Alvaro G. GutierrezUniversity of Chile · Departamento de Ciencias Ambientales y Recursos Naturales
Alvaro G. Gutierrez
Dr.
About
106
Publications
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Introduction
My work focuses on the dynamics and functioning of forests, with focus on conservation and the impacts of global change. I use a combination of approaches to explore how local interactions of trees with their environment, scale up to patterns of forest structure and distribution of tree species. My fieldwork has focused in temperate rainforests of southern South America.
more info on: http://www.bosqueciencia.org
Additional affiliations
November 2021 - present
Institute of Ecology and Biodversity
Position
- Principal Investigator
July 2015 - present
October 2013 - June 2015
Publications
Publications (106)
Dynamic vegetation models (DVMs) follow a process-based approach to simulate plant population demography, and have been used to address questions about disturbances, plant succession, community composition, and provisioning of ecosystem services under climate change scenarios. Despite their potential, they have seldom been used for studying species...
Increased droughts due to regional shifts in temperature and rainfall regimes are likely to affect forests in temperate regions in the coming decades. To assess their consequences for forest dynamics, we need predictive tools that couple hydrologic processes, soil moisture dynamics and plant productivity. Here, we developed and tested a dynamic for...
Aim
It has been suggested that predicting species distributions requires a process‐based and preferably dynamic approach. If dynamic models are to contribute towards understanding species distributions, uncertainties related to their spatial extrapolation and bioclimatic parameters need to be addressed. Here, we analyse the potential of a forest ga...
Forest degradation continues to increase globally, threatening biodiversity and the survival of species. In this context, identifying intact, old-growth forest stands is both urgent and vital to ensure their existence and multiple contributions to society. Despite the global ecological importance of the Valdivian temperate rainforests, they are thr...
It is widely accepted that global warming is affecting forests near the tree line by increasing tree growth in these cold-limited environments. However, since about 1970, a reduction in tree growth near the tree line has been observed in response to warming and increased drought stress. This reduction in tree growth has been mainly reported in fore...
Santiago de Chile es una ciudad con altos índices de concentración y crecimiento urbano, contaminación ambiental, riesgos socionaturales y desigualdad socioespacial en el acceso a
espacios verdes. Se encuentra emplazada en la cuenca del Río Maipo, en pleno hotspot de biodiversidad correspondiente a ecosistemas mediterráneos y bosque esclerófilo, lo...
Purpose
Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, UNESCO Landscapes and World Heritage sites have faced unstable situations. Both at the sites themselves and in the research centres, universities and even the homes of the people involved, they have acted and responded to the best of their ability. In this context, the aim of the comparative analysis of...
Outbreaks of the Ormiscodes amphimone moth are among the largest biotic disturbances in South America, defoliating vast areas of native Nothofagus pumilio forests in the Chilean and Argentinian Patagonia in the last decade. Using MODIS 16-day composites of the enhanced vegetation index and the new functions of the latest release of the “npphen” R-p...
As Earth's climate has varied strongly through geological time, studying the impacts of past climate change on biodiversity helps to understand the risks from future climate change. However, it remains unclear how paleoclimate shapes spatial variation in biodiversity. Here, we assessed the influence of Quaternary climate change on spatial dissimila...
Here we provide the ‘Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset’, containing species mean values for six vascular plant traits. Together, these traits –plant height, stem specific density, leaf area, leaf mass per area, leaf nitrogen content per dry mass, and diaspore (seed or spore) mass – define the primary axes of variation in plant form...
Safeguarding Earth’s tree diversity is a conservation priority due to the importance of trees for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services such as carbon sequestration. Here, we improve the foundation for effective conservation of global tree diversity by analyzing a recently developed database of tree species covering 46,752 species. We q...
Aim:
Climate change is expected to impact mountain biodiversity by shifting species ranges and the biomes they shape. The extent and regional variation in these impacts are still poorly understood, particularly in the highly biodiverse Andes. Regional syntheses of climate change impacts on vegetation are pivotal to identify and guide research prio...
Plant functional traits can predict community assembly and ecosystem functioning and are thus widely used in global models of vegetation dynamics and land–climate feedbacks. Still, we lack a global understanding of how land and climate affect plant traits. A previous global analysis of six traits observed two main axes of variation: (1) size variat...
Motivation
Assessing biodiversity status and trends in plant communities is critical for understanding, quantifying and predicting the effects of global change on ecosystems. Vegetation plots record the occurrence or abundance of all plant species co‐occurring within delimited local areas. This allows species absences to be inferred, information se...
Aim of the study: Seed removal may be a determining filter for regeneration. Factors such as leaf litter, tree cover and seed density affect seed removal. This aims to assess three aspects involving on post dispersal seed removal of four woody species (Lithraea caustica, Maytenus boaria, Quillaja saponaria and Retanilla ephedra) of a sclerophyll fo...
