Innovating Works

ALPHA

Financiado
Assessing Legacies of Past Human Activities in Amazonia
Amazon forests contribute vital ecosystem services, including maintaining biodiversity (>10,000 tree species) and storing large amounts of carbon. Amazonia also features prominently in global climate, carbon, and vegetation models... Amazon forests contribute vital ecosystem services, including maintaining biodiversity (>10,000 tree species) and storing large amounts of carbon. Amazonia also features prominently in global climate, carbon, and vegetation models, which assume tropical forests are effectively pristine and that past human disturbance mimicked natural processes. It is now evident that recurrent human disturbance of Amazonia, like fire and deforestation, were significant in some areas. Since those disturbances likely modify subsequent vegetation dynamics - including temporarily increasing forest capacity to absorb carbon - the emerging paradigm of human disturbance is a challenge to global ecological understanding. The focus of my project is thus to reliably determine whether human disturbances occurred in locations that form the basis of global models. A key expected outcome is to either legitimize or force revision to these models of carbon sequestration potential in Amazonia. I will innovatively integrate ecological, paleoecological, archaeological, chemical and biogeographic analyses to assess the degree to which past human disturbance drives the diversity patterns and carbon dynamics observed in modern Amazonian forests. For key long-term sites across Amazonia, I will quantify the: i) time since the last fire, ii) past fire frequency, extent and intensity, iii) past vegetation change in the presence and absence of human activity, and iv) continuity of past human activity over the last 1000 years. My results will provide the first quantification of local-scale recovery processes exceeding 100 years in tropical forests, and will determine if observed forest dynamics are driven by disturbances that occurred before modern ecological surveys began. I will then quantify the extent to which past disturbances create an overestimation of carbon storage potential, driving a profound reexamination of carbon sequestration and biodiversity patterns in Amazonia. ver más
31/12/2024
UvA
1M€
Duración del proyecto: 62 meses Fecha Inicio: 2019-10-25
Fecha Fin: 2024-12-31

Línea de financiación: concedida

El organismo H2020 notifico la concesión del proyecto el día 2019-10-25
Línea de financiación objetivo El proyecto se financió a través de la siguiente ayuda:
ERC-2019-STG: ERC Starting Grant
Cerrada hace 6 años
Presupuesto El presupuesto total del proyecto asciende a 1M€
Líder del proyecto
UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM No se ha especificado una descripción o un objeto social para esta compañía.
Perfil tecnológico TRL 4-5