I would like to encourage community participation!
Deadline for submission of abstracts is 10 Jan 2011 (please follow the link below for registration and abstract submission).
BG2.1
Amazon Forest Functioning and Responses to Environmental Change
Convener: Lina Mercado, Co-Conveners: Luiz Aragao, Oliver Phillips
Sumary
Changes in climate and the environment are likely to have profound impacts on the diversity, nutrient and water cycles of the Amazon forest. To better understand these processes and its responses to the changing environment, there is a need for interdisciplinary studies focusing on the long-term biology, ecology, physiology and climatology of this ecosystem from local to regional spatial scales.
The Amazon forest is highly heterogeneous in species composition, biomass and productivity, physical and chemical soil properties, and precipitation, as well as natural and anthropogenic disturbance regimes, such as blowdowns, fires and deforestation. Therefore, to understand the interaction between forest functioning and environmental change and to diagnose the future of the Amazon biome and the feedbacks to global climate, it is important to build an integrative view of these processes that explicitly accounts for this spatial variability.
To advance this debate, we aim to gather an overview of recent research carried out in Amazonia, focusing on two main topics: (i) heterogeneity of environmental variables and its influence on ecosystem functioning, and (ii), responses of ecosystem processes to environmental changes across the Amazon rainforest. We welcome empirical, remote sensing- and GIS-based, and modelling studies on carbon, nutrients (in particular, N and P)and water cycle, ecophysiological processes and responses to high temperature, drought and CO2, forest dynamics including productivity and species turnover, nutrient dynamics, disturbance impacts and rates, and detection of large-scale forest processes and environmental changes using remote sensing.
The Amazon forest is highly heterogeneous in species composition, biomass and productivity, physical and chemical soil properties, and precipitation, as well as natural and anthropogenic disturbance regimes, such as blowdowns, fires and deforestation. Therefore, to understand the interaction between forest functioning and environmental change and to diagnose the future of the Amazon biome and the feedbacks to global climate, it is important to build an integrative view of these processes that explicitly accounts for this spatial variability.
To advance this debate, we aim to gather an overview of recent research carried out in Amazonia, focusing on two main topics: (i) heterogeneity of environmental variables and its influence on ecosystem functioning, and (ii), responses of ecosystem processes to environmental changes across the Amazon rainforest. We welcome empirical, remote sensing- and GIS-based, and modelling studies on carbon, nutrients (in particular, N and P)and water cycle, ecophysiological processes and responses to high temperature, drought and CO2, forest dynamics including productivity and species turnover, nutrient dynamics, disturbance impacts and rates, and detection of large-scale forest processes and environmental changes using remote sensing.
