CREAF Talk with Freddie Draper - "Leveraging new technologies and big data for understanding tropical forests"

TITLE: "Leveraging new technologies and big data for understanding tropical forests"

DATE: Thursday, 28th November 2024.

TIME & FORMAT: form 12 to 1pm CET - In-person and online.

Seminars will combine in-person and online formats (CREAF, Sala Graus II, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) but in all cases, talks will be always streamed (not recorded), so they can be followed online.

HOW TO CONNECT: direct link to the conference.

SUMMARY OF THE WORKSHOP:

Tropical forests are remarkable, harbouring much of Earth’s biodiversity and playing a key role in regulating the global climate and biogeochemical cycles. However, despite decades of research we arguably know little about them. For example, we predict they hold >15,000 species of tree but more than 5,000 are yet to be discovered/described. We have some strong evidence that their growth and mortality may be increasing in response to global change, but which species or which trees are likely to be most vulnerable or most successful remains unclear.  

In this talk, Freddie will first discuss the big uncertainties surrounding tropical forest ecology, why they exist and if they really matter. He will go on to outline my research vision and how he think we can tackle these issues by:

1. Viewing hyperdiverse tropical forests through the lens of hyperdominant species.
2. Leveraging new technologies (particularly spectroscopy & drone based remote sensing) and AI approaches, to transform our understanding of the ecology of these complex but fascinating ecosystems.  

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Freddie Draper is a tropical forest ecologist, and his research broadly seeks to better understand the biodiversity and carbon dynamics of tropical forest ecosystems and help to answer vital questions such as: How are tropical forests responding to global change? and what does this response of tropical ecosystems mean for humanity? To answer these questions, he uses a range of different approaches including remote sensing, large-scale macroecology and phylogenetics. First and foremost, he is a field ecologist, and all of his research is grounded in botanical field plots. To date his research has focussed on Amazonian forests with a particular concentration in Northern Peru.