Head: Dr. Thomas Wohlgemuth
We study the importance of extreme events such as drought, storms, forest fires or clearings for the forest dynamics. In the frame of such disturbances we focus on:
- resistance to disturbance: the potential to resist; we experimentally test the drought resistance of regenerating trees.
- resilience after disturbance: the potential to regenerate; we monitor severely disturbed forests on the basis of systematic or stratified samples
- functional traits of forest plant species
Both the strong climate warming and a growing demand of forest goods (timber, fuel) will result in a general increase of disturbances. We elaborate basic knowledge for an adaptive forest managment.