El Libro fue elaborado con el objetivo de dar a conocer los principales resultados de la Planificación Ecológica a escala local del área del proyecto GEF Montaña al 2030, impulsada por el proyecto GEFSEC ID 5135 Corredores Biológicos de Montaña, del Ministerio del Medio Ambiente y ONU Medio Ambiente, y desarrollada por la Universidad de Chile.
La p...
Global Climate Models project that observed climate trends are likely to be preserved and the number of extreme events will be increasing during the rest of the 21st century, which may have a detrimental impact on forest ecosystems. These impacts may include forest decline and widespread dieback of the most vulnerable biomes, such as the Mediterran...
Both historical and contemporary environmental conditions determine present biodiversity patterns, but their relative importance is not well understood. One way to disentangle their relative effects is to assess how different dimensions of beta-diversity relate to past climatic changes, i.e., taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional compositional dis...
Trees are of vital importance for ecosystem functioning and services at local to global scales, yet we still lack a detailed overview of the global patterns of tree diversity and the underlying drivers, particularly the imprint of paleoclimate. Here, we present the high-resolution (110 km) worldwide mapping of tree species richness, functional and...
Although trees are key to ecosystem functioning, many forests and tree species across the globe face strong threats. Preserving areas of high biodiversity is a core priority for conservation; however, different dimensions of biodiversity and varied conservation targets make it difficult to respond effectively to this challenge. Here, we (i) identif...
La Infraestructura Verde, al igual que otras soluciones basadas en la naturaleza, se posiciona como una de las principales respuestas que están emprendiendo comunidades, municipios y gobiernos en ciudades de todo el mundo para enfrentar desafíos como el cambio climático, mejorar la salud pública, disminuir la segregación social y proteger la biodiv...
Insect outbreaks are among the largest disturbance affecting forest health, and as a consequence of global warming, their frequency can increase and their impact becomes more severe. In the southern tip of South America, massive outbreaks of the native moth Ormiscodes amphimone (Lepidoptera: Hemileucinae) have defoliated large areas of subantarctic...
Las plagas de Ormiscodes amphimone son cada vez más frecuentes en el sur de Sudamérica, con miles de hectáreas afectadas A dentrarse en un bosque de lengas (Nothofagus pumilio) que está siendo devorado por larvas de la polilla Ormiscodes amphimone resulta una experiencia escalofriante. Podemos observar miles y miles de ellas: unas trepan por los tr...
Aim: Alien plant species can cause severe ecological and economic problems, and therefore attract a lot of research interest in biogeography and related fields. To identify potential future invasive species, we need to better understand the mechanisms underlying the abundances of invasive tree species in their new ranges, and whether these mechanis...
Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research sp...
La submesa Cambio de Uso del Suelo (CUS) tuvo como objetivo compilar y presentar en un informe la evidencia científica disponible sobre los cambios de uso del suelo y sus impactos en relación con las opciones de mitigación del cambio climático. Esta submesa contó con la participación de más de 30 científicos de diversas áreas de las ciencias ambien...
The authors wish to make the following correction to this paper: The author name “Zahra Kalantary” should be “Zahra Kalantari” [...]
Tree height distributions in the canopy of old-growth temperate rainforests of south-central Chile
SUMMARY
Canopy structure is relevant to understanding forests functioning and sustaining biodiversity. In Chile, old-growth temperate evergreen rainforests have been characterized by a muti-stratified canopy; however, it is uncertain the common numb...
The cover image, by Sergio A. Estay et al., is based on the Original Contribution Quantifying massive outbreaks of the defoliator moth Ormiscodes amphimone in deciduous Nothofagus‐dominated southern forests using remote sensing time series analysis . DOI: 10.1111/jen.12643.
Cover credit : Cover image © Ronald Rocco Images
The Valdivian Temperate Rainforest ecoregion is considered as one of the most relevant ecoregions in the world due to its biological importance. However, the native forests of this ecoregion have been historically subjected to anthropogenic disturbances, affecting its functionality, composition and structure and making it a high priority to recover...
Forest insect outbreaks are one of the major biotic disturbances on natural and artificial landscapes. Although abundant literature of insect outbreaks exists in the Northern Hemisphere, studies for the Southern Hemisphere are rare. Recently, massive outbreaks of the native moth Ormiscodes amphimone (Fabricius) (Lepidoptera: Hemileucinae) have been...
Questions: Vegetation-plot records provide information on presence and cover or abundance of plants co-occurring in the same community. Vegetation-plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers, and thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database,...
Aims: Vegetation-plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance of plants co-occurring in the same community. Vegetation-plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers and, thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database,...
A través del uso de sensores remotos y análisis geoespaciales, se explica cómo desarrollar la caracterización de claros en el dosel, con el fin de obtener métricas que permitan determinar el estado de degradación de bosques adultos, fundadas en la teoría ecológica de la dinámica sucesional. Los métodos propuestos son de rápida medición y permiten d...
