About the Project

Both the intensity and frequency of compound extreme climate events (e.g., compound drought-heatwave events) are increasing dramatically along with climate warming. These events exert detrimental impacts on tree growth and productivity, potentially undermining terrestrial carbon sequestration, particularly in water-limited ecoregions. However, the critical effects of forest biodiversity and canopy structure complexity on tree growth resilience to compound extreme climate events remain largely unknown.

This project aims to address this crucial knowledge gap by relying on regional-scale tree-ring networks, gridded species biodiversity data, canopy structure complexity metrics, and climate and soil property datasets across sub-humid and semi-arid China. The specific research objectives include:

1. To clarify the regulatory effects of neighborhood species and functional trait diversity on individual tree growth and its response to compound extreme drought-heatwave events;
2. To reveal the spatial patterns and mechanisms underlying the regulatory effects of species and functional trait diversity on plot-scale tree growth resilience to compound extreme drought-heatwave events.