Biodiversity in transformed forest landscapes

景观的人为和环境变化以复杂的方式影响生物多样性。物种对这些转变的反应随生命史和扩散特征、生态相互作用和栖息地专业化程度而变化。随着大量研究表明生物多样性对生态系统功能的积极作用，了解不同尺度生物多样性格局与景观变化过程之间的关系是保护生态系统功能的根本挑战。由于气候变化和人类压力的增加，世界各地的许多森林生态系统正在发生变化，这使得森林成为研究生物多样性与景观变化之间关系的有趣模型系统。在农业和城市化地区，森林逐渐变得更加破碎，因此，森林利用强度使剩余的碎片进一步退化。在广阔的森林景观中，管理使大面积森林的组成和年龄结构同质化，而伐木则一再使领土支离破碎。我的研究计划将确定森林景观的变化如何在不同的空间、时间和组织尺度上与生态过程相互作用，从而影响其生物多样性和功能。特别是，该计划将理清不同景观变化对森林生物多样性的影响：栖息地丧失、栖息地破碎化和森林覆盖组成的变化。它还将评估森林管理引起的生物多样性变化如何反过来影响森林产生的生态系统服务。此外，它将产生关于景观异质性与当地和区域森林群落营养结构之间关系的新知识，以及生物相互作用在改变生境中形成物种分布和动态的重要性。本研究将结合元群落和景观生态学的最新进展，开发基于过程的模型来模拟森林动态和景观变化，并开发分析工具来量化时空生物多样性格局。该项目还将有助于弥合理论生态学的进步与森林管理的紧迫挑战之间的差距。所发展的知识和方法将对促进在森林管理中纳入多尺度观点作出具体贡献。参加本研究项目的学生将获得较强的定量和建模技能，并对管理与环境的相互作用有新的看法，从而成为下一代森林生态学家。

Anthropogenic and environmental transformations of landscapes impact biodiversity in complex ways. How species respond to these transformations varies with life-history and dispersal traits, ecological interactions, and degree of habitat specialization. As ample studies are demonstrating the positive effect of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning, understanding the relationship between biodiversity patterns at different scales and the processes of landscape change constitutes a fundamental challenge for preserving the functioning of ecosystems. Many forest ecosystems around the world are being transformed by changing climate and increased human pressure, making forests interesting model systems to study the relationship between biodiversity and landscape changes. In agricultural and urbanized regions, forests have become gradually more fragmented and as a result, forest-use intensity has further degraded remaining fragments. In vast forested landscapes, management has homogenized the composition and age-structure of forests over large areas, and logging has repeatedly fragmented the territory. My research program will determine how transformations of forest landscapes interact with ecological processes at different spatial, temporal and organization scales to influence their biodiversity and functions. In particular, the proposed program will untangle the consequences on forest biodiversity arising from different landscape transformations: habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, and variation in forest cover composition. It will also assess how changes in biodiversity induced by forest management in turn affect the ecosystem services produced by forests. Moreover, it will generate new knowledge on the relationships between landscape heterogeneity and the trophic structure of local and regional forest communities, and on the importance of biotic interactions in shaping species distributions and dynamics in modified habitats. This research will develop process-based models to simulate forest dynamics and landscape changes, and analysis tools to quantify spatial and temporal biodiversity patterns by combining approaches from recent advances in metacommunity and landscape ecology. This program will also help bridge the gap between advances in theoretical ecology and pressing challenges in forest management. Knowledge and methods developed will make concrete contributions to facilitate the integration of a multi-scale perspective in forest management. Students trained in this research program will acquire strong quantitative and modeling skills and gain a fresh perspective on management-environment interactions so as to become the next generation of forest ecologists.