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Project properties |
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| Title | Seed rain during secondary succession in tropical wet forest in Mexico |
| Group | Forest Ecology and Forest Management Group |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 39 |
| Supervisor(s) | FEM group: Frans Bongers
Other organisation: prof. Miguel Martínez-Ramos – CIECO Mexico |
| Examiner(s) | Prof.Dr. F.J.J.M (Frans) Bongers |
| Contact info | Frans.Bongers@wur.nl |
| Begin date | 2018/01/01 |
| End date | |
| Description | Secondary forests, regrowing after agricultural fields are abandoned, need input of seeds to develop. The seed rain (number and type of seeds) partly determine the possible growth trajectories of these forests. In this project, you will use an exciting dataset in which trees in 13 secondary forest plots in Mexico of different ages have been monitored over 13 years for growth and development, while seed rain data are available for five years. You will determine the spatial and temporal variation on seed fall in a secondary forest area. As a next step, you will investigate whether temporal changes in seed rain relate to climate, and assess effects of forest age on seed rain. Possibly you may explore the relation between seed rain and the standing and recruiting vegetation. The study does not involve field work, but a short stay in Mexico including field visit is possible.
Keywords to search by in the database (remove those that are not applicable) Biodiversity and functional diversity/ Plant-animal interactions/ Population and forest dynamics/ Sustainable forest management/ Forest restoration and succession / America's/ /Tropical zone |
| Used skills | Database handling, statistical analyses using eg SPSS or R |
| Requirements | FEM-30306 Forest Ecology and Forest Management; REG-31806 Ecological Methods I |