Project Details
Projekt
Coordination Funds
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Nina Farwig
Subject Area
Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
Term
since 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 386807763
Climate and land-use change modify and reorganize biodiversity with feedback effects to the atmosphere. Understanding and projecting the consequences of biodiversity change for ecosystem functioning of natural and replacement ecosystems is challenging in biodiversity hotspots. To address this challenge RESPECT integrates a trait-based approach (Response-Effect-Framework, REF) and land surface models (LSM) to project ecosystem resistance to environmental change. We established extensive research infrastructure and a joint core plot system in the tropical mountain rainforest (MRF), tropical dry forest (MDF) and their replacement systems. We have measured hydro-climatological dynamics and multiple ecosystem properties as well as collected trait and community data that have been used within an expanded REF approach highlighting species richness as main driver of ecosystem functioning across the gradient. We substantially developed and tested a biodiversity-informed LSM by implementing leaf traits and biotic processes (herbivory, mycorrhiza-mediated nutrient uptake). Moreover, we generated area-wide remote sensing and model products for our target functions (TFs, biomass production, water fluxes) and developed an approach to translate our climate-change optimized land-use portfolios into spatially explicit scenarios. Based on novel insights and developments, we restructure RESPECT into four syntheses projects that consolidate expertise, data and results to address our central hypotheses on ecosystem resistance to environmental change that go beyond the achievements of the previous phases. We will (Syn-A1) use climate, flux and sensing data as well as climate change and optimized land-use scenarios for modelling ecosystem resistance, (Syn-A2) integrate further abiotic and trait data into the biodiversity-informed LSM for area-wide scenario analyses of ecosystem resistance to environmental change, (Syn-B1) analyse the effects of land-use, hydroclimate and soil properties on tree growth and forest dynamics for improving predictions to environmental change, and (Syn-B2) quantify community-level trait variation of plants and animals and their associated ecosystem functions across environmental gradients using REF for assessing ecosystem resistance to environmental change. The four synthesis projects are closely linked, synergistically using the extended data to understand the relationships between abiotic drivers, functional diversity, biotic processes and the two TFs across ecosystems, to project how tropical ecosystems will respond to environmental change and to develop options for sustainable ecosystem management.
DFG Programme
Research Units
