Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Climate change is having positive and negative effects on forested ecosystems around the world. These effects are projected to increase in coming decades. Much current work has focused on increases in severe events and losses in forest productivity. However, increases in chronic background stresses have the potential to lead to as much mortality or growth loss as severe events but these have received much less attention than severe events. Sequential, low intensity disturbances that have been mediated by climate change can also lead to synergistic or potentially antagonistic effects with potentially large and unexpected impacts. Better quantifying impacts that have occurred is part of what is needed for forest managers but acquiring a greater knowledge of the processes being affected i.e. changes to tree hydraulics i.e. the ability to move water, and thus grow is necessary to better model and predict future changes. At the same time we need to test the efficacy of solutions i.e. climate smart forestry (increased diversity, choosing the right tree for the right place, planting southern provenances in the north or moving northern/extreme climate populations south vs locally adapted populations). These solutions will depend on tree species responses related to changes in phenology, plasticity in morphology, growth, and survival. The overall objective of my research program is to quantify forest response to changes in disturbances mediated by climate change. Specifically the short term objectives of my program are (1) to evaluate the effect of small chronic climate stresses on tree growth and survival as well as interactions between sequential moderate disturbances such as drought and insect defoliation, (2) quantify changes in growth phenology and tree hydraulics for different species along a climate gradient and (3) test early indicators of tree response, growth and survival of different species and populations in mixes and monocultures. My lab and I will capitalise on infrastructure developed in other projects as well as field sites equiped with monitoring devices purchased through a Canadian Fund for Innovation grant. My lab in collaboration with other leading research teams will address these questions in an inclusive team building setting. The impacts of this research will be in informing strategies for mitigating climate change through multifunctional plantations, in quantifying mortality and growth loss to low intensity chronic disturbances, and sequential disturbance interactions and in providing potential early indicators of stress. These impacts are thus both scientific and applied as they will inform on processes not yet studied and provide manages with tools to better evaluate risks.