Exploring conservation co-benefits to biodiversity and carbon storage and sink capacity across forests to improve practice.

探索森林对生物多样性和碳储存和汇能力的保护协同效益，以改进实践。

• 批准号: 2874924
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2874924
• 关键词: Exploring; conservation; co; benefits; biodiversity

Conservation of global forests is at the centre of the climate and biodiversity crisis prevention efforts. Forests play a fundamental role in mitigating climate change, absorbing around 1/3 of anthropogenic emissions, but are also home to 80% of terrestrial biodiversity. Modern forest management is mainly directed at protecting and increasing carbon stocks to mitigate climate change, often assuming biodiversity will be simultaneously protected as a co-benefit. While there is evidence for a positive relationship between these variables in tropical forests at large scales, recent studies suggest this may not be the case for temperate forests. In order to design future management policies, we need understand how and why this relationship between biodiversity and carbon dynamics may change across different spatial scales and forest uses. In the same way that biodiversity and carbon dynamics may be related across space, they may also be related through time, with disturbances in one variable having the potential to compromise the other. Overhunting, for instance, causes the loss of large vertebrates across forests globally, as these tend to be the most valuable for meat, trade and culture. Thus, species responsible for dispersing large seeds are removed from ecosystems, consequently reducing dispersion and regeneration of large-seeded trees, which tend to have higher carbon stocks. This alteration of regeneration dynamics causes a shift in forest composition, creating communities dominated by wind-dispersed species which typically have a lower wood density, and thus low carbon storage capacity. This project will generate a greater understanding of the multidirectional relationship between taxa biodiversity and carbon stocks and sequestration capacity (Figure 1). In addition, it has been suggested that vertebrate and tree diversity are insufficient surrogates for total habitat biodiversity, therefore I will investigate various taxa, providing a more comprehensive understanding of forest biodiversity and carbon interactions. The understanding of co-benefits between conservation of carbon dynamics and biodiversity from this project will help to inform conservation strategies in line with the UK Net Zero program.

保护全球森林是气候和生物多样性危机预防工作的核心。森林在减缓气候变化方面发挥着重要作用，吸收了约 1/3 的人为排放，同时也是 80% 陆地生物多样性的家园。现代森林管理主要旨在保护和增加碳储量以减缓气候变化，通常假设生物多样性将同时得到保护，作为共同效益。虽然有证据表明大尺度热带森林中这些变量之间存在正相关关系，但最近的研究表明，温带森林的情况可能并非如此。为了设计未来的管理政策，我们需要了解生物多样性和碳动态之间的这种关系如何以及为何在不同的空间尺度和森林利用中发生变化。就像生物多样性和碳动态可能在空间上相关一样，它们也可能在时间上相关，一个变量的干扰有可能损害另一个变量。例如，过度捕猎导致全球森林中大型脊椎动物的消失，因为这些脊椎动物往往对肉类、贸易和文化最有价值。因此，负责传播大种子的物种从生态系统中消失，从而减少了大种子树木的传播和再生，而大种子树木往往具有较高的碳储量。这种再生动态的改变导致森林组成的变化，形成以风散物种为主的群落，这些物种通常具有较低的木材密度，因此碳储存能力较低。该项目将使人们更好地了解类群生物多样性与碳储量和封存能力之间的多向关系（图 1）。此外，有人认为脊椎动物和树木多样性不足以替代总栖息地生物多样性，因此我将调查各种分类群，以更全面地了解森林生物多样性和碳相互作用。通过该项目了解碳动态保护和生物多样性之间的协同效益将有助于为符合英国净零计划的保护战略提供信息。