Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
-
DocumentManaging taxonomic and functional diversity is the key to sustain aboveground biomass and soil microbial diversity: A synthesis from long-term forest restoration of southern China
XV World Forestry Congress, 2-6 May 2022
2022Also available in:
No results found.Exploring the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship is one of the central goals of ecological research. Restoration is essential for supporting key ecosystem functions such as aboveground biomass production and managing soil microbial diversity. However, the relative importance of functional versus taxonomic diversity in explaining aboveground biomass and soil microbial diversity during restoration is poorly understood. Here, we used a trait-based approach to test for the importance of multiple plant diversity attributes in regulating aboveground biomass and soil microbial diversity in four 30- years-old restored subtropical forests in southern China. High-throughput Illumina sequencing was applied for detecting fungal and bacterial diversity. We show that both taxonomic and functional diversities are significant and positive regulators of aboveground biomass; however, functional diversity (FD) was more important than taxonomic diversity (TD) in controlling aboveground biomass. FD had the strongest direct effect on aboveground biomass compared with TD, soil properties, and community weighted mean (CWM) traits. Our results further indicate that leaf and root morphological traits and traits related to the nutrient content in plant tissues showed acquisitive resource use strategy which influenced aboveground biomass. In contrast to aboveground biomass, taxonomic diversity explained more of the soil microbial diversity than the FD and soil properties. Prediction of fungal richness was better than that of bacterial richness. In addition, root traits explained more variation of soil microbes than the leaf traits. Our results suggest that both TD and FD play a role in shaping aboveground biomass and soil microbial diversity; but FD is more important in supporting aboveground biomass while TD for belowground microbial diversity. These results imply that enhancing TD and FD is important to restoring and managing degraded forest landscapes. Key words: Biodiversity-Ecosystem functions; soil microbial diversity, taxonomic diversity, functional diversity, forest restoration ID: 3486373 -
MeetingNear East and North Africa Forests and Climate Change: Climate Induced Forest Disturbances, Building Resilience and Boosting Implementation of Countries Nationally Determined Contributions (N)DCs FO:NEFRC/2021/3
25th Session for the Near East Forestry and Range Commission
2021Also available in:
The Near East and North Africa (NENA) region is dry, hot and scarce in water and arable land resources, with arid, semi-arid to desert conditions and limited tree cover. Yet the 74.7 million hectares of forest and other wooded land, together with rangelands, produce a range of goods and ecosystem services that are essential to rural livelihoods. The region is extremely vulnerable to climate change through heat and drought, and national adaptation priorities focus on crops, forests and water resources. This document describes key challenges related to forests and climate change in the region, and how FAO is working with Members to address them. These include: • Forest and wildland fires, and FAO support for the NENA Regional Forest Wildland Fire Network (NENFIRE) • Forest pests and diseases, and support for the Near East Network on Forest Health and Invasive Species (NENFHIS) • Capacity needs for tracking climate change mitigation and adaptation progress, and support through the FAO/GEF project “Building global capacity to increase transparency in the forest sector” Tackling these interlinked challenges related to climate change is a prerequisite for strengthening the resilience of the forest ecosystems and the communities that depend on them. -
ArticleImplications of forest definition for quantifying disturbance regime characteristics in Mediterranean forests
XV World Forestry Congress, 2-6 May 2022
2022Also available in:
No results found.In the context of climate change and the increasing incidence of extreme events, global-scale assessments of forest disturbance regimes are needed to monitor changes, inform decision-making and adjust management and planning. But estimations of disturbance regime parameters can be strongly influenced by the criteria used for defining what constitutes a forest. Forests in Mediterranean regions are subject to increasingly higher pressure from climate change and anthropogenic factors. These pressures take the form of slow and diffuse degradation processes, such as drought-induced mortality and competition with shrubs, but also sudden stand- replacing disturbances, such as fire. Many Mediterranean forests, composed of widely spaced trees, are at the lower limit of the 10% canopy cover threshold set by the FAO for defining forests, while others are highly fragmented and mixed with a bushy matrix, qualifying them as other wooded lands. We thus expect assessments of forest disturbance regimes in the Mediterranean region to be particularly sensitive to the thresholds chosen. We assess the uncertainty linked to using different forest definitions for calculating disturbance rotation periods for the 40 ecoregions composing the Mediterranean biome. Using Google Earth Engine and remotely sensed data between 2000-2015, we apply different criteria for calculating the extent of forests and the areas disturbed within them, accounting for forest type, minimum size, canopy density and land use change. We identify the ecoregions with the disturbance rotation periods that are the most sensitive to these different definitions and compare the overall uncertainty with other major forest biomes. We conclude by discussing the importance of identifying harmonized definitions that can best support the sustainable management of Mediterranean forests, as well as opportunities for making consistent and accurate global baselines that can help improve projections of climate change impacts. Keywords: Forests, Disturbances, Remote Sensing, Planning, Climate Change ID: 3622233
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
No results found.