ECOLOGY AND GLOBAL CHANGE

Working at locations and biomes across the world, the Ecology and Global Change group aims to determine fundamental ecological patterns and their causes and the nature of environmental change at a range of temporal and spatial scales. The group aims are to link plant geographical observations with physiology; to understand magnitude, rates and timing of ecosystem response to past and future climate change, and effects of terrestrial ecosystems on atmospheric CO2; to establish spatial and evolutionary responses to long-term climate change; and to distinguish natural variability from human-driven processes. EGC has made major advances in understanding short and long-term ecoclimatological interactions. Many of our projects are focussed on forest systems, the most biogeochemically active and complex terrestrial ecosystems.

The group's research interests lie in:

  • Revealing ecological patterns and what determines them. (To what extent are plant distributions controlled by soils, climate, and history?)
  • Revealing fundamental macroecological patterns and what determines them (How is diversity distributed? What factors control biomass and dynamics?)
  • What have been, what are, and what will be the effects of forests on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels?
  • Magnitude, rates, and timing of forest response to past and future change in climate and atmospheric chemistry, including threshold effects.
  • Distinguishing long-term natural variability from anthropogenic forcing.
  • Ecological space and time up-scaling
    (local to global, annual to millennial).
  • Linking palaeo-ecological and contemporary ecological research.
  • The nature and timing of climatic and environmental changes and human impacts at millennial-centennial-decadal timescales.
  • The long-term dynamics of global peatland environments.

Latest News

The International Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO) has just published a one page ‘”spotlight” on our Science paper about global forest carbon sinks. These are periodic notices about interesting new papers. Read the article here.

In sum, the paper used forest data world-wide to “show the distribution of carbon sources and sinks, the importance of temperate and boreal forests as sustained sinks and the enormous fluxes (sources and sinks) contributed by tropical forests. But overall, the study shows the forests’ role, at least for now, is positive. They are carbon sinks. As sinks, they currently absorb about 27% of the 8 billion tons of fossil fuel emissions we emit yearly – giving us an arboreal discount on emissions. Factor in oceans and other terrestrial ecosystems and the total absorption rate goes up to over 50%. Without these natural sinks, the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere would be substantially higher.”