Model-guided assessment of forest resilience and vulnerability to climate change
This project is part of the doctoral training unit FORFUS: Forest function under stress
Forest resilience is defined as the ability of the ecosystem to recover from perturbations that eventually lead the system to a different state. By this definition, vulnerability quantifies the degree of the forest ecosystem response to such external perturbations. Climate and human-induced disturbances may alter forest ecosystem dynamics, possibly modifying their resilience to rapidly changing conditions. Previous studies based on the temporal analysis of remote sensing indices suggest a change in the resilience of forest ecosystems, with a declining trend for temperate forests. However, it is still unclear how such changing resilience emerges from the altered short-term physiological responses of tree species and modified long-term dynamics of the whole ecosystem.
The objectives of FORFUS-RT4.1 are to implement a vegetation demography model, formulating forest processes based on a classification of similarly-sized individuals (i.e. cohorts) across a network of monitored forest sites in Europe to: (a) explain ecosystem response to drought and heatwave events based on diversity in plant hydraulic traits and competition amongst different plant water use strategies; (b) assess how alternative CO2 concentration trajectories will result in altered ecosystem dynamics and resilience; and (c) evaluate the ecosystem resilience simulated by the numerical model with emerging signals extracted from multi-spectral remote sensing products.
The scientific knowledge generated in this project will help identify tree species and forest types with improved chances of persistence under future climates in Europe. The understanding and methods developed as part of the project are expected to be useful for similar studies at different sites around the world, in order to strengthen our ability to understand, anticipate and ultimately predict the resilience and vulnerability of forest ecosystems.
