Congolese forest in steady decline

摘要

The Congo rainforests are the second-largest on Earth after the Amazon, but little is known about their response to recent climate change. Liming Zhou et al. use remote sensing data to show that the drying trend of the past decade is associated with a large-scale decline in Congo forest greenness. This is a gradual process, however, in contrast to the abrupt drought episodes that have occurred in the Amazon. This gradual browning could be causing shifts in community composition towards more drought-tolerant species.