Ph.D. on Climate change impacts on heathland plant species and its consequences for ecosystem stability

This Ph.D. project was started March 2010 with Ph.D.-student Johannes Ransijn. The project is rooted in WP3.1 (Plant community).

Project
The PhD project focuses on plant species responses to climatic change. Plant species responses are investigated to study climate-plant-ecosystem feedback mechanisms and its effects on ecosystem structure, functioning and stability. The project will investigate responses of the two dominant species (Calluna vulgaris & Deschampsia flexuosa). Climate change induced changes in the competitive balance between these two species and/or changes in plant control of nutrient cycling (via changes in nutrient uptake, litter decomposition rates and synthesis of nutrient immobilizing and allelopathic compounds) may result in shifts to an alternative steady ecosystem state. Both quantitative (climate effects on biomass increment) and qualitative (climate effects on plant tissue chemistry) responses in the field experiment will be studied. Pot experiments wil be set up with plant seedlings from different functional groups (grass, dwarf-shrub and tree) exposed to different climate, soil and litter treatments in order to study of plant competition in the rejuvenation stage under changing climatic conditions and the importance of climate-plant-soil interactions. Additionally the potential of radiometric and lidar based methods for biomass estimation in (dwarf)shrub dominated ecosystems will be investigated.