Wetlands are often vital physical and social components of a country's natural capital, as well as providers of ecosystem services to local and national communities. We performed a network analysis to prioritize Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for sustainable development in iconic wetlands and wetlandscapes around the world. The analysis...
Wetlands are often vital physical and social components of a country's natural capital, as well as providers of ecosystem services to local and national communities. We performed a network analysis to prioritize Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for sustainable development in iconic wetlands and wetlandscapes around the world. The analysis...
Wetlands are often vital physical and social components of a country’s natural capital, as well as providers of ecosystem services to local and national communities. We performed a network analysis to prioritize Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for sustainable development in iconic wetlands and wetlandscapes around the world. The analysis...
Folivorous insects cause some of the most ecologically and economically important disturbances in forests worldwide. For this reason, several approaches have been developed to exploit the temporal richness of available satellite time series data to detect and quantify insect forest defoliation. Current approaches rely on parametric functions to des...
Plant functional traits directly affect ecosystem functions. At the species level, trait combinations depend on trade-offs representing different ecological strategies, but at the community level trait combinations are expected to be decoupled from these trade-offs because different strategies can facilitate co-existence within communities. A key r...
Plant functional traits directly affect ecosystem functions. At the species level, trait combinations depend on trade-offs representing different ecological strategies, but at the community level trait combinations are expected to be decoupled from these trade-offs because different strategies can facilitate co-existence within communities. A key q...
The forests in the Aysén region (ca. 43-49 °S, Chile) have a high degree of wilderness and cover more than 4.8 million hectares, making it one of the largest areas of subantarctic forest in the Southern Hemisphere. The impact of global warming on this region is poorly documented. The main objective of this work was to analyze the normalized differe...
Increasing evidence indicates that forest disturbances are changing in response to global change, yet local variability in disturbance remains high. We quantified this considerable variability and analyzed whether recent disturbance episodes around the globe were consistently driven by climate, and if human influence modulates patterns of forest di...
An increase in drought conditions over the last century has been documented in Central Chile, a fact that could affect the Mediterranean forests, especially the northernmost Nothofagus populations from South America (Nothofagus macrocarpa). For this reason, it is key to study the climate influence on radial growth and trees establishment to design...
An emerging phenomenon of forest decline in Mediterranean-type ecosystems has been detected in response to climate change during the last century. It is expected that the Mediterranean regions will likely experience drought events during this century with consequences for biodiversity maintenance. Although the Chilean Mediterranean-type forests are...
Aim
Despite several recent efforts to map plant traits and to identify their climatic drivers, there are still major gaps. Global trait patterns for major functional groups, in particular, the differences between woody and herbaceous plants, have yet to be identified. Here, we take advantage of big data efforts to compile plant species occurrence a...
An increase in drought conditions over the last century has been documented in Central Chile, a fact that could affect the Mediterranean forests, especially the northernmost Nothofagus populations from South America (Nothofagus macrocarpa). For this reason, it is key to study the climate influence on radial growth and trees establishment to design...
Plant functional traits directly affect ecosystem functions. At the species level, trait combinations depend on trade-offs representing different ecological strategies, but at the community level trait combinations are expected to be decoupled from these trade-offs because different strategies can facilitate co-existence within communities. A key q...
El clima es uno de los factores que influye en la distribución de las especies arbóreas y en el Bosque Templado, el cambio climático es un escenario que podría estar afectando en el borde de las distribuciones de las especies. Así, se propuso conocer qué factores bioclimáticos pueden determinar tanto la presencia como la distribución borde y núcleo...
El rango de distribución geográfica de una especie es dinámico, es decir, se está expandiendo y/o contrayendo en el tiempo1. En la medida en que la sequía y las altas temperaturas se vuelven más frecuentes e intensas en el borde cálido/seco, la mortalidad tendería a aumentar y, por ende, generar una contracción del rango de distribución.
Entre los...
La Ecorregión Templada Valdiviana es considerada como una de las ecorregiones más importantes a nivel mundial debido a su importancia biológica, sin embargo, ha sido históricamente sometida a disturbios antropogénicos, los que han provocado la degradación progresiva del bosque nativo, afectando su biodiversidad, productividad, funcionalidad, compos...
The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...
Figure S1: Database schema. Diversity data in yellow, GIS data in green and Catalogue of Life data in blue. The diversity tables datasource, study, site, measuredtaxon and diversitymeasurement
follow the structure described in ‘Methods’ in the main text and in Hudson et al. (2014): a datasource is associated with one or more study records, each of...
The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...
The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...
https://web.uchile.cl/archivos/VAA/ExperienciasInnovacionDocente/84/
This study defines and discusses the natural patrimony represented by monumental trees, i.e. large old trees of native tree species from Chile. These trees should be preserved because they: 1) foster natural fascination, 2) are rarities of nature, 3) provide ecosystem services, 4) allow the study of individual adaptations, 5) represent a biocultura...