National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan, NSTC 114-2311-B-002-016-MY3; duration: 2025/08/01-2028/07/31

We plan to use plant functional traits to understand the impact of environmental variables on ecosystem processes such as biomass accumulation, decomposition, carbon stabilization and nutrient cycling. These processes are critical in mitigating climate change by regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. We focus on subtropical montane rainforest in Taiwan, and resurvey small permanent vegetation plots affected be either fog frequency or chronic wind (or both) to quantify the dynamics of forest development. We also measure a set of environmental variables and monitor microclimate to understand environmental heterogeneity and changes in these plots. By quantifying plant functional traits related to economy and decomposition, we plan to create a predictive link between environmental variation and ecosystem processes. This allows us to better understand the mechanisms by which environment influences ecosystem processes, and also offer practical way how to predict changes in ecosystem processes in the future.

The study will utilize four datasets: two 1-ha forest dynamics plots which we plan to resurvey, one horizontal transect with 27 20 x 20 m permanent plots along fog frequency which we also plan to resurvey, and broad-scale occurrence data of plants in Taiwan which we plan to compile. Permanent plot data will be used to quantify ecosystem processes like litter decomposition and biomass accumulation, and for some of the plots also carbon stabilization and nutrient recycling. We will also collect traits of woody species (and ferns in case of the horizontal transect) and link them with environmental variables and ecosystem processes. For broad-scale occurrence data, we will use large-scale GIS layers to compile species ecological optima along fog frequency and wind intensity (so called “Ellenberg-type indicator values”) and link them with species traits compiled from available trait databases and collected by our lab.

We defined four main aims to study links between traits, environment and ecosystem processes. For each aim we formulated example hypotheses (H0 for null hypothesis and H1 for alternative hypothesis), proposed how these hypotheses can be tested, and suggested possible result and interpretation. This allows us to clearly define the main directions of our study. The methodological novelties include the focus on temporal changes in vegetation, measuring ecosystem processes behind carbon sequestration, broadening the range of measured plant functional traits, and increasing the quality of our environmental data. Temporal changes will offer information unavailable from classical snapshot sampling, including insights into biotic interactions between individuals. Measuring biomass accumulation and litter decomposition will elucidate how these forests function, and linking them to functional traits will allow us to predict changes in future climate scenarios.

We believe that the findings from this study will provide important insights for forecasting climate change-induced alterations in ecosystem processes and inform management and conservation strategies for forests affected by changing fog frequency and wind intensity conditions.

National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan, NSTC 113-2311-B-002-017; duration: 2024/08/01-2025/07/31

This project examines how environmental shifts, specifically the reduced fog frequency and chronic wind intensity due to climate change, may impact natural plant communities and their ecosystem processes. The study employs a trait- based response-effect framework to explore the relationship between environmental changes, plant functional traits, and ecosystem processes. The project's goal is to understand the influence of fog and wind on woody species' fitness through their response traits, and how communities of these species subsequently affect biomass accumulation and decomposition in forest ecosystems through effect traits. Biomass accumulation and decomposition are ecosystem processes which are key to forest carbon sequestration, mitigating climate change by regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

The research will be conducted at two levels: community and species. At the community level, the study involves resurveying two 1-hectare forest dynamics plots, one affected by frequent fog and another by chronic wind, and also a transect of multiple 400 square meter permanent plots along a fog frequency gradient. It will also include detailed environmental measurements, ecosystem process assessments, species composition analysis, and plant functional trait evaluations. Traits will be measured on inter- and intra-specific levels and include not only morphological but also chemical, structural and biomechanical characteristics of leaves and stems. Other key measurements include microclimate monitoring, soil analysis, measurements of biomass accumulation, and in-situ decomposition experiments. At the species level, the study will link plant functional traits to ecological optima along fog and wind gradients across Taiwan. This will involve analysing traits by which plants respond to these environmental factors, sourced from databases, published studies, and our own field measurements. To calculate species ecological optima analogous to Ellenberg-type indicator values, we will use an approach that integrates plant distribution data with geographic information system layers for fog frequency and wind intensity.

The methodological novelties include the focus on temporal changes in vegetation, measuring ecosystem processes behind carbon sequestration, and broadening the range of measured plant functional traits. Temporal changes will offer information unavailable from classical snapshot sampling, including insights into biotic interactions between individuals. Measuring biomass accumulation and decomposition will elucidate how these forests function, and linking them to functional traits will allow us to predict changes in future climate scenarios.

Among the new traits that we plan to measure are also biomechanical and chemical ones, important as response traits to wind and as effect traits affecting decomposition. To conduct various tensile, bending and compression tests we plan to purchase a dedicated tensile tester, a major equipment investment of our project, and upgrade our trait room equipment. For simple chemical analyses of leaves and soil, we will designate a sample analysis area with a working bench and analytical equipment.

