Forest Ecosystem Dynamics
Ongoing changes in climate in recent years have resulted in unrivalled activities of wildfires, insect outbreaks, and prolonged droughts beyond their observed historical ranges. This has ushered in new disturbance regimes, and it is not yet clear how such changes might affect forest productivity and functions.
Moreover, existing research on climate change effects have developed largely independently of consideration of other physical disturbances, such as wildfire and harvesting. There is therefore a lack synthetic understanding of the extent to which climate change interacts with anthropogenic disturbances and management activities to produce patterns and dynamic changes in forest ecosystems.
Our research seeks to uncover the direct and indirect effects of the interaction between climate change and anthropogenic disturbances in driving changes in forest functions, including species recruitment and aboveground productivity, and the mechanisms involved.