Dr. Pin-hsin Hu/ Postdoc, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry

Abstract:
In ecology, high plant-functional diversity is associated with strong ecosystem resilience and stability. Sofar, plant ecology studies have focused on the passive response of global ecosystems to climatic changes while the impacts of plant-functional diversity on climate including its feedback are seldom addressed. Notably, climate models are often criticized for oversimplifying global vegetation processes. To tackle such issues, I set up a new plant trait diversity model JeDi-BACH into the land component of the ICON-Earth System Model (ICON-ESM). In my talk, I will present a series of sensitivity studies investigating the effect of plant trait diversity on the coupled vegetation-climate system in an AMIP-type setup. From my analysis, I find that high-diversity ecosystems tend to support a more robust climate and ecosystem functioning than low-diversity ecosystems. As a result, terrestrial climate seemingly stabilizes toward a cooler and wetter state with increasing diversity.

Language: English

Contact: Yi-Hsuan Chen