Webinar: The pace of life for forest trees

Tree growth and longevity trade-offs fundamentally shape the terrestrial carbon balance. Yet, we lack a unified understanding of how such trade-offs vary across the world’s forests. In this seminar, I will present results from a collaboration with an international team of researchers. By mapping life history traits for a wide range of species across the Americas, our findings reveal considerable variation in remaining life expectancies from 10 cm in diameter and show that the pace of life for trees can be accurately classified into four demographic functional types. We find emergent patterns in the strength of trade-offs between growth and longevity across a temperature gradient. Furthermore, we show that the diversity of life history traits varies predictably across forest biomes, giving rise to a positive relationship between trait diversity and productivity. Our pan-latitudinal assessment provides novel insights into the demographic mechanisms that govern the rate of carbon turnover across forest biomes.

Speaker 

Dr. Lalasia Bialic-Murphy, Crowther Lab of ETH Zurich.