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Project properties |
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| Title | Nutrient balances in tropical trees |
| Group | Forest Ecology and Forest Management Group |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 24-36 |
| Supervisor(s) | Masha van der Sande |
| Examiner(s) | Prof. Lourens Poorter |
| Contact info | masha.vandersande@wur.nl |
| Begin date | 2020/05/01 |
| End date | |
| Description | MSc thesis / MSc internship
Trees compete for the acquisition of nutrients. Nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are crucial for plant growth and survival. Species can have different strategies to deal with (limiting) nutrient availability, which depend on the local soil fertility, but also on species’ strategies related to other limiting conditions such as drought. Often, the limitation of nutrients is reflected by the nutrient concentrations in the leaves and wood. Nevertheless, leaves and wood serve completely different purposes in a tree, and have different lifespan. It is therefore still unclear how leaf and wood nutrient concentrations are coordinated, and how they are associated to species’ functional strategies to deal with low fertility. Here, you can work with a large dataset of nutrient contents of leaves and wood from almost 100 tree species from tropical forest in Guyana (on very nutrient-poor soils) and Brazil (on somewhat more fertile soils). You can also link these data to other functional traits (e.g. deciduousness, specific leaf area, wood density, capacity to fix nitrogen) to assess species’ functional strategies to acquire and conserve nutrients. Corona proof: i.e.no field work (abroad) or intensive lab studies required Ecophysiology/ America's/ Tropical zone/ Desk study |
| Used skills | |
| Requirements | FEM-30306 Forest Ecology and Forest Management and
REG-31806 Ecological Methods I (or comparable statistical experience and tree ecology) |