讲座简介

Many regions around the world have undergone significant shifts in vegetation cover and plant community composition under global environmental change. These changes in vegetation have important impacts on ecohydrological and geochemical processes, regional climate and the provision of ecosystem services such as livestock grazing, soil conservation, and carbon sequestration. Two major ongoing shifts in vegetation composition are associated with woody plant dominance in savannas and grasslands, and tree die-offs in forests. The drivers, mechanisms and impacts of these changes in plant community composition remain poorly understood. In this presentation, I provide a process-based modeling framework - supported by experimental and satellite data - to explain the ecohydrological controls on the major changes in vegetation. I use long-term global datasets, remote sensing data, and earth system models to investigate spatiotemporal changes in vegetation carbon turnover time. I use a common garden to quantify the phylogenetic and biogeographic/climatic controls on nighttime stomatal conductance. I also show how vegetation loss increases dust emission and then suppress rainfall, thereby leading to the vegetation-rainfall feedback responsible for vegetated/wet and unvegetated/dry alternative stable states in West-African Sahel.

主讲人简介

余开亮博士，于2016年在美国弗吉尼亚大学获得博士学位，于2017年在犹他大学做博士后，现为苏黎世联邦理工学院博士后。博士期间主要从事生态水文学研究，研究内容包括树、草、景天科代谢植物的竞争和共存，生态水文模型开发等。博士后期间主要从事全球森林碳循环方面的研究。曾获得弗吉尼亚大学水文学奖，Joseph K. Roberts奖,论文发表奖等多个奖项，三项科研基金（第一完成人），目前已在Nature Geoscience, New Phytologist, Geophysical Reseach Letters等杂志发表SCI论文30余篇。