Abstract:
The new issue of the Tabebuia Bulletin of the RESPECT Research Unit presents the new biodiversity land surface model Hydroatmo Unified Model of BiOtic interactions and Local Trait Diversity (HUMBOL-TD) and how it integrates hydrologic, biodiversity-related and atmospheric parameters. The bulletin summarises the research results of the individual projects that could be achieved despite the COVID-19 pandemic which overshadowed the entire work. Researchers report about responses and feedback effects of climate and land-use changes on abiotic drivers, biodiversity and ecological processes in this hotspot area. In details this Bulletin covers:
• Hyperspectral data products that can be used to parameterize and test the LSMAtmo model
• Partitioning net ecosystem exchange into gross primary productivity and ecosystem respiration
• Simulating response and effect mechanisms of global change on hydrological processes
• Response of nutrient supply to climate and land-use changes
• Implementing biotic interactions into a process-based dynamic vegetation model
• Functional traits: Effects of phylogeny and elevation and the relation to tree growth
• Plant functional types that can be differentiated by their response to transitory drought events
• Radial variability of wood functional traits in the pioneer tree Heliocarpus americanus
• Evapotranspiration as an essential variable bridging climatology, soil science and plant ecophysiology
• Reproductive traits of fleshy-fruited plants
• How plant traits and arthropod communities influence herbivory
Beyond, the bulletin reports on establishment and repair of field infrastructure, recent advances of the data warehouse and the reconstruction of climate time series. Finally, research projects from Ecuadorian counterparts and milestones reached by the infrastructure providers round off the issue.
