Floodplains as an Achilles’ heel of Amazonian forest resilience

Significance Climate change may alter the distribution of biomes in tropical regions with implications for biodiversity and ecosystem services. Here we reveal that if the Amazon region becomes drier as predicted, forests may collapse first on seasonally inundated areas due to their vulnerability to wildfires. The widespread distribution of floodplain forests at the western and central regions implies that fire-prone savannas may expand deep into...