to providing food to local populations. In the Amazon rainforest, which is the largest rainforest on earth, is the Amazon basin. This is a key component of the global climate system. One of the most remarkable aspects of the climate behavior of this region is the occurrence of drought periods, which affect most sharply in distinct microregions, distributed throughout the biome. These drought events, whose frequency and intensity are predicted to increase, according to future scenarios presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will certainly cause physiological changes in forest growth. Climate seasonality unquestionably regulates physiological activities, but the nuances of how the "triggers" of growth and adaptation are fired have not yet been fully elucidated. Given the need to understand how forest species will behave in the future, this research aims to describe the growth behavior of forest species Cedrela sp. Using dendrochronology, the characterization of the anatomical elements of the secondary xylem and the carbon accumulation in the growth layers to infer future behaviors and thus contribute to the elucidation of the relations established between the climate and the Amazon rainforest.