Lucia Zuvela Rachel Cruz-Perez Tatiana Barreto-Vélez Nibia Becerra-Santillan Sophia F. Campbell Hieu P. Chu Trung Dam Iana F. Grullón-Penkova Miriam Kleit Deyaneira A. Ortiz-Iglesias Laura C. Rubio-Lebrón Molly A. Cavaleri Sasha C. Reed Debjani Sihi Tana E. Wood Christine S. O'Connell Gabriele Larocca Conte 2026 <p><span>Methane (CH</span>₄<span>) is a potent greenhouse gas, and tropical forests account for roughly one–third of global atmospheric CH</span>₄<span>&nbsp;uptake by soils. Projected warming and more frequent hurricanes in these ecosystems may alter soil CH</span>₄<span>&nbsp;sink strength, as warmer and wetter soils enhance methanogenesis activity. We measured soil CH</span>₄<span>&nbsp;and CO</span>₂<span>&nbsp;efflux during the calendar summer months of 2023 and 2024 alongside continuous records of soil moisture, soil and air temperature, and precipitation in an&nbsp;</span><i>in–situ</i><span>&nbsp;warming experiment (TRACE) located in a lowland tropical forest in Puerto Rico, six to seven years after Hurricanes Irma and Maria (2017). The realized warming (∼1.95°C) enhanced soil respiration only in summer 2023 (</span><i>p</i><span>&nbsp;&lt; 0.05), but net soil CH</span>₄<span>&nbsp;uptake was invariant in both campaigns (</span><i>p</i><span>&nbsp;&gt; 0.05). Instead, sampling day and between–plot variability explained soil CH</span>₄<span>&nbsp;dynamics much more than treatment contrasts. Importantly, CH</span>₄<span>&nbsp;uptake was consistently coupled to CO</span>₂<span>&nbsp;efflux, suggesting tight linkages between methanotrophic and heterotrophic activities. Between treatments, CH</span>₄<span>&nbsp;and CO</span>₂<span>&nbsp;responses to soil temperature variation were less sensitive in warmed plots, which may suggest weak metabolic upregulation under elevated temperatures. Together, these findings indicate that lowland tropical soils remain CH</span>₄<span>&nbsp;sink even under warming and years after hurricane disturbance, with CH</span>₄<span>&nbsp;dynamics driven more by spatial and temporal variability than experimental warming. Long–term, high–resolution monitoring integrating soil biogeochemistry and microbial processes will be critical to determine whether the observed net CH</span>₄<span>&nbsp;uptake signal represents a sustainable or transient response under continued warming and disturbance.</span></p> application/pdf 10.1016/j.agrformet.2026.111225 en Elsevier Lowland tropical forests remain a methane sink under warming and long-term hurricane disturbance recovery article