We acknowledge that there are challenges in addressing the effects of climate change on vegetation and ecosystems without extensive historical data. However, the findings from this study will provide important insights for forecasting climate change-induced alterations in ecosystem processes and inform management and conservation strategies for forests affected by changing fog frequency and wind intensity conditions.

National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan, NSTC 112-2621-B-002-004; duration: 2023/08/01-2024/07/31

At this project, we loosely connect to our previous MOST project entitled Taxonomic and functional diversity and geographical distribution of the Subtropical Montane Cloud Forest in Taiwan: A multiscale approach (MOST, 109-2621-B-002-002-MY3, conducted between 2020 and 2023), which largely focused on the effect of cloud frequency on vegetation. We plan to use some vegetation and environment data and built infrastructure. Namely, we will use data from the Lalashan Forest Dynamics Plot, whose survey was finished in 2020 and which we plan to resurvey within this proposed project, in 2025. We will also use data from our automated weather station renewed in Lalashan saddle, near LFDP, namely data about wind, precipitation, irradiation and fogginess, providing a valuable climatic reference for LFDP. Construction and maintenance of this weather station also teach us valuable lessons that we will use while constructing new automated weather station near the other forest dynamics plot we plan to resurvey, near Lopeishan. Some of the loggers purchased within the previous project will be reused within this proposed project, namely HOBO air temperature and relative humidity loggers, and also TOMST soil moisture and temperature loggers (even though we still need to purchase new batch of each logger types to cover the overall demand). Some of the small (20 m × 20 m) permanent vegetation plots, established along “vertical transect” within the cloud project, will be reused within the proposed project, since they are in relevant elevation and include strong windward and leeward topographical gradients. During the previous project we also improved our lab workflow for measuring leaf and wood traits for both woody and fern species. In this project, we plan to build on it and extend it for mechanical and water-related traits, relevant to the effect of chronic wind. We also experimented with alternative ways of measuring soil nutrients, using Plant Root Simulator membranes (PRS), and plan to use this cost-effective method to quantify available soil cations and anions also in the proposed project. We also tested different analytical methods to quantify plant ecological optima along the gradients of cloud frequency using data from herbarium specimen collections, and will use the same procedure to derive also plant optima along wind intensity gradient. And finally, we successfully applied the use of the Tea Bag decomposition experiment to measure litter decomposition by including an additional step, oven burning, to increase the precision of the decomposition rate and stabilization factor parameters; we will continue testing this method and compare it with standard leaf litter bag decomposition measurements done within the Lalashan Forest Dynamics Plot. Some of the findings from the previous project, e.g. those related to the effect of wind on leaf traits within the Lalashan Forest Dynamics Plots (presented at the IAVS conference in Madrid in June 2022 and currently under preparation for publication), are strongly relevant to our wind study and will provide important transition elements between our cloud and wind oriented studies.

Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, 109-2621-B-002-002-MY3; duration: 2020/08/01-2023/07/31

Mountain cloud forests worldwide belong to one of the most peculiar and at the same time one of the most endangered forest ecosystems. Frequent fog causes high air humidity and horizontal precipitations, which in turn also decrease air temperature, solar radiation and decomposition rate, resulting in a combination of the humid, dark and nutrient-limited environmental conditions. In Taiwan, around 48,000 ha of Subtropical Montane Cloud Forest (SMCF) still occurs in elevations between 1500–2500 m a.s.l. The main threat to cloud forests worldwide and also in Taiwan are land-use changes, mainly converting the forest into agricultural land or into forestry plantations, and anthropogenic climate change, which is likely to result in vertical uplift of the cloud base, directly affecting the habitats of cloud forests in lower elevations by drought. Since cloud forests provide important ecosystem services (e.g. availability of drinkable water for downstream regions), detailed understanding of the relationship between vegetation and environment is necessary for designing effective conservation and management strategies to protect their habitats.

In this project, we aim to study the SMCF in Taiwan, using a multiscale approach. We will focus on three distinct scale levels (in the sense of extent): fine-scale, regional scale and broad-scale of the whole Taiwan. Fine-scale studies will include establishing and resurveying a small (1-ha) forest dynamics plots, with a focus on exploring the spatial, compositional and age structure of selected cloud forest stands. The study at the regional scale will focus on the effect of cloud on the taxonomic and functional composition of forest vegetation while minimizing the effect of other confounding environmental factors. For this, we will sample vegetation plots along “horizontal transect”, located along the east-west gradient of decreasing cloud frequency and intensity, with individual localities at similar elevations. The study at the broad, whole-Taiwan scale, will focus on explaining vertical distribution pattern of lower and upper cloud forest in the context of Massenerhebung effect, and also describing the diversity pattern of forest vegetation along elevation. Massenerhebung effect combines together the effect of landmass heating (increasing the elevation of vegetation types against expectation in the central parts of the mountain ranges) with the effect of cloud and wind (decreasing the elevation in the marginal parts of mountain ranges and at isolated mountains); understanding relative importance of these effects will be useful for forecasting the upslope shift of the cloud forest under future climate scenarios.

