Collaborative research: Remote sensing of foliar chemistry to reconstruct the genealogy of canopy trees in a Neotropical rain forest.

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This project will investigate whether variation in leaf chemistry between trees in different locations in a tropical forest is determined by who their parent trees were or by differences in local environmental conditions. Individual trees of the same species in the tropical rain forest on Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama, differ in the chemical composition of their leaves as well as in their DNA. This project aims to develop new techniques that use this variation to map the genealogy of the trees in a forest from the air. Researchers will first directly determine which trees in each of three canopy species are descended from which others for a number of trees by collecting information on the DNA of each species. Next, differences in DNA will be related to seven chemical properties of the leaves that can be detected from high-resolution observations by an imaging spectrometer (the Carnegie AToMS system) designed to acquire measurements of biological diversity and foliar chemistry in species-rich, tropical rain forests. Finally, aerial images of these chemical properties of individual trees of the species over a wider area will be used to detect genetic lineages of trees without having to collect samples directly. In addition to addressing the ?nature vs. nurture? question, the project will seek to provide a new tool for using remote sensing to identify the genetic lineages of the trees in a forest, a large-scale level of genetic detail rarely achieved to date.The project contributes to the development of infrastructure for research and education by improving capacity for understanding biological diversity throughout large landscapes using advanced airborne remote sensing. Exposure to these technologies will help to prepare future generations of scholars for careers in science and natural resource management.