Tropical forests harbour remarkable density and diversity of woody plants, but how different processes interact to enable so many species to co-exist despite intense competition for resources is yet unresolved.

Traditionally, tropical diversity has been studied by establishing field inventory plots, but this is difficult and labour-intensive task, which limits the area that can be surveyed. In our latest paper, we use remote observation approaches to map how plant diversity changes over an entire landscape … Continue reading

The complexity of tree architecture may be the reason we find trees relaxing but it is hard to account for in ecology.

Along with our colleagues from UCL and Wageningen University, we mapped the range of tree architecture using terrestrial laser scanning data. This was done by scanning trees and forests from multiple locations, fitting cylinders to the raw point cloud data and then extracting architectural metrics from those cylinder models. … Continue reading

We have evaluated the history, current situation and trends of forest fragmentation in China, and summarised their effects on biodiversity.

Most studies exploring habitat fragmentation effect on biodiversity were conducted at the local or regional level. These studies generally ignored background information (e.g. history, drivers and dynamics) of forest fragmentation which is critical for biodiversity conservation at large scales (e.g. national scale).  … Continue reading

Here we report the recent discovery of the world’s tallest tropical tree (Shorea faguetiana), possibly the world’s tallest angiosperm (flowering plant), located in the rainforests of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. In addition, we provide a novel three-dimensional exploration of the dimensions of this remarkable tree and use these data to speculate on what drives the limits of tree height. Through consideration of both mechanical (risk of wind damage) and ecophysiological constraints we argue that this tree is close to the maximum height possible for angiosperms, around 100 m … Continue reading

We have quantified the effect of habitat fragmentation on diversity patterns of plants and seed dispersers in an artificial island archipelago, and concluded that differential responses of seed dispersers to habitat fragmentation may lead to pervasive shifts in the plant community structure of regenerating forest fragments.

Traditional studies generally consider habitat fragmentation as a driver of downsizing of plant seeds due to the disappearance of large seed dispersing vertebrates. However, most of these studies focuses on old‐growth forests, and much less is known about … Continue reading

We have assessed the quality of three dimensional forest models produced from drone surveys, and conclude that concerns about their quality for canopy height and carbon measurement are unjustified. The rise of drones has been explosive. Rapid advances in technology and decreases in price have resulted in products that can be used off-the-shelf to survey forests. Drones take overlapping photos that can be analysed using a piece of software, called structure from motion, that finds the distinctive ‘features’ shared between overlapping images. The location of these so called ‘tie-points’ is then triangulated to build a three-dimensional model of the forest. … Continue reading

We have quantified the temperature difference between sites within forests and outside, for the first time across the globe. Measurements occurred at 98 locations spread across five continents, in the tropics, temperate zone and northern boreal forests. The data show that the maximum temperature in forests is , on average across the globe, 4 degrees lower than outside forests.

With their foliage and branches in the canopy, trees create a thermal isolating layer above the forest, cooling the understory when ambient temperatures are hot and warming the understory when ambient temperatures are cold.  … Continue reading

Organisms experience climate at a small scale, where the topography and the vegetation cause microclimates that vary greatly in space and time. The difference in temperature between north and south facing slopes of a mole hill on a hot summer’s day in Europe, for example, is comparable to the temperature difference between the Mediterranean and Scotland. Microclimates are often neglected in ecology and evolution, despite mounting evidence that microclimates matter for ecosystem dynamics and processes, such as the response of organisms to climate change. A key impediment has been the lack of spatial data to map microclimatic variation over large spatial scales and over time. … Continue reading