In June and October 2021, two 1-month campaigns were organized at Yangambi in DR. Congo to select and instrumentalize 25 permanent trees with climbing ropes, dendrometers and sapflow sensors, to train local climbers, technicians and students and to perform leaf traits and leaf gas exchange measurements. This resulted in the first dataset with concomitant observations of plant traits (e.g. nutrients, structure), leaf gas exchange measurements (e.g. photosynthesis, transpiration), tree growth (e.g. dendrometers), sapflow and ecosystem level exchanges of carbon and water (e.g. flux tower) for two seasons (dry/wet) in a tropical rainforest in Africa. During the second campaign we also quantified the temperature response of photosynthesis for 5 dominants species representative of the different strategies (e.g. light tolerant, etc.) at site. We identified clear differences in the temperature response of species, suggesting potential shifts in forest composition with climate warming.
We evaluated the performances of current state-of-the art Terrestrial Biosphere Models in reproducing carbon stocks and fluxes of pantropical forests. None of the models are able to capture the spatial and temporal variability of carbon stocks. This work led a to clear review of the known sources of heterogeneity in tropical forests and what are the priorities to improve TBMs.
Current results are in preparation for publication and dissemination, and have only been disseminated so far between partner institutes.
Most analyses, model developments and simulations based on fieldwork data (delayed by COVID19) are still ongoing.