Our research group focuses on understanding how plants respond to global environmental change: increasing CO2, temperature, and changing water availability. We integrate a range of observation streams (e.g., manipulation experiments, eddy covariance, and satellite data) with vegetation models and statistical approaches to improve our understanding and capacity to predict future ecosystem change.
We tackle a diverse range of questions that connect terrestrial ecosystems with climate, including:
- how will plants respond to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration?
- can we predict when & where trees might die of drought-induced mortality?
- what acclimation potential do plants have to projected warming & drought?
- what role does legacy to past environmental conditions play in our capacity to predict ecosystem resilience?
- how does plant physiology affect land-atmosphere feedbacks during climate extremes?
- how will plant responses to environmental change affect the future hydrological cycle?
- how resilient are species distributions to climate change & how will distributions shift in the future?
- what role do urban trees play in mitigating climate-related warming & what species should we be planting in cities of the future?
Modelling is central tool used by our research group to understand, disentangle and project how climate and climate change will shape future vegetation-atmosphere dynamics. Our group employs models of varying complexity, from simple (GDAY), to the more complex: stand (MAESPA), land surface (CABLE, JULES), dynamic vegetation (LPJ-GUESS; SDGVM) and coupled-climate (ACCESS) models.
"The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit" - Karl Popper