Title:  Carbon budget along a tropical forest aridity gradient in West Africa

Speaker:   Dr. Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng University of Oxford

Time: 4:30 PM, Tuesday, Sep 19, 2023 

 Venue:  

  Offline: The Conference Hall in Xishuangbanna Headquarters

  Online: ZOOM Conference Platform  
 

 ID：312 430 8960   

 PWD：666666 

Abstract:

Tropical forests cover large areas of equatorial Africa and play a significant role in the global carbon cycle. However, there has been a lack of in-situ measurements to understand the forests’ gross and net primary productivity (GPP and NPP) and their allocation. In this seminar I will present the first detailed field assessment of the carbon budget of multiple forest sites in Africa, by monitoring 14 one-hectare plots along an aridity gradient in Ghana. When compared with an equivalent aridity gradient in Amazonia using the same measurement protocol, the studied West African forests generally had higher GPP and NPP and lower carbon use efficiency (CUE). The West African aridity gradient consistently shows the highest NPP, CUE, GPP, and autotrophic respiration at a medium-aridity site, Bobiri. Notably, NPP and GPP of the site are the highest yet reported anywhere in the tropics using similar methods. Widely used data products (MODIS and FLUXCOM) substantially underestimate productivity when compared to in situ measurements, in Amazonia and especially in Africa. I will also discuss likely reasons for the West-African forests high productivity and the cause of the data-model discrepancy.  

About the speaker: 

Dr. Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng is particularly interested in tropical forests carbon cycling, especially tropical Africa. His research involves many aspects pertaining to tropical forest carbon dynamics including photosynthetic traits, dynamic global vegetation models and drone-based remote sensing. He has a good track record with 6 peer-reviewed publications. He is also an R CRAN package author. Huanyuan obtained his PhD from the University of Oxford in 2023, by studying the carbon budget of West-African forests under the supervision of Prof. Yadvinder Malhi. He also holds Master (distinction) from Imperial College London and Bachelor (first class honor) from the University of Birmingham. He was a visiting scholar at XTBG in 2021 working at Ailaoshan elevated CO2 experiments with Prof. Zexin Fan. He is currently a Research Associate at the University of Oxford, working on meta-analysis of carbon budget quantified through Global Ecosystem Monitoring (GEM) network.