The National Science Foundation has awarded a $443,010 grant to study tree biodiversity in China.
The grant – which funds the project from April 30, 2013 to Aug. 31, 2015 – is designed to “establish an international research coordination network that combines two existing forest networks in the United States with a set of forest plots in China, to advance understanding of how tree biodiversity determines the functional aspects of forests and to test hypotheses concerning the resilience of forests to global change.”
The grant abstract posted on the NSF website states that “an ultimate goal is to develop detailed models of forest composition and its genetic and functional basis, to be simulated over a range of climatic predictions.
“This integration across multiple dimensions of biodiversity will enhance understanding of how forests are structured, a critical step towards predicting how forests will respond to global change,” the abstract states.
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