Captured Sunshine: Productivity and Energy Flow of Tropical Rainforests
Life on Earth is powered by the capture of sunshine and its conversion into chemical energy, and then the transfer of this energy into other trophic levels. Tropical rainforests are the most productive biomes on Earth but little is known about how and why they vary in productivity across regions. Professor Yadvinder Malhi will discuss how we measure the productivity of a tropical forest, and present results from sites across the tropics ranging across Amazonia, Africa and southeast Asia. He will look at how this productivity is distributed between the forest canopy, wood and fine roots and then use satellite data to produce global maps of productivity. Finally, he will explore the flow of this energy from vegetation to mammals and birds, and what this means for how we think about intact and degraded forests.
Time: 18:00 GMT
