Pierre Couteron

Institute of Research for Development | IRD · 123 - Plant Architecture, Functioning and Evolution (AMAP)

Forest expansion into savanna is a pervasive phenomenon in West and Central Africa, warranting comparative studies under diverse environmental conditions. We collected vegetation data from the woody and grassy components within 73 plots of 0.16 ha distributed along a successional gradient from humid savanna to forest in Central Africa. We associate...

Tropical moist forests are not the homogeneous green carpet often illustrated in maps or considered by global models. They harbour a complex mixture of forest types organized at different spatial scales that can now be more accurately mapped thanks to remote sensing products and artificial intelligence. In this study, we built a large‐scale vegetat...

Ecologists are being challenged to predict how ecosystems will respond to climate changes. According to the Multi‐Colored World (MCW) hypothesis, climate impacts may not manifest because consumers such as fire and herbivory can override the influence of climate on ecosystem state. One MCW interpretation is that climate determinism fails because alt...

accurate mapping and monitoring of tropical forests aboveground biomass (aGB) is crucial to design effective carbon emission reduction strategies and improving our understanding of Earth's carbon cycle. However, existing large-scale maps of tropical forest aGB generated through combinations of Earth Observation (EO) and forest inventory data show m...

Forest encroachment over savannas has been recurrently reported in the tropics over the last decades, especially in northern tropical Africa. However, process-based, spatially-explicit modelling of the phenomenon is still trailing broad scale empirical observations. In this paper, we used remotely-sensed diachronic data from Central Cameroon to cal...

Trees structure the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we inve...

Aim The mosaic of savannas that persists in the forest‐dominant Congo Basin is thought to be palaeoclimatic relics, but past biogeographical processes that have formed and maintained these systems are poorly understood. Here, we explored the post‐Pleistocene biogeography of Gabon's savannas using termites as biological indicators to understand hist...

Tree height and crown area are important predictors of aboveground biomass but difficult to measure on the ground. Numerous allometric models have been established to predict tree height from diameter (H–D) and crown area from diameter (CA–D). A major challenge is to select the most precise and accurate allometric model among existing ones, dependi...

An automatic method of landform mapping applicable to large continental areas is presented, based on 30-meter SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) data and combining texture analysis using Fourier 2D periodograms (FOTO method) with a set of morphometric variables. This integrated strategy was applied to the whole Congo Basin and adjacent regions...

Woody encroachment and forest progression are widespread in forest-savanna transitional areas in Central Africa. Quantifying these dynamics and understanding their drivers at relevant spatial scales has long been a challenge. Recent progress in open access imagery sources with improved spatial, spectral and temporal resolution combined with cloud c...

For about twenty years, the question about the essential factors promoting the long-lasting coexistence of trees and grasses in humid savannas is at the center of several mathematical works, by the construction of deterministic and/or stochastic mathematical models. A closely related topic is coexistence of open savanna and forest patches at landsc...

When ordinating plots of tropical rain forests using stand-level structural attributes such as biomass, basal area and the number of trees in different size classes, two patterns often emerge: a gradient from poorly to highly stocked plots and high positive correlations between biomass, basal area and the number of large trees. These patterns are i...

In this work, we propose a spatio-temporal tree-grass interactions model, allowing to account for a possibly periodic spatial structuring sometimes observes in humid savanna zone. The proposed model relies on an integro-differential reaction-diffusion system, involving kernels of intra and inter-specific interactions. From a linear stability analys...

Most remote sensing studies of urban areas focus on a single scale, using supervised methodologies and very few analyses focus on the “neighborhood” scale. The lack of multi-scale analysis, together with the scarcity of training and validation datasets in many countries lead us to propose a single fast unsupervised method for the characterization o...

Background and aims Terrestrial LiDAR scanning (TLS) data are of great interest in forest ecology and management because they provide detailed 3D information on tree structure. Automated pipelines are increasingly used to process TLS data and extract various tree- and plot-level metrics. With these developments comes the risk of unknown reliability...

The aim of this study was to determine the diversity. composition. forest structure of a stretch of dense ombrophilous forest in the state of Amapá. The area is located in the east of the state of Amapá. in the Eastern Amazon. at the following coordinates: 2º 0’0.00 ’’ N. 14º 0’0.00’’O. The sampling process used was systematic. where nine plots of...

