Ecologist Akhil Javad felt the thrill of fieldwork quickly fade when he was faced with the prospect of scaling trees over five times his height. But for some of the trees he was studying in India’s Western Ghat mountains, that was the only way to take their temperature.
So, Javad got climbing. Sensors that he placed on leaves in the upper canopy are providing unprecedented insights into how tropical forests are weathering global warming. The findings suggest that the trees may be in better shape than scientists thought, he and colleagues report in the February Global Change Biology.
Ecologist Akhil Javad (shown) and colleagues found that tropical trees’