Visiting PhD student, Pengcheng Liu is working with IGCB Professor Kai Zhu to study the shifts in richness and abundance across Chinese subtropical forests from a half-century window. By doing so, Pencheng and Prof Zhu hope to provide novel insights for the management and conservation of subtropical forests under climate change. Pencheng's background is in forest ecology and biogeography. Specifically, Pencheng is interested in species distribution and abundance modeling, and devoted into identifying the relative importance of multiple ecological processes, like selection and disposal, in shaping large-scale biodiversity or biogeographic patterns. Currently, the focus is on temporal dynamics of plant community in responses to environmental (e.g., climate, soil and Anthropocene) changes.

This research is being conducted according to the following:
1. Assembling a large dataset containing relative abundance records of tree species from 300 historically inventory plots, surveyed in around 1960s and 2010s, in Chinese subtropical region.
2. Comparing historic (1950s) and contemporary (2010s) communities and document changes in species richness, relative abundance and species composition across the Chinese subtropical forests, and explore the geographic patterns of these changes.
3. Comparing the relative contributions of abiotic factors (e.g., climate and land use changes) of the above changes and identity the underlying key drivers to predict the shifts in future environmental scenarios.
 

This work will contribute to the conservation policy-making of subtropical forests in the context of global change, and it is extremely relevant to the research scope of IGCB. As such, I am glad to as a IGCB Exchange Fellow.

Researchers involved: