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Content archived on 2024-05-27

INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE VARIABILITY ON THE DYNAMICS AND STRUCTURE OF OLD-GROWTH TEMPERATE RAINFORESTS

Objective

Many temperate forests are considered to be in an equilibrium state to which they return after a disturbance. Interactions between tree functional traits and disturbances in shaping forest composition and structure have mainly focused on spatially discrete disturbances, e.g. gaps, fire. Other disturbances occurring at relatively larger spatial scale, e.g. drought, might have diffuse but long lasting effects so that current forest structure reflects legacies from past ecological and climatic conditions. This project will examine relationships between climate and forest structure and composition through an integrated study combining multi-century climate reconstructions, forest disturbance histories, and cutting-edge forest succession models along environmental gradients in temperate rainforests. This strategy will be applied to the temperate rainforests of northeastern Turkey which are some of the few remnants of old growth forests in Western Eurasia and are seriously endangered by global change and anthropogenic disturbances. Understanding within-community variation in the species responses to climate and examining historical climate at a temporal scale relevant to tree recruitment and canopy dieback are essential steps to analyze how forests will respond to global change. The combination of paleoecological and modelling approaches will allow investigating multiple climate effects on the ecology of these forests under changing environmental conditions. A deeper understanding of ecological processes under a combination of complex disturbances will provide critical and long-term perspectives on the role of climate variability in causing vegetation changes in these ecosystems where global change is expected to lead to more frequent and intense droughts.

Call for proposal

FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF
See other projects for this call

Coordinator

EIDGENOESSISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE ZUERICH
EU contribution
€ 192 622,20
Address
Raemistrasse 101
8092 Zuerich
Switzerland

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Region
Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera Zürich Zürich
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Administrative Contact
Harald Bugmann (Prof.)
Links
Total cost
No data