Dry forest biomes in Brazil: biodiversity and ecosystem services

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This proposal aims to meet the urgent need to extend monitoring of biodiversity, carbon stock, carbon balance, tree growth, and tree mortality in Latin America beyond rain forests and into dry biomes. Most concerns about biodiversity and ecosystem function in the tropics focus on rain forests, but this neglects the fact that 50% of the lowland tropics globally is climatically seasonal, with a natural vegetation of dry forest or savanna. In South America in particular, the rain forests of Amazonia monopolise research and conservation, but dry forests and woody savannas can house equal numbers of plant species, many of which are endemic. We need to understand far better how these dry biomes contribute to global biogeochemical cycles and how their unique species react to environmental changes. In particular, little is known about how dry forests will respond to climate change.Initiatives such as RAINFOR have been highly successful in connecting a large network of scientists who have established permanent inventory plots in Neotropical rain forests. Collectively, hundreds of plots distributed across Amazonia have been central to describing patterns of biodiversity across the basin, and how the forest participates in global biogeochemical cycles. No corresponding network connecting a large number of plots over broad geographic scales exists in Brazil or more widely in the Neotropics for dry biomes. This project aims to start a process of connecting researchers who have established dozens of inventory plots in these biomes.We propose to:1. Re-census, using methodologies agreed by the RAINFOR network, 10 permanent 0.2Ha plots in tropical dry forest in Rio de Janeiro state for carbon stock, above ground biomass (C) gain, tree growth, tree mortality, and biodiversity. 2. Contribute data for five existing 1 Ha plots in dry forests and neighbouring forest biomes in Rio de Janeiro state and c. 100 dry forest plots from elsewhere in Brazil to the ForestPlots.net database, thereby making it available to the global research community. We will prioritise dry forests, but we also have plot-based data from the Mata Atlântica rain forests (not covered by RAINFOR), and from the tree-savanna biome of the cerrado in Central Brazil, and we hope additionally to start a process of adding this information to ForestPlots.net. 3. Convene a workshop to bring together key workers from RJ and across Brazil who have established inventory plots in dry biomes to encourage them to join a new network that can take forward dry forest monitoring at a continental scale. This workshop will be held in the Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense (UENF), Campos dos Goytacazes, RJ, Brazil. This workshop will be preceded by a two day training course in phylogenetics and phylogenetic diversity delivered by Dexter and Pennington at the Escola de Botânica in Rio, and will be followed a course for the same student pool on ecological niche modelling taught by Antje Ahrends (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh). In addition, training will be provided to Brazilian co-Is in the UK to build capacity to make some simple growth, leaf area and respiration measurements, led by Meir and Grace, with plot curation and analysis training using the ForestPlots.net facility, led by Gabriela Lopez in Leeds.4. Compare phylogenetic diversity between dry forests and neighbouring rain forests in RJ to determine if these dry forests house unique lineage diversity, thereby adding a further argument for their conservation (7). Additionally, we will examine the impact of landscape history and fragmentation on phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic community structure in these dry forests. 5. We will develop a database of key functional traits, environmental parameters and principal carbon stocks and fluxes, and of the structure, floristics and phylogeny of Atlantic tropical semi-deciduous seasonal forest.