Mapping forest resilience hotspots in South America

Researchers from Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute have developed a new way to assess the resilience of South America’s temperate forests — identifying where ecosystems are most likely to withstand environmental change, and where they may be most vulnerable.

The study, led by Xiongjie Deng, ECI PhD student, and published in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, combines data from over 8,000 trees in Chile with drone and satellite imagery. The result is one of the most detailed maps to date of forest resilience across a 2,300-kilometre stretch of southern South America.

Resilience is linked to two key components:

• Functional diversity – how many different roles plant species play in the ecosystem
• Functional redundancy – how many species perform similar functions, acting as ecological “backups”

Forests with high levels of both are thought to be better able to cope with climate change and other pressures.
The research highlights a “resilience hotspot” in the Valdivian rainforests (between 35°S and 42°S), where forests show both high diversity and high redundancy — suggesting strong potential to adapt to change. In contrast, forests further north and south show more vulnerability, either lacking species redundancy or overall diversity.

Xiongjie Deng said:

“Our work bridges a critical gap, scaling up detailed ecological understanding from individual trees to entire landscapes. By combining intensive fieldwork with cutting-edge remote sensing and machine learning, we can create spatially explicit maps that are vital for understanding how biodiversity and forest function vary across these vast and complex regions.”

Xiongjie worked alongside fellow ECI researchers and experts from the ECI’s Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery; Dr Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez, Prof Yadvinder Malhi, Dr Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng, Alice Rosen and Prof Sandra Díaz. The study also involved local collaborators from Chile, Danny Carvajal, Antonio Lara and Rocio Urrutia.

The findings could help guide conservation efforts, pointing to areas where protecting biodiversity and ecological function will be most critical.

Read the full paper in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation: Quantifying the functional composition and potential resilience hotspots across a large latitudinal and environmental gradient in South American forests