Forest dynamics, landslide dynamics, and their interactions - a process-based landscape modelling approach for a mountain rain forest in South Ecuador

据推测，滑坡等自然干扰对厄瓜多尔南部热带山区森林的生物多样性有重要影响。因此，在森林动力学的背景下理解山体滑坡是理解这一巨大多样性生态系统的先决条件。我们的项目旨在分析和预测森林景观的时空动态，包括滑坡及其非生物和生物控制。因此，我们开发了基于过程的森林模型，并将其与基于区域化地形属性、土壤特性和水文因子的不同复杂性的滑坡模型相耦合。由此产生的空间上明确的，动态的综合景观模型，使我们能够了解滑坡和景观动态的主要驱动因素的相互作用，并预测森林的时空发展沿着其对栖息地动态，生物多样性，风险评估和森林管理的影响。我们将能够估计不同森林类型和整个研究区域的碳平衡。碳通量将强烈依赖于森林的演替状态和干扰历史。

It has been hypothesized that natural disturbances such as landslides have an important effect on biodiversity in the tropical mountain forests of Southern Ecuador. Thus, understanding landslides in the context of forest dynamics is a precondition for understanding this megadiverse ecosystem. Our project aims at analysing and predicting the spatiotemporal dynamics of forest landscapes including landslides and their abiotic and biotic controls. Therefore, we develop process-based forest models and couple them with landslide models of different complexity based on regionalized terrain attributes, soil properties and hydrological factors. The resulting spatially explicit, dynamic integrated landscape model allows us to understand the interplay of the main drivers of landslides and landscape dynamics, and to predict the spatiotemporal development of forests along with their implications on habitat dynamics, biodiversity, risk assessment and forest management. We will be able to estimate carbon balances for the different forest types and the whole research area. The carbon fluxes will strongly depend on the successional state of forests and their disturbance history.