Uncertainties surrounding vegetation response to increased disturbance rates associated with climate change remains a major global change issue for Amazon forests. Additionally, turnover rates computed as the average of mortality and recruitment rates in the Western Amazon basin are doubled when compared to the Central Amazon, and notable gradients currently exist in specific wood density and aboveground biomass (AGB) between these two regions. This study investigates the extent to which the variation in disturbance regimes contributes to these regional gradients. To address these issues, we evaluated disturbance-recovery processes under two scenarios of increased disturbance rates in a complex Central Amazon forest using first ZELIG-TROP, a dynamic vegetation gap model which we calibrated using long-term inventory data, and second using the Community Land Model (CLM), a global land surface model that is part of the Community Earth System Model (CESM). Upon doubling the mortality rate in the Central Amazon to mirror the natural disturbance regime in the Western Amazon of ∼2% mortality, at steady-state, AGB significantly decreased by 41.9% and there was no significant difference between the modeled AGB of 104 Mg C ha −1 and empirical AGB from the western Amazon datasets of 107 Mg C ha −1 . We confirm that increases in natural disturbance rates in the Central Amazon will result in terrestrial carbon loss associated with higher turnover. However, different processes were responsible for the reductions in AGB between the models and empirical datasets. We observed that with increased turnover, the subsequent decrease in wood density drives the reduction in AGB in empirical datasets. However, decrease in stand basal area was the driver of the drop in AGB in ZELIG-TROP, and decreased leaf area index (LAI) was the driver in CLM. Further comparisons found that stem density, specific wood density, and basal area growth rates differed between the two Amazonian regions. This suggests that: (1) the variability between regions cannot be entirely explained by the variability in disturbance regime, but rather potentially sensitive to intrinsic environmental factors; or (2) the models are not accurately simulating all forest characteristics in response to increased disturbances. Last, to help quantify the impacts of increased disturbances on climate and the earth system, we evaluated the fidelity of tree mortality and disturbance in a global land surface model: CLM. For a 100% increase in annual mortality rate, both ZELIG-TROP and CLM were in close agreement with each other and predicted a net carbon loss of 41.9 and 49.9%, respectively, with an insignificant effect on aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP). Likewise, a 20% increase in mortality every 50 years (i.e. periodic disturbance treatment) resulted in a reciprocal biomass loss of 18.3 and 18.7% in ZELIG-TROP and CLM, respectively.