Tropical forests are biomes of global significance due to their exceptional biodiversity, carbon storage capacity, and key role in the hydrological cycle. In recent decades, ecosystems across South America, Central America, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia have experienced increasing pressures from human activities, climate change, and intensified natural variability, including a growing frequency of extreme events such as droughts, heatwaves, and storms compounded by ENSO and increased fire occurrency. These drivers have altered the cycling of nutrients, carbon, water, and energy, while also affecting human livelihoods. Yet the ecological consequences of extremes are rarely limited to single, isolated events: repeated disturbances can compound over time, shifting forests from resilient recovery trajectories toward cumulative, and potentially irreversible, stress.
In this session, we aim to place a particular emphasis on how tropical forest ecosystems respond to both individual extreme events and their cumulative effects of multiple stressors over time. We invite contributions that examine the consequences of single versus repeated disturbances across multiple dimensions, including above- and belowground biomass, forest-atmosphere interactions, carbon budgets, biodiversity, and social livelihoods. We welcome studies using diverse approaches, ranging from experimental and field-based investigations to remote sensing and modeling. Our goal is to foster a holistic understanding of how the transition from single events to cumulative stress shapes both the current and future states of tropical vegetation and the communities that depend on it.