Wageningen University
Global climate has changed more dramatically since 1950, with the human activities have led to declining of biodiversity. The disappearance or degradation of some ecosystems, seriously affecting ecosystem services and functions. Productivity is a fundamental and important component of ecosystem functioning and continued loss of biodiversity will lead to an accelerated decline in global forest productivity. Therefore, to assess the relationship between biodiversity and productivity, I will take advantage of an ongoing experiment, where three thinning treatments in each plot: removal of 30% of the basal area of the dominant species, rare species, and the random removal of 30% of the basal area, and it contains three aspects: disturbance(thinning), dominate and rare species, richness and evenness. I will test the hypotheses that 1) stand productivity will decrease with the thinning treatment, 2) stand productivity will decrease with the removal of dominate species and rare species in the long term, and 3) stand productivity will increase with the increase of species richness and evenness. The aim of this research is to help further clarify the relationship between tropical secondary forest plant diversity and ecosystem productivity and their underlying mechanisms and provide a theoretical basis for scientific forest creation and management.
