01 July 2021

Making the Top 100 in Ecology: the story of a successful research paper

IIASA researcher Florian Hofhansl tells the story of a paper resulting from a decade of research that was recently included in the Top 100 most downloaded ecology papers published in 2020.

© Horia Vlad Bogdan | Dreamstime.com

© Horia Vlad Bogdan | Dreamstime.com

A study featured today on IIASA’s NEXUS research blog once again highlights that a systematic integrated approach is necessary when gaining insights into natural processes, such as plant species composition and vegetation carbon storage, both of which affect the functioning of tropical forests under projected climate change.

Research like this enables scientists to determine how much of man-made carbon emissions will be sequestered into plant biomass or will be released back to the atmosphere, and therefore might further heat up the climate system.

“Our findings indicate that we would have to account for the small-scale heterogeneity of the landscape in order to understand future ecosystem responses to projected climate change, and thus to accurately predict associated tropical ecosystem services under future scenarios”, says Hofhansl (lead author of the study conducted by an international consortium).

The positive uptake by the research community echoes the value of conducting on-site experiments that empower researchers to understand crucial ecosystem processes and applying the obtained results in next-generation models, designed to forecast climate change and its impact on humankind. 



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Last edited: 01 July 2021

CONTACT DETAILS

Florian Hofhansl

Research Scholar Biodiversity, Ecology, and Conservation Research Group - Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program

Research Scholar Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group - Advancing Systems Analysis Program

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Phone: (+43 2236) 807 0 Fax:(+43 2236) 71 313