Conveners
Ze-Xin Fan
Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, CAS
China
Session Description
Tropical and subtropical forests harbor a high biodiversity and are a major component of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Tropical and subtropical forest ecosystems are facing rapidly climate changes world. Climate change is hypothesized to cause shifts in species distributions, changes in forest productivity and ecosystem functioning. How tropical and subtropical forests are responding to climate change remains largely unexplored. In this session, we will present approaches and evidences on the effects of climate change in the species composition and ecosystem function across Chinese tropical and subtropical forests. We aim to share results from studies that scale from individual species- to ecosystem-level. Specifically, we will be discussing results on the effects of climate change in
species composition
tree growth and forest productivity
species coexistence and community assembly
biogeochemical cycles
ecosystem functioning.
The goal of the proposed session is to congregate researchers to advance our mechanistic understanding of species-to-ecosystem responses to environmental changes. We believe that the proposed topic will have broader interest for the ILTER community
Session Justification
This proposed session is a great opportunity for communicating ongoing long term ecological research on ecosystem functioning. Meanwhile, the proposed session will also serve as a channel to call for a wider attention to the vulnerability of forest ecosystems under climate change, and call for future scientific infrastructure for long-term ecological studies.
One Sentence Session Summary
Communicate advanced approaches and proceedings on the effects of climate change on species composition and ecosystem function of tropical and subtropical forests