From LEAF to Terrestrial Biosphere Model: Integrating multi-scale observations of highly diverse tropical ecosystems for global scale simulations

2026-07-22

The representation of terrestrial ecosystems is a key source of uncertainty in future projections of the coupled carbon cycle/climatic system. Current Terrestrial Biosphere Models (TBMs) represent the worldwide vegetation by a dozen of rigid Plant Functional Types (PFT), with empirical mechanisms calibrated on discrete observations. As a result, TBMs represent highly diverse ecosystems such as tropical forests with only one clone of the same plant. This over-simplified representation arises from the lack of observations in some regions such as over Africa, which leads to widely diverging results for C cycling and nutrient/water limitations under future scenarios. Simulating plant diversity is crucial for assessing global change impact on ecosystems and their feedback on climate. LEAF2TBM targets the unresolved challenge for TBMs to simulate the effects of plant diversity on tropical forest ecosystem functioning and associated global biogeochemical cycles based on an integrated assessment of processes across different scales. I will achieve this by using unique concomitant field observations of carbon dioxide and water vapor exchanges measured at multiple scales (from individuals to ecosystem) and state-of-the-art modelling approaches to ( 1 ) accurately quantify the effect of the functional diversity on ecosystems fluxes for two forests located in the Congo Basin and Amazon; ( 2 ) disentangle the roles of species composition and environment on ecosystems fluxes; and ( 3 ) provide a robust estimate of the global C budget uncertainty for tropical forests in TBMs. LEAF2TBM will enhance EU scientific excellence and will be a crucial step for guiding the development of the next generation TBMs that are central for policy decision making. The science excellence and training through LEAF2TBM will enable me to apply for senior research positions or an ERC starting grant in the future, which would allow me to establish my own research group on terrestrial ecology.

Belgium

2026-02-15