Beyond MAP: A guide to dimensions of rainfall variability for tropical ecology |
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| Authors: | Naomi B. Schwartz Benjamin R. Lintner Xue Feng Jennifer S. Powers |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Geography, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada;2. Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA;3. Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo-engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA;4. Departments of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior and Plant and Microbial Biology, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN, USA |
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| Abstract: | Tropical ecologists have long recognized rainfall as the key climate filter shaping tropical ecosystem structure and function across space and time. Still, tropical ecologists have historically had a limited toolkit for characterizing rainfall, largely relying on simple metrics like mean annual precipitation (MAP) and dry season length to characterize rainfall regimes that vary along many more dimensions. Here, we review methods for quantifying dimensions of rainfall variability on multiple time scales, with a focus on ecological applications of these methods. We also discuss key considerations for tropical ecologists looking to use rainfall metrics that better align with hypothesized biological or ecological mechanisms or that more effectively describe rainfall variability in the systems we study and provide a toolkit (R scripts and gridded datasets) to do so. We argue that incorporating more sophisticated approaches to quantify rainfall variability into study design and statistical analyses will enhance our understanding of past, ongoing, and future changes in tropical ecosystems. |
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| Keywords: | climate change climate variability precipitation seasonal ecosystem |
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