Search

Disentangling the environmental determinants of tropical biomes is crucial for understanding their response to climate change. This study investigated the effect of climate and soil-related variables on biome transitions in the Caribbean region of Colombia and Panama, focusing on xerophytic forest (XF), tropical dry forest (TDF), and tropical rainforest (TRF). We analyzed the climatic variables at different time scales (daily, seasonal, and annual) and their interaction with soil properties. We performed an ordinal logistic regression to assess the combined effect of the most important variables in biome transitions. Our results showed that climate variables are major discriminators in our study region, particularly precipitation at a seasonal and annual scale. The ordinal logistic regression highlighted the significance of annual precipitation and dry-season length in biome transitions, with maximum temperature impacting TDF-TRF transitions. Soil differences, although present (e.g., higher sand content in XF), played a marginal role. Overall, our findings emphasize the dominance of climate over soil in shaping tropical biome distributions in the northern Caribbean part of South America. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of tropical biome responses to climate change. • We analyzed the importance of climate variables by using a differentiability index. • Dry season length is a key determinant in biome distributions in our study region. • Xerophytic - Tropical dry forest transition occurs in a narrow climate threshold. • Dry forest - rainforest transition occurs gradually in a wide environmental space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]