Impacts of environmental change on climate and ecosystem in southern Ecuador
DFG FOR 816 - D3 (NA 783/6-1)
From 03/2010 to 04/2013Principal Investigator: Jörg Bendix, Thomas Nauß
Subproject within the DFG research unit 816: Biodiversity and Sustainable Management
of a Megadiverse Mountain Ecosystem in South Ecuador
The main aim of the project is
- to unveil the impacts of climate and land use change on the regional climate of the ecosystem platform,
- to examine effects of climate change on biodiversity for selected organismic groups by testing two different approaches,
- to investigate atmospheric nutrient deposition from remote sources in the framework of the NUMEX experiment as well as its future development under environmental change, and
- to support the research unit by providing data on vegetation activity based on remotely sensed data.
Subject 1 encompasses an in-depth analysis of weather situations with an anomalous zonal overturning Walker circulation (El Niño/La Niña events) by means of a comprehensive data set gathered during previous studies. Additionally, a coupled model suite of a regional climate (WRF) and a SVAT model (CLM) will be used to conduct simulation runs for the joint scenarios of land use and global climate change.
Subject 2 uses downscaled temperature data for the climate change scenarios to test effects on biodiversity with the species-area approach and the energetic-equivalence rule for moths, soil mites and trees.
Subject 3 observes fog- and rain-water deposition including a back-trajectory modelling encompassing. Remotely sensed products of atmospheric chemistry and future climate/emission scenario runs are applied to disentangle present-day and future atmospheric fertilization of the mountain forest and its remote sources.
Subject 4 makes vegetation products (NDVI, LAI, GPP) of different sensors available to the research unit.
Homepage: http://www.tropicalmountainforest.org/