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Glacial Legacy on the establishment of evergreen vs. summergreen boreal forests

Objective

Boreal forests provide critical ecosystem services to humanity, including timber supplies, cli-mate-regulation, and permafrost-stabilization. However, these forests differ markedly between Asia, which is dominated by summergreen larch forests, and North America, where boreal for-ests are exclusively evergreen. The basic mechanisms controlling the distributions of these bo-real biomes remain poorly understood.
My new hypothesis is that summergreen and evergreen needle-leaf forests represent alterna-tive quasi-stable states that occur today under similar climatic conditions, but were triggered by different environmental conditions and gene pools during the Last Glacial.
GlacialLegacy will use coherent empirical and modelling approaches to investigate this hypoth-esis across the entire Northern Hemisphere, also collecting new data from northern Asia, where both forests types occur today.
Work package (WP) A will explore the dependency of post-glacial forest establishment on the glacial climate and genetic characteristics of northern tree refugia. We will use ancient DNA analysis of sediments, complemented by results from pollen data synthesis. For a mechanistic understanding of the empirical evidence obtained, we will simulate post-glacial forest migra-tion using the LAVESI individual-based vegetation model, into which long-term genetic process-es will be incorporated.
WP-B will further refine the LAVESI model using results from vegetation and biophysical field surveys. This will enable us to quantify the vegetation–fire–permafrost–climate feedbacks that are likely to facilitate boreal forest bi-stability.
Such a model configuration is the only way that reliable predictions of the future of boreal for-ests can be made, which will be the objective of WP-C. These predictions will aim to anticipate potentially critical future ecosystem service changes on a continental scale, thus providing the knowledge base required for adaptation strategies to be prepared.

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2017-COG

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Host institution

ALFRED-WEGENER-INSTITUT HELMHOLTZ-ZENTRUM FUR POLAR- UND MEERESFORSCHUNG
Net EU contribution

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.

€ 1 979 052,00
Address
AM HANDELSHAFEN 12
27570 Bremerhaven
Germany

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Region
Bremen Bremen Bremerhaven, Kreisfreie Stadt
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost

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.

€ 1 979 052,50

Beneficiaries (1)

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