< Back to previous page

Project

How resistant and resilient are tropical forests against short-term climate anomalies? Addressing current challenges of remote sensing time series analysis.

Tropical forests deliver a range of crucial ecosystem services. Yet, the stable delivery of these services is threatened by a change in average climate conditions as well as the frequency and magnitude of climate extremes, whereas small changes in tropical forest dynamics might have a substantial effect on climate change itself. Insight in the ability of tropical forests to withstand (i.e. resistance) and recover (i.e. resilience) from climate anomalies and driving factors behind stability is hence an important premise for maintaining sustainable development of the ecosystem and socio-economic system. Although many studies already focused on biomass production stability of tropical forests with respect to climate anomalies, the topic is still heavily debated. Many of them rely on optical remote sensing. Yet, several issues are associated with optical remote sensing data over tropical forests, resulting in inaccurate and contradictory results. The aim of this PDM project is to develop a method to reliably quantify ecosystem stability of tropical forests on a global scale.
Date:1 Oct 2015 →  18 Jan 2017
Keywords:remote sensing, resilience, resistance, ecosystem stability, tropical forests
Disciplines:Biophysics