Biodiversity and Ecosystem Processes in Human-Modified Tropical Forests

人工改造热带森林的生物多样性和生态系统过程

• 批准号: NE/K016377/1
• 负责人: David Coomes
• 金额: $ 67.22万
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2013 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FK016377%2F1
• 关键词: Biodiversity; Ecosystem; Processes; Human; Modified

Anthropogenic disturbance and land-use change in the tropics is leading to irrevocable changes in biodiversity and substantial shifts in ecosystem biogeochemistry. Yet, we still have a poor understanding of how human-driven changes in biodiversity feed back to alter biogeochemical processes. This knowledge gap substantially restricts our ability to model and predict the response of tropical ecosystems to current and future environmental change. There are a number of critical challenges to our understanding of how changes in biodiversity may alter ecosystem processes in the tropics; namely: (i) how the high taxonomic diversity of the tropics is linked to ecosystem functioning, (ii) how changes in the interactions among trophic levels and taxonomic groups following disturbance impacts upon functional diversity and biogeochemistry, and (iii) how plot-level measurements can be used to scale to whole landscapes. We have formed a consortium to address these critical challenges to launch a large-scale, replicated, and fully integrated study that brings together a multi-disciplinary team with the skills and expertise to study the necessary taxonomic and trophic groups, different biogeochemical processes, and the complex interactions amongst them.To understand and quantify the effects of land-use change on the activity of focal biodiversity groups and how this impacts biogeochemistry, we will: (i) analyse pre-existing data on distributions of focal biodiversity groups; (ii) sample the landscape-scale treatments at the Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems (SAFE) Project site (treatments include forest degradation, fragmentation, oil palm conversion) and key auxiliary sites (Maliau Basin - old growth on infertile soils, Lambir Hills - old growth on fertile soils, Sabah Biodiversity Experiment - rehabilitated forest, INFAPRO-FACE - rehabilitated forest); and (iii) implement new experiments that manipulate key components of biodiversity and pathways of belowground carbon flux. The manipulations will focus on trees and lianas, mycorrhizal fungi, termites and ants, because these organisms are the likely agents of change for biogeochemical cycling in human-modified tropical forests. We will use a combination of cutting-edge techniques to test how these target groups of organisms interact each other to affect biogeochemical cycling. We will additionally collate and analyse archived data on other taxa, including vertebrates of conservation concern. The key unifying concept is the recognition that so-called 'functional traits' play a key role in linking taxonomic diversity to ecosystem function. We will focus on identifying key functional traits associated with plants, and how they vary in abundance along the disturbance gradient at SAFE. In particular, we propose that leaf functional traits (e.g. physical and chemical recalcitrance, nitrogen content, etc.) play a pivotal role in determining key ecosystem processes and also strongly influence atmospheric composition. Critically, cutting-edge airborne remote sensing techniques suggest it is possible to map leaf functional traits, chemistry and physiology at landscape-scales, and so we will use these novel airborne methods to quantify landscape-scale patterns of forest degradation, canopy structure, biogeochemical cycling and tree distributions. Process-based mathematical models will then be linked to the remote sensing imagery and ground-based measurements of functional diversity and biogeochemical cycling to upscale our findings over disturbance gradients.

