Dr Adriane Esquivel Muelbert investigates how forests respond to different global change forces and what the implications of these responses are on biodiversity and global biogeochemical cycles. Her work demonstrates the importance of drought tolerance in shaping diversity and composition across Neotropical tree communities and provides evidence that Amazonian forests are changing as a result of the increase in water stress and atmospheric CO2. More recently, she has focused on tree mortality and how tree death varies across large geographical scales. In 2020, Adriane was winner of the Forests 2020 Young Investigator Award and lead for the successful International Tree Mortality Webinar series. She was promoted to lecturer in 2020 and has begun building her own group around the topic of forest dynamics, welcoming a visiting PhD researcher from Brazil in 2021. She has published a paper in Nature Communications quantifying the ways in which trees in the Amazon die and what predisposes them to high mortality risk. She also contributed to two major analyses in Science and Nature showing how tropical forests are responding to climate change. Dr Daijun Liu published a new paper on how drought affects vegetation in Mediterranean forests.
Dr Marie Arnaud research fellow investigating the belowground carbon dynamics of wetlands. She is interested to understand soil carbon processes in coastal wetlands, as well as the persistence of coastal wetlands to global changes (sea level rise, global warming, pollutions). So far, her work has focused on mangroves and saltmarshes. She has used mesocoms approach and field studies, notably minirhizotrons (underground camera) to measure root production, soil organic matter decay or soil water dynamics.
Doctoral Research
Forest Edge student Jordan Johnson began his PhD in 2020 investigating how volcanic eruptions influence the forest dynamics in Chilean temperate forests. Poster 2021
Recent Publications
Arnaud, M., Morris, P., Baird, A., Thuong Huyen, D., & Nguyen, T. (2021). Fine root production in a chronosequence of mature reforested mangroves. The New phytologist. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.17480
Esquivel Muelbert, A. et al (2019) A Spatial and Temporal Risk Assessment of the Impacts of El Niño on the Tropical Forest Carbon Cycle: Theoretical Framework, Scenarios, and Implications. Atmosphere, 10, 588 https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10100588
Sullivan M., Lewis, S. L.; […] Esquivel Muelbert, A.; […] Phillips, O. L. (2020) Long-term thermal sensitivity of Earth’s tropical forests. Science 368, 869-874 https://doi.org/science.aaw7578
Zang, C. S.; Buras, A.; Esquivel Muelbert, A.; Jump, A. S.; Rigling, A.; and Rammig A. (2020) Standardized Drought Indices in Ecological Research: Why one size does not fit all. Global Change Biology https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14809