DATAFORUSE

Data-driven assessment of global patterns in tree drought responses and forest water use

Creaf leader

Combinating two datebases from CREAF to study the variation in trees and forests water use, in order to identify the main factors affecting this variability and to understand physiological and hydraulics mechanisms that sustain it.

The main goals of this project are: (1) to characterise the inter- and intraspecific variability in physiological regulation of tree transpiration (2) to understand how the covariation amongst water use and hydraulic traits results in different drought response strategies across species, (3) to quantify water use resilience from time series of tree transpiration and (4) to assess the biotic and abiotic drivers of forest transpiration globally.

Forests dominate transpiration fluxes globally but trees are also highly vulnerable to the impacts of increasing drought conditions under global change. Understanding how trees regulate transpiration in response to variations in evaporative demand and soil moisture supply is paramount to assess the global variation in woody plant drought response strategies and to quantify the magnitudes and drivers of forest transpiration globally.

We will combine two global ecophysiological datasets (SAPFLUXNET and HydraTRY) to
characterise the worldwide variation in tree and forest water use, to identify its main environmental drivers across time and space and to understand its hydraulic underpinnings. To achieve these goals, we will make use of an extensive data infrastructure developed during previous projects and we will apply several data science methodologies.

Proyecto RTI2018-095297-J-I00 financiado por MCIN/ AEI /10.13039/501100011033/ y por FEDER Una manera de hacer Europa