Project Tag Archives

The juvenile life stage is a crucial determinant of forest dynamics and a first indicator of changes to species’ ranges under climate change. However, paucity of detailed re‐measurement data of seedlings, saplings and small trees means that their demography is not well understood at large scales, and rarely represented in forest models in detail. InContinue reading “Capturing juvenile tree dynamics from count data using Approximate Bayesian Computation”

Developing a robust algorithm for automatic individual tree crown (ITC) detection from airborne laser scanning (ALS) data sets is important for tracking the responses of trees to anthropogenic change. Such approaches allow the size, growth, and mortality of individual trees to be measured, enabling forest carbon stocks and dynamics to be tracked and understood. ManyContinue reading “3D Segmentation of Trees Through a Flexible Multiclass Graph Cut Algorithm”

Forest understorey microclimates are often buffered against extreme heat or cold, with important implications for the organisms living in these environments. We quantified seasonal effects of understorey microclimate predictors describing canopy structure, canopy composition and topography (i.e., local factors) and the forest patch size and distance to the coast (i.e., landscape factors). The local canopyContinue reading “Seasonal drivers of understorey temperature buffering in temperate deciduous forests across Europe”

El Niño events generate periods of relatively low precipitation, low cloud cover and high temperature over the rainforests of Southeast Asia, but their impact on tree physiology remains poorly understood. Here we use remote sensing and functional trait approaches – commonly used to understand plant acclimation to environmental fluctuations – to evaluate rainforest responses toContinue reading “Changes in leaf functional traits of rainforest canopy trees associated with an El Niño event in Borneo”

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 beContinue reading “Using image spectroscopy to study diversity in tropical forests”

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 limitsContinue reading “The world’s tallest tropical tree in three dimensions”

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, fittingContinue reading “Mapping tree architecture with lasers”

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). Hence, these studies provided little practical implications for forest management in fragmented landscapes.Continue reading “Forest gain doesn’t stop forest fragmentation in China”

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 lowerContinue reading “Forests protect animals and plants against warming”

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 influences of habitat fragmentation on seed size pattern in patches of regenerating forests. This pattern may differContinue reading “Indirect effects of habitat fragmentation on seed dispersers influence plant community structure”