Functional ecology and sustainable management of the Munessa forest, Ethiopia - Central project
Final Report Abstract
Sustainable forestry is one of the key issues that must be addressed to improve the livelyhood of the Ethiopian people and to conserve the natural forest remnants. Five groups are jointly investigating the Munessa forest Ethiopia, to provide a scientific basis for that. Detailed objectives of the project package PAK 188 are (i) to study ecophysiological traits (water utilisation, carbon cycling) of important functional types at the individual tree level, (ii) to assess ecosystem attributes with respect to process regulation and stability at the stand level, and (iii) to identify a sustainable management and conservation system of the forest resources. The task of the central project is to provide a framework that enables the individual project to perform their studies and to integrate the individual results obtained into a synthesis. With this background, the central project is responsible for management of the central data service, and the organization of the data synthesis and integrative utilisation. The database serves as a data warehouse for the project members. Based on the user requirements and considering the reduced funding for the central data service an effective client server architecture is developed. Users have access to the database based on a client software to be installed in the researcher computer and web-based version of the data base for data viewing and data download. The database presently contains 224 parameters with thousands of observations and data views representing the aggregation of data. Non parametric information (documents, maps, images) are more efficiently stored on a file server linked to the database. The client software is distributed to the project members. It consists of a user dialog for the upload, download and analysis of data, documents and maps. The project members are also asked to sign a data use agreement that defines the duties of project members, the use of project data, and the enforcement in case of serious violation of obligations under agreement. Due to delay of the individual projects, the data synthesis could be performed only for parts of the whole project. One important result is, e.g., that the different temporal variation in physiological performance of trees with different life strategies is directly related to processes of carbon allocation to the soils and back to the atmosphere. Anthropogenic or climatic induced changes will have an impact on the distribution of different functional types of trees with consequences for the carbon, water, and nutrient fluxes for the whole forest. In the silvicultural plots it is intriguing that already one year after the measure the promoted trees show a larger radial increment than the controls. Further, silviculture management strongly affects the understorey vegetation with consequences for carbon and nutrient cycling.
Publications
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2010. Seasonal growth dynamics of different treee species and their climatic control in Munessa Forest, Ethiopia. TRACE - Tree Rings in Archaeology, Climatology and Ecology B, 146-150
Bräuning A., Krepkowski J., Gebrekirstos A.
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2010. The Munessa Forest Database
Felbermeier B.
