The Forest Survived the Drought—the Next Forest Didn't

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For five years, researchers prevented the rain from reaching part of a cloud forest in the Peruvian Andes. Soil moisture dropped by 69%. If that happened in my forest I’d expect the trees to brown, drop their leaves and start falling over. The studied trees didn’t. The canopy held, and so did the carbon numbers. By most measures a forester would check from the trail, the stand came through severe drought looking fine. But it had almost stopped making fruit. Fruit production fell by 90.6%. The forest survived the drought but stopped making the next forest.

Ecology on Digital Dryad

The Forest Survived the Drought—the Next Forest Didn't