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Tree growth and mortality in the face of climate change: A pantropical journey at the crossroad of trait-based and demographic approaches

Project description

Predicting climate change impacts on the future of tropical forests

Tropical forests provide important ecosystems services for human populations such as carbon storage, climate regulation and a biodiversity reservoir. However, the future of these ecosystem services remains uncertain as global change is rapidly altering tropical forests in terms of their composition, dynamics and functions. To improve predictions of the future of tropical forests with changing abiotic and biotic conditions, we need to clarify the mechanisms by which the phenotype of tropical trees can capture differences in individual performance along environmental gradients. Using state-of-the-art modelling approaches with long-term demographic surveys and extensive trait data for over 700 tropical tree species across four continents, the EU-funded TropDemTrait project aims to provide a better mechanistic understanding of tropical forest dynamics in response to abiotic and biotic drivers at a pantropical scale.

Objective

Tropical forests represent key terrestrial ecosystems for carbon stocks and biodiversity. The dynamics of carbon storage in forests are primarily driven by tree performance in terms of mortality and growth. But climate change is rapidly altering tree performance, with important consequences for carbon cycle, climate regulation and biodiversity. Yet, we are still lacking accurate predictions of the response of tropical forest in terms of their composition, dynamics and functions to altered climate. While demographic approaches have traditionally focused on how individual performance vary with ontogeny or size, trait-based approaches have often focused on how morphological or physiological properties of individuals (traits) change with abiotic and biotic factors and links to performance. Though the link between traits and performance influences population dynamics and subsequent community structure and ecosystem functions, we still understand very little about the drivers shaping the trait-performance relationship. With tropical forests facing rapidly changing abiotic and biotic conditions with global changes, we need a better mechanistic understanding of tropical tree growth and mortality response to the interplay of traits with abiotic and biotic factors. The proposed project will yield a major contribution to this goal by using state-of-the-art, powerful modelling approaches with unprecedented demographic data spanning over 40 years and leaf and wood economics and hydraulics traits of over 700 tropical tree species distributed in 74 forest plots along broad soil and climatic gradients on four continents. Our results will bring a mechanistic understanding of how the interplay of species traits, tree size, climate, soil, and biotic interactions impact tree growth and mortality rates in tropical forests, while disentangling region-specific from pantropical effects.

Coordinator

INSTITUT DE RECHERCHE POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT
Net EU contribution
€ 196 707,84
Address
Boulevard de dunkerque 44 cs 90009
13572 Marseille
France

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Region
Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Bouches-du-Rhône
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost
€ 196 707,84