Abstract
The challenge- Tropical forests are global hotspots of biodiversity, play key roles in biophysical processes of planetary relevance (e.g. carbon and water cycles) and deliver crucial ecosystem services (e.g. climate change mitigation, forest products, spiritual recreation) but these are threatened by deforestation and global warming. We focus on forests that regrow after forest removal for agriculture (“secondary forests”-SF), because they cover large areas, have potential to recover biodiversity, function as sink of atmospheric carbon, and are the basis for ecosystem restoration. A key challenge is to understand and quantify SF productivity and resilience to climatic stresses: to what extent dry and wet tropical SF are able to recover from severe droughts? Aims- This study will understand and quantify how forest structural and functional attributes determine the resilience of dry and wet tropical SF to severe droughts linked to El Niño-related events. Approach- We use two of the worldwide longest monitoring systems studying secondary forest dynamics (each with >20 plots with 0-70yrs fallow age and 9-20yrs of data) to evaluate SF responses to climatic variability on a yearly basis. We quantify the relative contribution of structural and functional traits of tree communities to forest resilience to severe droughts in wet and dry tropical localities. Impact- We will unravel underlying mechanisms driving tropical forest resilience to severe droughts, exploring field data collected over unprecedented temporal scales. The results will allow making evidence-based decisions for managing secondary succession as a natural engine for forest restoration, and for designing effective forest restoration strategies.
Netherlands