Pantropical dynamics of 'intact' rain forest canopy texture

Aside from deforestation and selective logging, mature tropical rain forest s appear to be in a state of near-term flux. At plot scales over a 20-year period, forest inventory data (representing areas < 750 ha) have shown stan ds to be accumulating above-ground biomass pantropically while displaying s igns of increasing turnover. To assess whether or not such disequilibrium i s manifest at broader spatial scales (i.e. coarser grain sizes and larger e xtents), we performed a change detection analysis of landscape texture (i.e . the organization of reflective properties), in satellite images of closed -canopy tropical rain forests considered to be anthropically undisturbed. H ere we show that fractal properties of pixel spectral values depicting low and high levels of photosynthetic activity underwent significant shifts fro m the 1970s to the 1980s. Following expectations for aggrading forests, can opy texture became more random throughout the tropics. Although subject to periodic disturbance events such as natural exogenic perturbations and/or s ynchronous die-off, which should produce no consistent trend, these foreste d landscapes across the globe exhibited similar dynamics at fine temporal ( decadal) intervals. Such biophysical changes (representing areas > 1000 000 ha) directly affect atmospheric boundary layer conditions and could have i mplications with respect to biodiversity and carbon cycling in these system s.