Project description
Helping trees adapt to a drier, hotter world
Soaking up huge amounts of carbon and helping to regulate the water cycle, Europe’s forests play a key role in fighting climate change. But trees are under pressure. More frequent droughts and heatwaves mean that forests are in danger. The ERC-funded STEMCELL project aims to find a solution. It is digging into a little-known process happening inside tree trunks: how water pressure within cells (turgor) drives wood growth. Through lab experiments, fieldwork, and high-tech modelling, the project aims to understand how water stress impacts both wood formation and carbon storage. The findings could lead to more accurate predictions of forest growth and offer valuable insights for managing forests sustainably.
Objective
Trees play a key role in regulating the global terrestrial water and carbon cycles by controlling water loss through leaves and directing carbon into stems to form wood. In doing so, forests capture substantial amounts of anthropogenic carbon, a crucial process shaping international climate mitigation policies. However, increasing atmospheric and soil water deficits have raised global concerns about the resilience of wood formation in European forests. Predicting how environmental changes will affect wood formation and related ecosystem services remains difficult due to unclear underlying mechanisms. Recent studies identify turgor as a critical link between tree water-use strategies and wood growth, providing new insights into tree responses to water stress. Before application, this concept must be tested, validated, and integrated into forest growth and carbon models.
STEMCELL aims to uncover the relationship between whole-tree water use and wood cell formation in mature trees, using turgor-driven growth models to predict the future of wood formation and carbon allocation in forests facing drier conditions. STEMCELL will integrate experimental, observational, and modelling approaches. Controlled experiments on juvenile trees will be scaled up to mature trees at unique whole-ecosystem rainfall exclusion experiments, carefully monitoring wood formation. These experiments will drive the development of a new numeric model simulating wood formation responses to drought, validated using one of Europe’s largest databases of tree growth, wood structure, and water use.
Through the outlined work, STEMCELL will build a solid physiological and mechanistic foundation for predicting the effects of climate change on wood formation and the global carbon cycle. Given the ecological and economic importance of forest ecosystems, the project's outcomes will be critical for guiding science-based forest management and conservation efforts aimed at strengthening ecosystem resilience.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences databases
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture horticulture arboriculture
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries forestry
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
80333 Muenchen
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.