Towards a biome-scale monitoring of the COngo basin FORest FUNCtional composition – CoForFunc

Expected strong climate, demographic and economic changes in Central Africa threaten the sustainability of ecological, social and economic services Congo Basin Forests (CBF) provide to humanity. In addition to deforestation, anthropogenic environmental impacts will lead to dramatic changes in forest tree functional composition with potential deleterious feedbacks on carbon and water cycles among other services.
Our project aims at developing an integrated approach for the monitoring of tree functional diversity of the CBF to support biome-scale assessment of their vulnerability to global changes. Achieving such aim faces several challenges that define the specific objectives of this project: (1) Gather, harmonize and share existing data to provide ground-truth estimates of multiple dimensions of tree diversity in the CBF. (2) Connect existing forest plots to develop a regional network of observatories for a consistent monitoring of functional dynamics. (3) Characterize variation in functioning of canopy species along environmental gradients, combining proximal sensing of tree phenology and ground ecophysiological and functional trait measurements. (4) Develop an up-scaling chain from field data, to proximal and intermediate high-resolution (Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2) and coarse-resolution remote sensing data captured by time-series of satellite data of various types and resolutions provided by recent and upcoming Earth Observation Systems to quantify biome-scale Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs). (5) Combine biome-scale EBVs and environmental drivers to assess CBF vulnerability to expected changes (based on trend analyses and space-for-time substitution approaches). (6) Disseminate the project outcome to forest stakeholders and by technology transfer and capacity development of students and staff in the self-financed academic and operational partner institutions of the project.
Our new consortium gathers four renowned research teams having each complementary and essential expertiss: two teams (IRD-AMAP, France and Uliège, Belgium) of tropical forest ecologists with a strong experience and partnership in central African countries where some of the participants are currently posted; one team of ecophysiologists (CREAF, Spain) with a strong experience in functioning of trees and forests and their response to environmental change with a focus on vegetation water use and drought responses, one team of remote sensing specialists (MPI-BGC, Germany) with experience in monitoring ecosystem function from space to improve our understanding of biogeochemical cycles. It also involves three self-financed partners in Cameroon and Congo, and a Research Network (R2FAC) comprised of researchers of major forest science institutions in the region, which acts as a scientific advisory board for the Commission of Central African Forests (COMIFAC) in charge of coordinating CBF policies.