We present and analyze a model aiming at recovering, as dynamical outcomes of fire-mediated tree–grass interactions, the wide range of vegetation physiognomies observable in the savanna biome along rainfall gradients at regional/continental scales. The model is based on two ordinary differential equations (ODE), for woody and grass biomass. It is p...

To fulfil their growth and reproductive functions, trees develop a three‐dimensional structure that is subject to both internal and external constraints. This is reflected by the unique architecture of each individual at a given time. Addressing the crown dimensions and topological structure of large tropical trees is challenging considering their...

Aim Examining tree species‐environment association can offer insight into the drivers of vegetation patterns and key information of practical relevance to forest management. Here, we aim to quantify the contribution of climate and soil gradients to variation in Central African tree species composition (abundance and occurrence). Location Tropical...

Precise accounting of carbon stocks and fluxes in tropical vegetation using remote sensing approaches remains a challenging exercise, as both signal saturation and ground sampling limitations contribute to inaccurate extrapolations. Airborne LiDAR Scanning (ALS) data can be used as an intermediate level to radically increase sampling and enhance mo...

We present and analyze a model aiming at recovering as dynamical outcomes of tree-grass interactions the wide range of vegetation physiognomies observable in the savanna biome along rainfall gradients at regional/continental scales. The model is based on two ordinary differential equations (ODE), for woody and grass biomass. It is parameterized fro...

Degraded tropical forests dominate agricultural frontiers and their management is becoming an urgent priority. This calls for a better understanding of the different forest cover states and cost-efficient techniques to quantify the impact of degradation on forest structure. Canopy texture analyses based on Very High Spatial Resolution (VHSR) optical i...

Wood density (WD) relates to important tree functions such as stem mechanics and resistance against pathogens. This functional trait can exhibit high intraindividual variability both radially and vertically. With the rise of LiDAR-based methodologies allowing nondestructive tree volume estimations, failing to account for WD variations related to tr...

Forest biomass monitoring is at the core of the research agenda due to the critical importance of forest dynamics in the carbon cycle. However, forest biomass is never directly measured; thus, upscaling it from trees to stand or larger scales (e.g., countries, regions) relies on a series of statistical models that may propagate large errors. Here,...

The savanna biome encompasses a variety of vegetation physiognomies that traduce complex dynamical responses of plants to the rainfall gradients leading from tropical forests to hot deserts. Such responses are shaped by interactions between woody and grassy plants that can be either direct, disturbance-mediated or both. There has been increasing ev...

The estimation and monitoring of the huge amount of carbon contained in tropical forests, and specifically in the above-ground biomass (AGB) of trees, is needed for the successful implementation of climate change mitigation strategies. Its accuracy depends on the availability of reliable allometric equations to convert forest inventory data into AG...

We report for the first time on the formation of spirals like vegetation patterns in isotropic and uniform environmental conditions. The vegetation spirals are not waves and they do not rotate. They belong to the class of dissipative structures found out of equilibrium. Isolated or interacting spirals and arcs observed in South America (Bolivia) an...

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.

Disturbance controls rainforest dynamics and, according to the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis (IDH), is a key driver of local diversity. Variations in disturbance regimes and their consequences for regional diversity at broad spatiotemporal scales are still poorly understood. Using multi-disciplinary large-scale inventories and LiDAR acquisiti...

Availability of digital elevation models (DEM) of increased spatial resolution has triggered interest in texture-based methods for automated geomorphometry. This prospect is all the more appealing concerning tropical countries for which mapping of geomorphic entities has remained limited despite its relevance for natural resource assessment and lan...

In this work, we improve a previous minimalistic tree-grass savanna model by taking into account water availability, in addition to fire, since both factors are known to be important for shaping savanna physiognomies along a climatic gradient. As in our previous models, we consider two nonlinear functions of grass and tree biomasses to respectively...

Background and aims - There is increasing recognition that plant traits mediate environmental influence on species distribution, justifying non-random community assembly. We studied the influence of local scale edaphic factors on the distribution of functional traits in a tropical rainforest of Cameroon with the aim to find correlations between the...

Very high spatial resolution (VHSR) optical satellite imagery has shown good potential to provide non-saturating proxies of tropical forest aboveground biomass (AGB) from the analysis of canopy texture, for instance through the Fourier Transform Textural Ordination method. Empirical case studies however showed that the relationship between Fourier...

