Marie Curie CIG Grants

Univ. Prof. Douglas L. Godbold (Institute of Forest Ecology) and Assist. Prof. Rupert Seidl (Institute of Silviculture) from the Department of Forest- and Soil Sciences have each been awarded a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (CIG). Prof. Godbold will be working on relationships between tree- and mycorrhiza diversity and the functioning and stability of forest ecosystems in his CIG LINKTOFUN (Linking tree and belowground biodiversity to forest Ecosystem function). A particular emphasis of the work will be on the link between biodiversity and soil carbon dynamics. Investigations will be conducted in nature reserves, a newly established tree biodiversity experiment in Tulln, as well as mesocosms. The project aims at contributing to our understanding of the link between biodiversity and ecosystem services in forest ecosystems. In the CIG SAGE (Simulating adaptation of forest management to changing climate and disturbance regimes) Assist. Prof. Seidl asks how changing climatic conditions will affect forest ecosystem functions and services, and which adaptation pathways are available for management. A particular focus of the project is on the potential for climate-related changes in the disturbance regime, i.e. increasing damage from wind and bark beetle outbreaks, and their consequences for the sustainable provisioning of ecosystem services. In this regard the spatially explicit forest landscape model iLand, developed by Seidl and hosted at BOKU, will be extended with regard to disturbance interactions and management processes. The project thus aims to contribute to the challenge of managing forest ecosystems under (increasing) uncertainty.