Abstract

Tropical forests are critical elements of the biosphere, but face unprecedented threats in the face of deforestation and climate change. These potential threats include wavering trends in precipitation and water availability, the effects of which are yet to be clearly established. Recent advances in remote sensing technology, particularly the launch of the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Instrument (GEDI), allow us to evaluate the relationship between forest structure and drought conditions, including the GEDI -derived Plant Area Index (PAI) and a range of climate variables such as precipitation, radiation, and temperature. We compare the response of PAI to precipitation across regions, run seasonality analyses, and study the impacts of anomalous drought. We hope that our study will provide valuable insights into the resilience of tropical forests facing drought, aiding conservation efforts to mitigate the impact of climate change on these vital ecosystems.

All code used to generate the results in this study is available at a GitHub repository via the following link: https://github.com/4C-Guided-Team-Challenge/drought-with-gedi/releases/tag/v0.1.0.