Pantropical drought-induced tree mortality: a first estimate using tree-ring and plot data

One of the most pervasive drought impacts on tropical forests is increased tree mortality. While satellite imagery can detect large-scale drought-induced tree mortality events, it cannot detect individual tree mortality that is scattered in space and lagged in time. To estimate the latter mortality drought-induced growth anomalies from tree-ring data can be combined with plot-based growth-mortality associations. Here we combine data from 158 globally distributed tree-ring chronologies with plot-based growth-mortality associations to present a first pantropical estimate of drought-associated mortality.For the 10% driest years, our pantropical estimate of angiosperm lowland tree mortality is 0.1% y-1 (confidence interval: 0.08-0.15%) on top of 1% y-1 background mortality. This value is slightly higher for the 5% driest years.Direct empirical associations between growth and…