April 14, 2010

CTFS-Arnold Arboretum Co-Hosts 6th Annual Harvard Plant Biology Symposium on 29-30 April

Harvard University's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (OEB) in partnership with the CTFS-Arnold Arboretum Program will host the 6th Annual Harvard Plant Biology Symposium. This year’s theme is "Trees and the Global Environment.” The symposium is supported by CTFS-AA, OEB, and the HSBC Climate Partnership.


Live Webcast of Harvard PBI Symposium: 29 & 30 April

Speakers represent both empirical and modeling/theory perspectives and come from diverse disciplines in plant science and resource economics. Presentations will range from the functional responses of individual trees to changing environmental conditions all the way up to ecosystem and landscape-scale responses. Poster presentations will showcase important research being done on plants at the Arnold Arboretum and at Harvard more broadly. For more information, visit: http://www.pbi.fas.harvard.edu/events.htm.

Program: Trees and the Global Environment

THUR, 29 APRIL

Eva Pell, Smithsonian Institution
Introductory Comments

Stephen Pacala, Princeton University
Scaling from physiology to the globe in models of forest dynamics

Deborah Clark, University of Missouri-St. Louis / OTS
Tropical forests in a changing world: Profound global implications and the evolving evidence

Steven Wofsy, Harvard University
Do forests really sequester carbon: A critical reassessment based on case studies spanning the climate spectrum

Peter Reich, University of Minnesota
Linking plant traits, community dynamics, and ecosystems processes across scales: Why might this matter in a changing world?

Tom Bruns
, University of California, Berkeley
Dispersal of ectomycorrhizal fungi through space and time during post-fire regeneration of pine forests

David Neale, University of California, Davis
Development and application of genomic-based tools to nanage forest tree populations in response to climate change

Anna Sala, University of Montana
Physiological mechanisms of drought-induced tree mortality: There is much to learn

FRI, 30 APRIL

Jeffrey Vincent
, Duke University
Valuing changes in tropical rainforests

Gregory Asner,
Carnegie Institution for Science / Stanford University
Chemical phylogeny and remote sensing of tropical canopies

Jason McLachlan, University of Notre Dame
Anticipating the combined impact of forest fragmentation and climate-driven range shifts on forest genetics

Helene Muller-Landau, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
The tolerance-fecundity tradeoff and the maintenance of seed size diversity in variable and changing environments

Richard Condit, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Impact of environment and species input on diversity in stochastic community models and Center for Tropical Forest Science plots

Yadvinder Malhi
, Oxford University
The productivity and carbon cycle of lowland and montane tropical forests in Amazonia

Daniel Nepstad, Woods Hole Research Center
Managing the Amazon forest dieback