PYRTREELINEMOD · A model for Pyrenean Treeline: from individuals to landscapes under a changing climate
FP7 — People (Marie Curie Actions)
- Duration
- 2008-06-02 → 2010-06-01
- EU contribution
- €151,664
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MC-IEF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
A model for Pyrenean treeline: from individuals to landscapes under a changing climate
Over the last years the interest in tree line ecology has increased considerably, given the high vulnerability of mountain ecosystems to global change. Tree line ecotones are one of the best indicators of climate change, providing a registry of recent Earth history. In the last decades, advancing tree lines have been observed worldwide, a response which has been attributed mainly to anthropogenic climate change. For example, a recent work by Harsch et al. (2009) showed that abrupt tree lines are less likely to advance in response to climate change than gradual tree lines. An upward shift of forests would have important implications by increasing the terrestrial carbon sink and by reducing the availability of habitat for endemic or endangered alpine plants. However, there is a controversy about the mechanisms underlying the formation of tree lines, and the emergence of different tree line physiognomies. This is a major limitation for predicting the future evolution of tree lines under projected climate scenarios for this century. In this context, the project PYRTREELINEMOD was proposed to improve the understanding of tree line dynamics and to apply this insight to predict its future evolution, with a main focus on the Pyrenean range.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Alpine ecosystems belong to the most endangered in the word, given their high sensibility to human induced impacts. Recent studies have detected a response of the boundary between subalpine forests and alpine zones (i.e. the treeline) to climate change, but there is an ongoing controversy about whether or not and how treelines may advance or retreat under current climate trends. This question is however of great interest for the biodiversity of alpine ecotones, and changes in the treeline would have important implications for the global carbon cycle. Thus, there is a need to understand the mechanisms shaping treelines and how different factors operate on them both at local and landscape scales. This project is designed to disentangle treeline dynamics, i.e. its spatiotemporal variation and long-term responses to climatic forcing and biological interactions using advanced modeling techniques and an extensive dataset of individual tree age, growth, position, size and recruitment in Pinus uncinata at the Pyrenean range. Spatially-explicit, individual-based models will be employed to simulate treeline spatiotemporal dynamics including both abiotic (temperature and precipitation, especially snow) and biotic factors (e.g. seed viability and dispersal, tree growth), as well as potential synergisms. First, modeling efforts will focus on the local scale and then, the entire Pyrenees will be modeled by upscaling, retaining only the relevant detail necessary to describe broad scale dynamics. Finally, the landscape scale model will be used to project treeline dynamics forced under different climate change scenarios generated through regional climate models. In all stages, a pattern-oriented modeling strategy will be used to examine the sensitivity of model predictions and assumptions, and to optimize model performance. The project will make a significant advance in finding reliable conservation policies for alpine areas, especially those related to climate change mitigation.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- HELMHOLTZ-ZENTRUM FUR UMWELTFORSCHUNG GMBH - UFZ · LeipzigCoordinatorGermany
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union