Climate Change: Mitigation and Adaptation
Forest and Landscape Restoration can play an important role in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Investigating the impacts of restoration on climate processes and vice versa is crucial in order to maximize restoration benefits such as carbon sequestration and to understand the response of forests to a changing climate.
Climate Change: Mitigation and Adaptation research projects
In collaboration with:
Located at the University of São Paulo’s Itatinga research station, this project establishes a tree diversity experiment (MataDIV) and an observational eddy covariance flux tower (MataFLUX) built over restoration plantings for the first time.
MataDIV/MataFLUX investigates the relationship between tree diversity and ecosystem functioning. The effects of tree species composition, drought and soil fertility on carbon and water cycles are studied by measuring the carbon, water and energy ‘fluxes’ as the restoration forest grows.
This work will help improve our understanding of how to optimise restoration approaches in Brazil’s Mata Atlantica (Atlantic Forest) in the face of a changing climate.