Exploring conservation co-benefits to biodiversity and carbon storage and sink capacity across forests to improve practice.

探索森林对生物多样性和碳储存和汇能力的保护协同效益，以改进实践。

• 批准号: 2874924
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2874924
• 关键词: Exploring; conservation; co; benefits; biodiversity

Conservation of global forests is at the centre of the climate and biodiversity crisis prevention efforts. Forests play a fundamental role in mitigating climate change, absorbing around 1/3 of anthropogenic emissions, but are also home to 80% of terrestrial biodiversity. Modern forest management is mainly directed at protecting and increasing carbon stocks to mitigate climate change, often assuming biodiversity will be simultaneously protected as a co-benefit. While there is evidence for a positive relationship between these variables in tropical forests at large scales, recent studies suggest this may not be the case for temperate forests. In order to design future management policies, we need understand how and why this relationship between biodiversity and carbon dynamics may change across different spatial scales and forest uses. In the same way that biodiversity and carbon dynamics may be related across space, they may also be related through time, with disturbances in one variable having the potential to compromise the other. Overhunting, for instance, causes the loss of large vertebrates across forests globally, as these tend to be the most valuable for meat, trade and culture. Thus, species responsible for dispersing large seeds are removed from ecosystems, consequently reducing dispersion and regeneration of large-seeded trees, which tend to have higher carbon stocks. This alteration of regeneration dynamics causes a shift in forest composition, creating communities dominated by wind-dispersed species which typically have a lower wood density, and thus low carbon storage capacity. This project will generate a greater understanding of the multidirectional relationship between taxa biodiversity and carbon stocks and sequestration capacity (Figure 1). In addition, it has been suggested that vertebrate and tree diversity are insufficient surrogates for total habitat biodiversity, therefore I will investigate various taxa, providing a more comprehensive understanding of forest biodiversity and carbon interactions. The understanding of co-benefits between conservation of carbon dynamics and biodiversity from this project will help to inform conservation strategies in line with the UK Net Zero program.

保护全球森林是气候和生物多样性危机预防工作的核心。森林在减缓气候变化方面发挥着重要作用，吸收了约1/3的人为排放，但也是80%的陆地生物多样性的家园。现代森林管理的主要目标是保护和增加碳储量，以减缓气候变化，往往假设生物多样性将同时得到保护，作为一种共同效益。虽然有证据表明，在大规模的热带森林中，这些变量之间存在正相关关系，但最近的研究表明，温带森林的情况可能并非如此。为了设计未来的管理政策，我们需要了解生物多样性和碳动态之间的这种关系如何以及为什么会在不同的空间尺度和森林用途上发生变化。正如生物多样性和碳动态可能在空间上相互关联一样，它们也可能在时间上相互关联，一个变量的扰动有可能损害另一个变量。例如，过度狩猎导致全球森林中大型脊椎动物的损失，因为这些动物往往是最有价值的肉类，贸易和文化。因此，负责传播大种子的物种被从生态系统中清除，从而减少了大种子树木的传播和再生，而这些树木往往具有较高的碳储存。这种更新动态的改变导致森林组成的转变，创造了以风分散物种为主的社区，这些物种通常具有较低的木材密度，因此碳储存能力较低。该项目将使人们更好地了解生物多样性分类群与碳储存和固碳能力之间的多方向关系（图1）。此外，有人建议，脊椎动物和树木的多样性是不足以替代总栖息地的生物多样性，因此我将调查各种类群，提供一个更全面的了解森林生物多样性和碳的相互作用。该项目对碳动力学保护和生物多样性保护之间的共同利益的理解将有助于为符合英国净零计划的保护战略提供信息。