BioEO
Functional Biodiversity & Earth Observation Lab
Interdependence of tropical forests and soil biota as seen by remote sensing
We cannot adequately understand or simulate how tropical forests respond to environmental change without the knowledge of the local feedback between plants and their soil biota (e.g. fungi and bacterial communities) as these play a major role in the resilience of forest ecosystems. Current approaches that model vegetations responses to a changing climate tend to ignore such soil-plant feedbacks simply because we do not know how they are interconnected across forest ecosystems. The biodiversity-rich tropical forests, which are home to more than 50% of global diversity, urgently need answers to these questions as evidence shows how climate change is affecting their biodiversity levels.
Funded by NERC Pushing the frontiers
Effects of vegetation structure and landscape simplification on bee diversity
In our research, we include the heterogeneity that exists within patches of remnant forest in studies that assess the effects of habitat loss on pollinators. The study is focused at Cerrado; a diverse brazilian savannah that is highly threatened by land use change. We studied patches of natural and restored evergreen riparian forest and deciduous forests within private farms, which are protected by environmental law. The sampling areas were in the state of Goiás, in the central plateau of Brazil, and in the state of Mato Grosso, in the transition between Cerrado and Amazon forest.
There are three main questions on this research:
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Are the vegetation structure and plant traits affect the richness and abundance of bees that occurred in small fragments of natural habitats within farms? We discuss the importance of the vegetation structure and plant traits as a source of nesting and feeding resources for bees. Then, we sampled the bees within forest patches across private farms using bait- and pan-traps and sampled the vegetation using LiDAR and multispectral imagery.
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Is the heterogeneity of those structural aspects or plant traits buffer the negative effects of loss of natural habitat at the landscape?
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Are the vegetation structure and plant traits being important drivers of bee diversity at a larger scale (tropical region)? We will perform SDM to understand how the distribution and richness of tropical bees respond to the relationship between their traits, the vegetation structure and plant traits and climatic conditions.
Coarse UAV remote sensing to predict grassland plant & invertebrate biodiversity
In this project we are studying the propensity of multispectral and LiDAR data gathered via drone / Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) surveys at relatively coarse spatial resolutions, to accurately predict grassland plant and invertebrate biodiversity. This references in-situ ecological data gathered by the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery (LCNR) in Park Farm, a series of permanent pasture grasslands newly adopted for research in Oxford, forming part of their regenerative farming gradient of study sites.
Applying the vegetation spectral and structural diversity hypotheses, we investigate how well the coefficient of variation in vegetation's reflectance between pixels across 10 wavelength bands, partitioned within and between communities, as well as the structural diversity of hedgerows and grassland, can explain the variation in these measures of biodiversity between survey sites. The ability of which would be highly beneficial to further the development of cost-effective, accurate monitoring of biodiversity, able to be extended remotely across large spatial scales.
AI, Remote Sensing, and Forest Resilience to Climate - Insights for Public Health
Climate change poses a critical threat to tropical forests and to human well-being in biodiverse regions such as the Amazon. This project will investigate how climate-driven stresses (e.g. drought and heat) are reshaping forest functional strategies in the Amazon and how these ecological shifts intersect with public health outcomes and socio-economic vulnerability across municipalities. The project will integrate functional ecology, remote sensing and artificial intelligence, epidemiology, and socio-environmental modelling.
Research objectives include:
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to characterise current tree functional strategies from permanent plots and trait datasets and to develop AI/ML models to predict these strategies from UAV+satellite spectra, climate, hydrology and soils;
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to reconstruct multi-decadal shifts in forest functional strategies using harmonised Landsat-Sentinel archives and to test the role of agrarian economic contexts (Techno-productive Trajectories) in modulating climate-forest relationships;
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to model associations between shifts in forest functional strategies and disease incidence (e.g. dengue, leishmaniasis, malaria, Chagas, leptospirosis, hantavirus, schistosomiasis) across municipalities;
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to evaluate how socio-economic vulnerability indicators mediate forest-health links and identify contexts where risks are amplified or dampened.
Publication PDFs are available to read & download at the adjacent buttons, for accessibility
Aguirre-Gutiérrez, J., Rifai, S. W., Deng, X., Ter Steege, H., Thomson, E., Corral-Rivas, J. J., ... & Malhi, Y. (2025). Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests. Nature, 1-8. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08663-2
Aguirre-Gutiérrez, J., Díaz, S., Rifai, S. W., Corral-Rivas, J. J., Nava-Miranda, M. G., González-M, R., ... & Malhi, Y. (2025). Tropical forests in the Americas are changing too slowly to track climate change. Science, 387(6738), eadl5414. doi: 10.1126/science.adl5414
Deng, X., Carvajal, D. E., Urrutia-Jalabert, R., Machida, W. S., Rosen, A., Zhang-Zheng, H., ... & Aguirre-Gutiérrez, J. (2025). Quantifying the functional composition and potential resilience hotspots across a large latitudinal and environmental gradient in South American forests. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 142, 104704. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2025.104704
Jefferys, K. M., Betts, M. G., Robinson, W. D., Curtis, J. R., Hallman, T., Smith, A. C., ... & Aguirre-Gutiérrez, J. (2024). Breeding habitat loss linked to declines in Rufous Hummingbirds. Avian Conservation and Ecology, 19(2), 2. doi: 10.5751/ACE-02681-190202
Aguirre-Gutiérrez, J., Stevens, N., & Berenguer, E. (2023). Valuing the functionality of tropical ecosystems beyond carbon. Trends in ecology & evolution, 38(12), 1109-1111. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2023.08.012
Doughty, C.E., Gaillard, C., Burns, P., Keany, J., Abraham, A., Malhi, Y.S., Aguirre-Gutierrez, J., Koch, G., Jantz, P., Shenkin, A. and Tang, H. (2023). Tropical forests are mainly unstratified especially in Amazonia and regions with lower fertility or higher temperatures. doi:https://doi.org/10.1088/2752-664x/ace723.
