FOR 1246: Kilimanjaro Ecosystems under Global Change: Linking Biodiversity, Biotic Interactions and Biogeochemical Ecosystem Processes

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The combined impacts of global warming, conversion of natural to human-modified habitats and land use intensification are threatening biodiversity and ecosystem processes maintained by tropical mountain ecosystems. Thus, important ecosystem services such as provision of water, food and biomass, erosion control, carbon and nutrient storage, climate regulation, decomposition, pollination, seed dispersal, and top-down control of herbivores can be disrupted. Ecosystem services, particularly driven by biogeochemical and biotic ecosystem processes, are intimately connected with biological diversity at genetic, species and community levels, but little is known about the functional relationships and feedback loops between these levels and the actual mechanisms linking biodiversity to the resilience or adaptive change of ecosystems. Our project has aimed at the parallel assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem processes along elevational gradients in both natural and human-disturbed ecosystems at Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. During the first two phases, we established an extensive research infrastructure and a joint study design representing the 13 major natural, disturbed or anthropogenic land cover types, each with five replicated plots, along an elevational range of nearly 3700 m from tropical savannas up to afroalpine vegetation. Eco-climatological dynamics and multiple ecosystem properties such as physico-chemical and biological soil properties and nutrient availability, water, carbon and nitrogen turnover and fluxes, trace gas emissions, as well as plant and root biomass have been measured. In the same ecosystems, diversity of plants, birds, bats, soil arthropods, selected insect taxa and related biotic interactions, i.e., decomposition, pollination, seed dispersal, herbivory, and predation have been quantified. During the third and final phase we will restructure the research unit into six synthesis projects that will bring together expertise, data and results from the previous seven subprojects and the former project Z2 to address overarching, interdisciplinary questions and hypotheses. We will (1) link remote sensing information with biodiversity and biotic and biogeochemical processes and ecosystem functions, (2) assess the functional relationships between land-use, climate, soil properties and biogeochemical cycles, (3) analyse the effects of land-use and climate on plant communities and plant-related ecosystem functions, (4) reveal the mechanistic links between biodiversity, mutualistic plant-animal interaction networks and ecosystem functions, (5) address the importance of biodiversity for ecosystem functioning and stability under climate and land-use change, and (6) synthesize the available information on the conservation and sustainable use of species, biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services.