Response of element cycles in a tropical mountain rain forest to environmental and land-use change

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Wolfgang Wilcke
• Co-Applicant: Professor Carlos Valarezo
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
• Term: from 2007 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 29937865

The north Andean forest is affected by climate-driven acid and base depositions and will experience increasing N input in the future. Based on our knowledge of element cycling in the Reserva Biologica San Francisco, we aim at developing scenarios of possible responses of the study forest to expected environmental change. We will evaluate the available data series and complete the parameterization of a catchment-based hydrologic model (CATFLOW). We will assume the joint change scenarios of the Research Unit. The developed scenarios will be validated by continuing the Long-term Ecosystem Study and the Nutrient Management Experiment (NUMEX). The Long-term Ecosystem Study was established in 1998. For >11 years, a unique data set of weekly records of all major water and element fluxes has been collected. In the interdisciplinary NUMEX experiment, established in 2007, we continuously add N, P, N+P, and Ca twice per year to native forest in a block design at ca. 2000 m a.s.l. to explore the forest response to low-level nutrient input. For the next phase, a joint 15N pulse chasing experiment will be conducted to further explore the fate of added N. We contribute by setting up a complete flux budget of the applied isotope label.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 816: Biodiversity and Sustainable Management of a Megadiverse Mountain Ecosystem in Southern Ecuador
• International Connection: Ecuador, Switzerland