热带地区的人为干扰和土地利用变化正在导致生物多样性发生不可逆转的变化以及生态系统生物地球化学的重大变化。然而，我们对人类驱动的生物多样性变化如何反馈以改变生物地球化学过程仍然知之甚少。这种知识差距极大地限制了我们模拟和预测热带生态系统对当前和未来环境变化的响应的能力。我们对生物多样性的变化如何改变热带生态系统过程的理解面临着许多关键挑战；即：（i）热带地区的高度分类多样性如何与生态系统功能联系起来，（ii）干扰后营养级和分类群之间相互作用的变化如何影响功能多样性和生物地球化学，以及（iii）如何使用地块级测量来扩展到整个景观。我们成立了一个联盟来应对这些关键挑战，发起一项大规模、可复制和完全综合的研究，汇集了一支具有技能和专业知识的多学科团队，研究必要的分类和营养群体、不同的生物地球化学过程以及它们之间的复杂相互作用。为了了解和量化土地利用变化对重点生物多样性群体活动的影响以及这如何影响生物地球化学，我们 将： (i) 分析关于生物多样性重点群体分布的现有数据； (ii) 对改变森林生态系统稳定性 (SAFE) 项目地点的景观规模处理进行抽样（处理措施包括森林退化、破碎化、油棕转化）和主要辅助地点（马廖盆地 - 贫瘠土壤上的老生长物、兰比尔山 - 肥沃土壤上的老生长物、沙巴生物多样性实验 - 恢复森林、INFAPRO-FACE - 恢复） 森林）; (iii) 实施新的实验来操纵生物多样性的关键组成部分和地下碳通量的途径。这些操作将集中在树木和藤本植物、菌根真菌、白蚁和蚂蚁上，因为这些生物体可能是人类改造的热带森林中生物地球化学循环变化的推动者。我们将结合使用尖端技术来测试这些目标生物体群体如何相互作用以影响生物地球化学循环。我们还将整理和分析其他类群的存档数据，包括受保护的脊椎动物。关键的统一概念是认识到所谓的“功能特征”在将分类多样性与生态系统功能联系起来方面发挥着关键作用。我们将重点识别与植物相关的关键功能性状，以及它们在 SAFE 中如何沿着干扰梯度变化。特别是，我们提出叶子功能性状（例如物理和化学不顺性、氮含量等）在确定关键生态系统过程中发挥着关键作用，并且也强烈影响大气组成。至关重要的是，尖端的机载遥感技术表明可以在景观尺度上绘制叶子功能特征、化学和生理学，因此我们将使用这些新颖的机载方法来量化森林退化、冠层结构、生物地球化学循环和树木分布的景观尺度模式。然后，基于过程的数学模型将与遥感图像以及功能多样性和生物地球化学循环的地面测量相联系，以升级我们在干扰梯度上的发现。

项目成果

Mapped aboveground carbon stocks to advance forest conservation and recovery in Malaysian Borneo

• DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2017.10.020
• 发表时间: 2018-01-01
• 期刊: BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION
• 影响因子: 5.9
• 作者: Asner, Gregory P.;Brodrick, Philip G.;Coomes, David A.
• 通讯作者: Coomes, David A.

Reconciling the contribution of environmental and stochastic structuring of tropical forest diversity through the lens of imaging spectroscopy.

通过成像光谱学的视角协调热带森林多样性的环境和随机结构的贡献。

• DOI: 10.1111/ele.13357
• 发表时间: 2019
• 期刊: Ecology letters
• 影响因子: 8.8
• 作者: Bongalov B

iDirac: a field-portable instrument for long-term autonomous measurements of isoprene and selected VOCs

• DOI: 10.5194/amt-13-821-2020
• 发表时间: 2020-02
• 期刊: Atmospheric Measurement Techniques
• 影响因子: 3.8
• 作者: C. Bolas;V. Ferracci;A. Robinson;M. I. Mead;M. Nadzir;J. Pyle;Roderic L. Jones;N. Harris

Accurate delineation of individual tree crowns in tropical forests from aerial RGB imagery using Mask R-CNN

使用 Mask R-CNN 从航空 RGB 图像准确描绘热带森林中的单个树冠

• DOI: 10.1101/2022.07.10.499480
• 发表时间: 2022
• 作者: Ball J

Using repeat airborne LiDAR to map the growth of individual oil palms in Malaysian Borneo during the 2015-16 El Niño

使用重复机载激光雷达绘制 2015-16 厄尔尼诺现象期间马来西亚婆罗洲各个油棕的生长情况

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jag.2022.103117
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation
• 影响因子: 7.5
• 作者: Beese L