Impacts of environmental change on climate and ecosystem in southern Ecuador

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The main aim of the proposal at hand is (i) to unveil the impacts of climate and land use change on the regional climate of the ecosystem platform, (ii) to examine effects of climate change on biodiversity for selected organismic groups by testing two different approaches, (iii) to investigate atmospheric nutrient deposition from remote sources in the framework of the NUMEX experiment as well as its future development under environmental change, and (iv) to support the research unit by providing data on vegetation activity based on remotely sensed data. (i) encompasses an in-depth analysis of weather situations with an anomalous zonal overturning Walker circulation (El Niño/La Niña events) by means of a comprehensive data set gathered during previous studies. Additionally, a coupled model suite of a regional climate (WRF) and a SVAT model (CLM) will be used to conduct simulation runs for the joint scenarios of land use and global climate change. (ii) Downscaled temperature data for the climate change scenarios will be used to test effects on biodiversity with the species-area approach and the energetic-equivalence rule for moths, soil mites and trees. (iii) The continuous observation of fog- and rain-water deposition, back-trajectory modelling encompassing remotely sensed products of atmospheric chemistry and future climate/emission scenario runs are applied to disentangle present-day and future atmospheric fertilization of the mountain forest and its remote sources. (iv) Vegetation products (NDVI, LAI, GPP) of different sensors will be made available to the research unit.