COBADIM Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action funded

I’m happy to announce that my Congo Basin drought resilience (an integrative modelling approach) or COBADIM project as submitted to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action was funded.

The COBADIM project will combine eco-physiological and dendrochronological research with a model based approach to increase our understanding of the response of African tropical tree species under changing climatological conditions across the central Congo Basin.

In this project I will integrate several data streams including past inventory data (provided through COBECORE and Jungle Rhythms) and associated leaf traits, measured wood traits, retrospective dendrochronological measurements and wood core stable isotope and calcium tracer time series, in order to constrain data-informed mechanistic ecosystem models.

Furthermore, a novel [Ca] tracer experiment will corroborate the use of a [Ca] tracer in tropical tree species for rapid dating and eco-physiological research into drought resistance. Accurate model predictions, based upon [Ca] measurements made during this project, will provide estimates of the vulnerability of tree species to future drought conditions. The latter results have important policy implications as the demise of important tree species could have significant effects on ecosystem services, affecting the carbon balance, as well as a direct economic impact on sustainable local and EU timber trade.

I hope this project will not only increase our understanding of drought resilience in African tropical forest but also opens many more research opportunities linked to COBECORE.

– Koen Hufkens