Increasing evidence suggests that forest disturbance and climate change are both resulting in increased liana abundance and biomass in tropical and subtropical forests. The proliferation of lianas may have negative effects on forests ecosystems services; however, these effects are poorly understood. There is an urgent need to evaluate how liana proliferation may affect local and regional carbon and nutrient cycles.
To address this gap in our knowledge, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden XTBG) organized the 1st International workshop on liana forest ecology from October 12–16 in 2023.
35 participants from 14 countries reviewed the current state of knowledge on liana ecology, discussed and defined the future research axes needed to achieve more understanding on how lianas interfere in water, carbon, and nutrient cycles.
The meeting report was recently published in New Phytologist.
“Leaf phenology and the afterlives of lianas are clear gaps in our general understanding of the contribution of lianas to ecosystem services and nutrient cycling in forests. Liana stem and leaf properties differ from those of trees, making unique contributions to forest soil dynamics. Thus, the contribution of lianas to decay rates of dead plant matter and their interactions therein with tree derived deadwood and litter are understudied but potentially important to understanding forest ecology,” said Gbadamassi G. O. Dossa, first author of the study.
One key outcome of this workshop is the acknowledgement that insight can be gained by merging analyses of species-level functional traits of wide-ranging lianas and trees, with those of community-level plant and decomposer composition, demography, and matter cycling.
Contact
Gbadamassi G. O. Dossa Ph.D
Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan 666303, China
E-mail: dossa@xtbg.org.cn
Published: 15 April 2024
