Diagnosis and decision-making criteria to attenuate the effect of global change on biodiversity in the Congo Basin forests

CoForChange项目将在4年内聚集一个独特的跨学科研究人员和森林工程师团队：(i)来自8个公共和私营机构和4个欧洲国家，（ii）与6个国家和国际机构有关，以解释和预测刚果盆地热带潮湿森林（TMF）可能的命运。这些因其生物多样性和主要生态系统服务而具有世界重要性的森林森林正在经历过去和现在的气候和人为变化的影响。树种如何、为什么以及在哪里能够在这个区域的干旱趋势和资源使用的增加中生存下来，这对欧洲来说是一个具有挑战性的问题。欧洲既是非洲木材的消费者，也是非洲木材的生产者。欧洲主要参与关于生物多样性保护、森林管理和碳储量问题的决策。CoForChange的核心假设是：“在气候和人为变化的驱动下，水和/或光的可用性是形成TMFs特征的主要因素。它们根据物种的耐旱性和光照需求来过滤物种。为了验证这一假设并实现我们的目标，我们将把我们的工作分为五个主题和一个综合工作包，旨在：(1)绘制和表征树木群落和环境因素；(2)绘制土壤水分有效性及其对降雨模式的敏感性；(3)分析过去的植被变化、干扰和环境变化；(4)表征树种的耐旱性、光照需求和相关功能性状；(5)评估树木群落的持续进化；(6)整合结果，为减轻全球变化的影响提供诊断和决策工具。我们的项目将动员来自北方和南方的遥感、人口和社区生态学、功能生态学、水文/气候学、土壤学、古生态学和人类学专家。我们将利用现有数据，特别是广泛的卫星图像库和独特的森林清单数据库，获取沉积物岩心和土壤剖面的新古生态数据，分析新的考古遗址，并对刚果盆地地区的主要树种进行受控干旱和光照实验。我们将把树木群落组成的时空变化、环境因子的时空变化和物种功能特征的信息联系起来，以便为欧洲行政部门、国家森林管理部门、私营公司和非政府组织提供业务工具：(i)确定最古老、适应性较差、进化较快或生物多样性更丰富群落的专题地图；（ii）概述不同气候变化和人为变化情景（社会经济驱动因素）对未来树种分布的可能影响的地图；（iii）重要物种环境要求数据库；及（iv）濒危物种或物种群的鉴定。这些工具将解决决策者在健全的基础上对森林的养护战略和可持续管理（包括木材采伐规则）进行推理的需要，并调整其有关的领土和森林管理政策。

The CoForChange project will gather for 4 years a unique interdisciplinary team of researchers and forest engineers: (i) from 8 public and private institutions and 4 European countries, (ii) associated to 6 national and international institutions, to explain and predict the possible fate of tropical moist forests (TMF) of the Congo Basin. Those TMF, of world importance for their biodiversity and their major ecosystem services, are experiencing past and ongoing effects of climate and anthropogenic changes. How, why and where will tree species survive a drying trend and an increase in resource use in this region is a challenging issue for Europe - both consumer and producer of African timber - , most involved in policy-making on biodiversity conservation, forest management and carbon stocks issues. The core hypothesis of CoForChange is that: 'water and/or light availability, driven by climate and anthropogenic change, are the predominant factors shaping TMFs characteristics. They filter species depending on their drought tolerance and light requirement. To test this hypothesis, and fulfill our objectives, we will organize our work into five thematic and one integrative workpackages aiming at: (1) mapping and characterizing tree communities and environmental factors; (2) mapping soil water availability and its sensitivity to rainfall pattern; (3) Analysing past changes in vegetation, disturbance and environmental changes; (4) Characterising drought tolerance, light requirements and associated functional traits of tree species (5) Evaluating the ongoing evolution of tree communities and (6) integrating results to provide diagnostic and decision-making tools to attenuate the effects of global change. Our project will mobilize specialists of remote-sensing, populations and communities ecology, functional ecology, hydrology/climatology, pedology, paleoecology and anthropology, both from the north and the south. We will use existing data, in particular extensive pools of satellite imagery and a unique database on forest inventories, acquire new paleoecological data on sediment cores and soil profiles, analyse new archaeological sites and implement controlled drought and light experiments on the main tree species of the Congo Basin region. We will link information on spatial and temporal variation of tree communities composition, spatial and temporal variation of environmental factors, and species functional traits in order to provide European administratives, national forest administrations, private companies and NGOs with operational tools: (i) thematic maps identifying the oldest, less resilient, faster-evolving or more biodiverse communities; (ii) maps outlining the possible impacts of various scenarios of climate change and anthropogenic change (socio-economic drivers) on future tree species distributions and thus TMFs characteristics; (iii) databases on important species environmental requirements, and (iv) identification of endangered species or groups of species. Those tools will address decision-makers needs to reason, on a sound basis, conservation strategies and sustainable management of forests - comprising timber logging rules - and to adapt their related territories and forest management policies.