Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests and Global Environmental Change

With Jennifer Powers, University of Minnesota, USA.

Seasonally dry tropical forests once were a vast biome—accounting for up to 40% of all tropical forest. In addition to storing carbon, these forests hold unique biodiversity. Land-use change has greatly reduced the area of these forests, and climate change further altering the structure and function of remaining dry forests. However, these ecosystems have been far less studied compared to tropical rain forests, and we have very little understanding of what unites and differentiates them.

I will discuss recent data on the vulnerability of dry forests in Costa Rica to changing rainfall regimes. I conclude by highlighting approaches for understanding global change effects on the dry forest biome from microbial to continental scales using field data from Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Colombia and Mexico. 

All seminars online. Please contact sue.davis@nottingham.ac.uk for the link. Subject to change.

Part of the Geosciences Seminar Series.