Distribution of plots used to estimate aboveground biomass in the studied Northwest South American region (Colombia, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador).

<p>Color of the symbols represent the forest types in the region: Blue for forest plots in Amazonia; yellow for forest plots in the Andean uplands; red for plots in the inter-andean valleys; Orange for the Caribbean plots; Green for the Orinoco region and the green triangles for the forest plot in the Choco region. The grey scale is displayed to denote altitude (m. a.s.l).</p

Plots of forest structure parameters and aboveground biomass.

<p>The Coefficient of determination is showed in each plot. *P<0.01; **P<0.001; ***P<0.000; ns: non-significant.</p

Relationship between Aboveground Biomass (AGB) and (a) Water Availability (WA), (b) Precipitation Variability (PV), Actual Evapotranspiration (AET) and (d) Annual Mean Temperature (AMT).

<p>Bioregions are shown with different colors. Solid lines represent the trend of relationships, based on the original data (without transformation), according to the best models (highest AIC scores) presented in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0171072#pone.0171072.t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a>; pR² is a partial regression coefficient for each of the relationships.</p

Mean and standard deviation of aboveground biomass (AGB) across geographic regions of Northwest South America.

<p>Mean and standard deviation of aboveground biomass (AGB) across geographic regions of Northwest South America.</p

Explanatory models of aboveground biomass.

<p>Explanatory models of aboveground biomass.</p

Climatic space represented for each vegetation plot used in this analysis.

<p>The climatic space is shown as principal components analysis to reduce climatic variables used. The first axis represents temperature variability and second axis represents precipitation variability. Gray points represent the climatic space availability across Northwest South America. Blue points represent actual climatic conditions of each of the vegetation plots sampled.</p