Dechant, B., Jens Kattge, Pavlick, R., Schneider, N., Sabatini, F., Álvaro Moreno-Martínez, Butler, E.E., Peter, Vallicrosa, H., Teja Kattenborn, Coline C. F. Boonman, Madani, N., Wright, I.P., Dong, N., Hannes Feilhauer, Josep Peñuelas, Jordi Sardans, Jesús Aguirre‐Gutiérrez, Reich, P.B. and Leitao, P. (2023). Intercomparison of global foliar trait maps reveals fundamental differences and limitations of upscaling approaches. EarthArXiv (California Digital Library). doi:https://doi.org/10.31223/x58s97.
Zhang, H., Malhi, Y., Agne Gvozdevaite, Peprah, T., Boackye, M., Kasia Ziemińska, Adu‐Bredu, S., Jesús Aguirre‐Gutiérrez, Sandoval, D., Prentice, C. and Oliveras, I. (2023). Photosynthetic and water transport strategies of plants along a tropical forest aridity gradient: a test of optimality theory. bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory). doi:https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.10.523419.
Bhalla, I.S., Aguirre‐Gutiérrez, J. and Whittaker, R.J. (2023). Batting for rice: The effect of bat exclusion on rice in North-East India. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 341, p.108196. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2022.108196.
Doughty, C.E., Gaillard, C., Abraham, A., Burns, P., Keany, J., Jesús Aguirre‐Gutiérrez, Malhi, Y., Jantz, P., Koch, G., Shenkin, A. and Tang, H. (2022). Unstratified forests dominate the tropics especially in regions with lower fertility or higher temperatures. EcoEvoRxiv. doi:https://doi.org/10.32942/x2vc7t.
Bauman, D., Fortunel, C., Delhaye, G., Malhi, Y., Cernusak, L.A., Bentley, L.P., Rifai, S.W., Aguirre-Gutiérrez, J., Menor, I.O., Phillips, O.L., McNellis, B.E., Bradford, M., Laurance, S.G.W., Hutchinson, M.F., Dempsey, R., Santos-Andrade, P.E., Ninantay-Rivera, H.R., Chambi Paucar, J.R. and McMahon, S.M. (2022). Tropical tree mortality has increased with rising atmospheric water stress. Nature, [online] pp.1–6. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04737-7.
Aguirre‐Gutiérrez, J., Berenguer, E., Oliveras Menor, I., Bauman, D., Corral-Rivas, J.J., Nava-Miranda, M.G., Both, S., Ndong, J.E., Ondo, F.E., Bengone, N.N., Mihinhou, V., Dalling, J.W., Heineman, K., Figueiredo, A., González-M, R., Norden, N., Hurtado-M, A.B., González, D., Salgado-Negret, B. and Reis, S.M. (2022). Functional susceptibility of tropical forests to climate change. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 6(7), pp.878–889. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01747-6.
Liang, J., Javier, Picard, N., Zhou, M., Pijanowski, B.C., Jacobs, D.F., Reich, P.B., Crowther, T.W., Gert-Jan Nabuurs, de-Miguel, S., Fang, J., Woodall, C.W., Jens-Christian Svenning, Tommaso Jucker, Bastin, J.-F., Wiser, S.K., Ferry Slik, Hérault, B., Alberti, G. and Keppel, G. (2022). Co-limitation towards lower latitudes shapes global forest diversity gradients. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 6(10), pp.1423–1437. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01831-x.
Aguirre-Gutiérrez, J., Rifai, S., Shenkin, A., Oliveras, I., Bentley, L.P., Svátek, M., Girardin, C.A.J., Both, S., Riutta, T., Berenguer, E., Kissling, W.D., Bauman, D., Raab, N., Moore, S., Farfan-Rios, W., Figueiredo, A.E.S., Reis, S.M., Ndong, J.E., Ondo, F.E. and N’ssi Bengone, N. (2021). Pantropical modelling of canopy functional traits using Sentinel-2 remote sensing data. Remote Sensing of Environment, 252, p.112122. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2020.112122.
Aguirre-Gutiérrez, J., Malhi, Y., Lewis, S.L., Fauset, S., Adu-Bredu, S., Affum-Baffoe, K., Baker, T.R., Gvozdevaite, A., Hubau, W., Moore, S., Peprah, T., Ziemińska, K., Phillips, O.L. and Oliveras, I. (2020). Long-term droughts may drive drier tropical forests towards increased functional, taxonomic and phylogenetic homogeneity. Nature Communications, 11(1). doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16973-4.
Resources & presentations
Tropical forests and a changing climate: Analysis at the interface between trait-based ecology, forest dynamics and remote sensing
Dr. Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez
CSIR-FORIG, Ghana, January 2022
Understanding climate effects on tropical forests through trait-based ecology and remote sensing:
A presentation at CSIR-FORIG.
Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests
This interactive platform provides pantropical maps of community-level canopy functional traits derived from field observations and remote sensing, associated with the article “Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests”. The data include spatial predictions of key leaf traits, wood density and community weighted mean (CWM) trait values across tropical forests worldwide, enabling exploration of large-scale ecological patterns.
https://pantropicalanalysis.users.earthengine.app/view/pantropical-traits-aguirre-gutierrez-2025
Aguirre-Gutiérrez, et al. 2025. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08663-2