Assessment of above ground forest biomass (AGB) is essential in carbon modelling studies to provide mitigation strategies as demonstrated by reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Several researchers have demonstrated the use of remote sensing data in spatial AGB estimation, in terms of spectral and radar backscatter based ap...

Long term tree–grass dynamics is an important issue in many places around the world. Especially, if we intend to take into account environmental and human perturbations, like fire events, herbivory, etc. In this paper, we complete and extend temporal models developed in recent papers by Yatat et al. (2014, 2017) and Tchuinte Tamen et al. (2014), us...

Fires and rainfall are major mechanisms that regulate woody and grassy biomasses in savanna ecosystems. Conditions of long-lasting coexistence of trees and grasses have been mainly studied using continuous-time modelling of tree-grass competition. In these frameworks, fire is a time-continuous forcing while the relationship between woody plant size...

Large scale assessment of aboveground biomass (AGB) in tropical forests is often limited by the saturation of remote sensing signals at high AGB values. Fourier Transform Textural Ordination (FOTO) performs well in quantifying canopy texture from very high-resolution (VHR) imagery, from which stand structure parameters can be retrieved with no satu...

Since savannas are important ecosystems around the world, their long term dynamics is an important issue, in particular when perturbations, like fires, occur more or less often. In a previous paper, we developed and studied a tree-grass model that take into account fires as pulse events using impulsive differential equations. In this work, we propo...

Key message Across five biogeographic areas, DBH-CA allometry was characterized by inter-site homogeneity and intra-site heterogeneity, whereas the reverse was observed for DBH-H allometry. Abstract Tree crowns play a central role in stand dynamics. Remotely sensed canopy images have been shown to allow inferring stand structure and biomass which s...

Desertification due to climate change and increasing drought periods is a worldwide problem for both ecology and economy. Our ability to understand how vegetation manages to survive and propagate through arid and semiarid ecosystems may be useful in the development of future strategies to prevent desertification, preserve flora-and fauna within-or...

For obvious reasons, niche modelling is clearly of low relevance when considering rare species. It also displays limitations in presence of weak environmental gradients. Moreover autocorrelation in both floristic and environmental variables is likely to unduly inflate type I error associated to niche models while methods designed to acknowledge for...

Background. Analyzing floristic composition is important to understand species diversity and its response to varying environmental factors. As such, the focus of previous papers has been on selected species or local scales. We assessed the explanatory power of environmental factors on species distribution in the central African rainforest. We aimed...

Accurately monitoring tropical forest carbon stocks is a challenge that remains outstanding. Allometric models that consider tree diameter, height and wood density as predictors are currently used in most tropical forest carbon studies. In particular, a pantropical biomass model has been widely used for approximately a decade, and its most recent v...

Savannas are dynamical systems where grasses and trees can either dominate or coexist. Fires are known to be central in the functioning of the savanna biome although their characteristics are expected to vary along the rainfall gradients as observed in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, we model the tree-grass dynamics using impulsive differential...

The influence of geomorphological features on rain-forest diversity has been reported in different Amazonian regions. Soil filtering is often assumed to underlie the observed geomorphic control on the floristic composition but other hypotheses related to biogeography or long-term forest dynamics are also possible. We tested relationships between ge...

Accurately monitoring tropical forest carbon stocks is an outstanding challenge. Allometric models that consider tree diameter, height and wood density as predictors are currently used in most tropical forest carbon studies. In particular, a pantropical biomass model has been widely used for approximately a decade, and its most recent version will...

Precise mapping of above-ground biomass (AGB) is a major challenge for the success of REDD+ processes in tropical rainforest. The usual mapping methods are based on two hypotheses: a large and long-ranged spatial autocorrelation and a strong environment influence at the regional scale. However, there are no studies of the spatial structure of AGB a...

Tropical rainforests exhibit a high alpha-diversity and a complex local structure that hides patterns at regional scale. Thus little is known about spatial distribution of tree species and variation of communities’ composition at operational scales. Nevertheless this information is essential to assure the sustainability of forest management in the...

Large tropical trees and a few dominant species were recently identified as the main structuring elements of tropical forests. However, such result did not translate yet into quantitative approaches which are essential to understand, predict and monitor forest functions and composition over large, often poorly accessible territories. Here we show t...