First drafted 2006-01-11. Last updated 2006-02-15. Version 1.2.0

Ecology and Global Change Research Cluster Notes

Andy Turner

2006-02-15

Helen Busby Resource supply versus species type: assessing the roles of light availability and species traits in driving growth of trees in Amazonia

- This work would benefit from the production of 2D visual displays (maps) and perhaps the use of Geographically Weighted Statistics.

Pia Wohland What controls CO2 exchange between the atmosphere and biosphere in tropical grasslands in the Okavango Delta, Botswana?

Savannas cover a large area of Earth. They are a diverse biome, and there are a variety of different environments caused by drianage, geomorphology, climate etc... Savannas are potentailly large carbon stores and sinks.

As with John Lloyd's seminar on 2006-02-09 the gain the focus was on measuring photosynthetic and respiratory carbon balance in plants. I asked Pia to give me pointers to anyone working on preciptiation related aspects of carbon balance and she said she would :).

Kuo-Jung Chao Exciting new results on predicting tree death in Venezuela

2006-02-09

Jon Lloyd Ecology and Physiology of Boreal and tropical Forests in a Changing World

- Focus on measuring photosynthetic and respiratory carbon balance in plants. The seminar made me wonder if part of the carbon balance equation was missing, i.e. the amount of carbon returing from the atmosphere in precipitation. I asked a question, but John reckoned that the climate scientists had shown this to be negligible. I wonder what the state of this research is.

2006-01-11

Richard Law Spatial Patterns and Inferences about Dynamics in Plant Communities

- Illustrated an example of torus type distance weighting being useful. Interesting notions of pair and multiple densities. Often it is interesting when things appear in two's! Illustrated the Janzen-Connell hypothesis as described in Hyatt l.A., Rosenberg M.S., Howard T.G., Bole G., Fang W., Anastasia J., Brown K., Grella R., Hinman K., Kurdziel J.P. Gurevitch J., (2003) The distance dependence prediction of the Janzen-Connell hypothesis: a meta-analysis. OIKOS 103: 590-602. Described the use of inhomogenous K-function (as described here and here ) for work on cancer epidemiology by Diggle P.J. and colleagues. - All the talk of kernels, scales and distance was refreshing. To encourage further collaboration I emailed Richard and pointed him to work on GAM/K

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