The project will consist of collecting a suite of plant ecophysiological traits at the field site located at Tanguro ranch in Matto Grosso, Brazil located at the Amazon-Cerrado ecotone. The traits we will be collecting, (ψgs50, gcuti20, P50, KPlant) , will characterize plant water stress. These traits will be used to pararmeterize the SurEau-Ecos Model, which is a trait-based model of drought mortality. Collecting these traits and using them in conjunction with this model will allow us to make large-scale predictions of drought mortality under different CMIP6 simulations of future drought conditions.
In addition, we will be sampling traits along a gradient of disturbance which will allow us to contrast the models predictions of mortality between disturbed and undisturbed forests. The primary goal of this project is to determine what patterns of mortality will look like under increasingly severe drought conditions. The secondary goal is to determine whether disturbed forests are more or less vulnerable to drought mortality. These questions are of the utmost importance as the widespread disturbance of the Amazon-Cerrado region through land-use change has lead to questions about how it will be shaped by climate change.