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中心。森林在减轻气候变化，吸收大约1/3的人为排放量中起着基本作用，但也是陆地生物多样性的80％的家园。现代森林管理主要是针对保护和增加碳储备以减轻气候变化的，通常假设生物多样性将同时保护为共同利益。尽管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与碳动态之间的这种关系如何以及为什么在不同的空间尺度和森林使用中发生变化。就像生物多样性和碳动力学可能在整个空间之间相关的方式一样，它们也可能随着时间的推移而相关，一个变量中的干扰有可能损害另一个变量。例如，过度狩猎会导致全球森林中大型脊椎动物的丧失，因为这些脊椎动物对于肉类，贸易和文化而言最有价值。因此，负责分散大种子的物种将从生态系统中去除，从而减少大种子树的分散和再生，这些树木往往具有较高的碳库存。再生动力学的这种改变会导致森林组成的转变，从而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，因此碳储存量较低。该项目将对分类单元生物多样性与碳库存和固存能力之间的多向关系产生更深入的了解（图1）。此外，已经提出脊椎动物和树木多样性是总栖息地生物多样性的替代物不足，因此我将研究各种分类单元，从而更全面地了解森林生物多样性和碳相互作用。对该项目的碳动态保护与生物多样性之间的共同利益的理解将有助于根据英国净零计划为保护策略提供信息。