The effect of forest management and neighborhood diversity on seasonal tree growth responses

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Christian Ammer
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
• Term: from 2011 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 193258401

By analyzing the growth response of trees as a function of local neighborhood diversity this application addresses the key element of the DFG-exploratories: which impact do diversity and management intensity have on ecosystem functions? The purpose of this research is therefore (1) to explain the growth response of selected trees on different time scales (day to year) as a function of their neighborhood (which is strongly related to management intensity); (2) to reveal the impact of neighborhood density and species composition on individual tree growth (measured by self-acting dendrometers) and (3) to explain the revealed growth pattern by using growth related plant traits, especially stabile isotope ratios, nitrogen concentrations and SLA and morphological characteristics such as branch remification. The idea of this proposal therefore is not only to detect different patterns of growth-neighborhood-responses by analyzing tree growth measurements originating from daily to yearly growth data, but also to relate these different growth patterns to different ecophysiological characteristics and strategies.

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1374: Biodiversity Exploratories
• Participating Person: Professor Dr. Ernst-Detlef Schulze