Forest Ecosystems Workshop 2027: Extreme Climate and Forest Ecosystems: Impacts, Resilience and Adaptation

Outline

Extreme climate can profoundly influence forest ecosystems, affecting their structure, functioning and dynamics, with important implications for biodiversity, carbon cycling and ecosystem services. Forest responses to extreme climate vary across ecosystem types and environmental contexts and are shaped by multiple interacting climatic and ecological factors. Climate change is an additional factor impacting forests, both producing the possibility of increased extreme events and modifying the conditions forest experience at environmental extremes.

This workshop will bring together scientists with expertise in forest ecology, ecophysiology, climatology, biogeochemistry and ecosystem modelling. It aims to facilitate the exchange of recent research advances, explore the impacts and ecological mechanisms of extreme climate on forest ecosystems, and identify key research priorities for advancing our understanding of forest ecosystem resilience and adaptation.

The workshop will involve 1.5 days of presentations by keynote speakers at Beijing Forestry University, followed by a visit to Northeast Forestry University, and a field visit to experiments at the Mohe Forest Ecosystem Observation and Research Station (intended for keynote speakers and invited participants).

The workshop will lead to a special issue of Forest Ecosystems on "Extreme Climate and Forest Ecosystems: Impacts, Resilience and Adaptation". It will include contributions from keynote speakers as well as submissions from the wider research community. Discussions during the workshop are expected to provide a basis for developing a synthesis paper on future research directions in extreme climate and forest ecosystems.

The scientific program will be coordinated by Prof. Lucas Cernusak (James Cook University, Australia), Prof. Pavel Krestov (Botanical Garden-Institute, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), Prof. Keping Ma (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China), and Prof. John Kershaw (University of New Brunswick, Canada).

Schedule:

• June 27 – Arrival in Beijing
• June 28 – Keynote presentations, posters
• June 29 – Keynote presentations, posters and/or transfer to Harbin
• June 30 – Workshop discussion at Northeast Forestry University
• July 01 – From Harbin to Mohe
• July 02 – Field visit to experiments at Mohe Forest Ecosystem Observation and Research Station
• July 03 – Back to Beijing

Keynote speakers:

To be updated in December

For more information, please contact the Editorial Office of Forest Ecosystems at forestecosystems@bjfu.edu.cn, or Ms. Zhen Huang at huangzhen@bjfu.edu.cn.