Persons involved:
Dominik Seidel (PI)
Sarah Kabache (PhD student, associated)
Research outline:
It has been hypothesized that evolution resulted in forests with complex structures because they enable a more efficient use of sunlight. If complex forest structures, like those found in primary forests, allow for a more efficient use of sun light as energy source, structurally complex forests would have more resources available for growth, defense, storage, adaptation or reproduction and should therefore be more resilient to perturbations (Seidel and Ammer 2023). As the energy intake of a forest depends on light absorption, it is not surprising that positive relationships between the vertical layering of foliage and the productivity and light use efficiency of forests have been identified. The energy available for physiological process and finally for adaptation and building resilience is related to the light use efficiency, which itself is strongly tied to the structural complexity of the forest structures. This structural complexity can today be quantified for forest using a holistic and quantitative measure, the box-dimension from 3D laser scanning (Seidel 2018). At the same time, spaceborne sensors measure the earth surface temperature on high spatial and temporal resolution, data that can be used to calculate the energy budget of a forest.
Our objective (O1) is to investigate the structural complexity – resilience relationship by contrasting the structural complexity of forest with the amount of energy they release via radiation. Our hypothesis (H1) is that forests of greater structural complexity emit less energy due to a greater proportion of the incoming energy being used within the ecosystem.
Contact
Prof. Dr. Dominik Seidel
Georg August University of Göttingen
Department for Spatial Structures and Digitization of Forests
Büsgenweg 1, 37077 Göttingen
Tel.: 0551 39- 23680
Email: dseidel@gwdg.de