Our goal is to understand in more detail the fine-scale dynamics of cloud forest vegetation and compare the importance of individual fine-scale and broad-scale environmental factors on the diversity, composition and distribution of cloud forest in Taiwan. Since cloud forest ecosystems are under threat from ongoing climate change and land-use changes, this information is necessary for predicting its response to climate change and changes in its diversity, species composition and spatial distribution in the future.

Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, 106-2621-B-002-003-MY3; duration: 2017/08/01-2020/07/31

Taiwan as a subtropical island exposed to East-Asian monsoon system offers a unique opportunity to study vegetation along two peculiar stress gradients, cloud frequency and chronic-wind intensity. Frequent cloud or persistent strong winds have remarkable ecological effects on vegetation and require specific species adaptations. Cloud and monsoon forests thus represent unique vegetation types, hosting a number of endemic and relict species. In the near future, ongoing climate change is expected to modify both cloud frequency and chronic-wind intensity. To understand the impact of these changes on future diversity and species composition of cloud and monsoon forests and the ecological mechanisms behind has therefore not only high theoretical values, but also practical importance in conservation.

In this project, we will use patterns of forest vegetation along the gradient of cloud frequency and chronic-wind intensity in Taiwan as a model system to study mechanisms how species from species pool assemble to a local community. Apart from taxonomical approach (species census), we will also focus on plant functional traits, since these allow more mechanical and general explanation of environmental filtering. Four aims will be conducted on our model system:

1. to analyse species- and community-level changes in leaf and wood functional trait properties along cloud and wind gradients,
2. to analyse the pattern of taxonomic and functional diversity,
3. to compile Ellenberg-like species indicator values along gradients of cloud frequency and chronic-wind intensity, and
4. to identify cloud and wind specialists and their functional trait properties.

Additionally, we will invest considerable energy to sample the environment factors together with long-term microclimate monitoring, since detail knowledge of actual soil and microclimatic conditions are the keys to understanding how vegetation response to them.

Studies focused on cloud and wind gradients are rather rare, especially from subtropical regions, and many ecological questions remain unresolved. We believe that our project, applying modern methods from the toolbox of vegetation ecologists, can answer at least some of them. Such findings, apart from the general importance for theoretical ecology, have also a good potential for application in conservation, management and restoration of these habitats, which are threatened by land-use and climate changes.

Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, 105-2621-B-002-004; duration: 2016/09/01-2017/07/31

This project focuses on changes in species and functional composition of forest vegetation along two strong environmental stress gradients, namely gradient of cloud frequency and chronic-wind intensity, to better understand underlying processes of community assembly. Peculiar stress effects of elevated cloud and chronic-wind intensity on vegetation are far less studied and understood compared to other factors like productivity, temperature, precipitation or soil properties, offering potential for new and interesting findings. Taiwan, as a subtropical island exposed to frequent cloud formations from the sea and nearly constant winds related to East-Asian monsoon system, offers a unique opportunity to study forest vegetation along both stress gradients.

To study different aspects of changes in species composition along the cloud frequency and the chronic-wind intensity gradients, we will employ a wide range of methods which are part of the modern toolbox of vegetation ecologists, at both the whole-community and individual-species level. At the whole-community level, we will focus on describing patterns of taxonomic and functional alpha, beta and gamma diversity. We will also deconstruct the species composition into the level of individual species and examine the degree of their habitat specialisation and ecological preferences, which will allow us to link ecological behaviour of individual species with their functional trait properties.

An important part of the project is extensive field campaign focused on collecting vegetation and trait data along the studied gradients. Vegetation sampling will focus on all vegetation layers accessible from ground together with a thorough record of local environmental conditions, including detailed soil sample analysis. Part of the sampling strategy is also the establishment of a set of small-scale permanent plots equipped with sensors for microclimatic measurements. These plots will serve as a long-term reference localities for future re-sampling with potential for further and more detail investigations and monitoring. Additionally, we will use data from other sources, including data which we have collected within previous projects in Taiwan, vegetation plots from National Vegetation Database of Taiwan, publicly available floristic data (e.g. www.gbif.org), and datasets (vegetation and trait) from Japan which we will gain from our co-operation with Japanese colleagues (namely Prof. Yasuhiro Kubota and his team).