Plant ecology

Plants can cope with fluctuating and variable climatic conditions to a certain extent, beyond which their growth is reduced and their organs are damaged, with cascading effects on all the ecosystem components – from soil processes to herbivory - and ecosystem services – primary production and their reliability, regulating services.

We are facing fast and extensive changes in climatic conditions. How do plants and plant communities in intensely managed ecosystems respond to variable and changing climatic conditions? How can these ecosystems be managed to reduce the vulnerability to more extreme climatic conditions? And how can this goal be achieved while maintaining productivity and reducing negative environmental effects? 

We are particularly interested in management practices exploiting ecological processes in the field and landscape for improved ecosystem services and their year-to-year reliability. Examples are diversifying plant species or use of plants with specific traits. Ultimately, we assess to what extent these practices can help adapting agroecosystems and forests to changing climatic conditions, and their environmental, economic and societal implications.

To these aims, we develop process-based models, capturing the mechanisms driving matter and energy fluxes in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum, and the role of plant traits, plant ecophysiological processes, and single and co-occurring abiotic stressors. In parallel, to investigate long-term responses and net effects, we collate and statistically analyze large datasets from different sources – from long-term field experiments, surveys and farm reporting, to meteorological data, global climate model outputs. With these quantitative tools, we characterize ecosystem functioning and productivity under variable conditions and specific management practices.