Project in the picture
Forests are biodiversity hotspots and the large majority of forest plant species occurs below tree canopies. European forests are, however, now experiencing droughts unprecedented in at least 2000 years, leading to a major pulse of forest canopy opening and novel light regimes at the forest floor. These novel light regimes will strongly interact with direct drought effects on the understorey such that interactive, synergistic and indirect effects can be expected.
Why?
No integrative study has assessed the large-scale interactive impacts of novel light regimes and drought on forest plant biodiversity.
How?
The overarching aim of CanopyChange is to understand, quantify, and predict the (interactive) impacts of novel light regimes and drought on below-canopy forest plant biodiversity. To address this overarching aim and based on the state-of-the-art, four key hypotheses are formulated which will be addressed via the four multidisciplinary and complementary work packages.
Who?
The CanopyChange-project is coordinated by ForNaLab at Ghent university, and led by Pieter De Frenne. For more information, visit the CanopyChange website.