Yennie Bredin , NMBU
Yennie Katarina Bredin
Swedish
E-mail: yennie.bredin@nmbu.no
Phone: +4767231733
PhD title: Forest structure, aboveground biomass and carbon stocks in the Amazonian Várzea
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Research (max 300 words):
I focus on flooded forests in the Amazon, the so-called Várzea in my PhD. These are forest terrestrial ecosystems for part of the year and aquatic ecosystems for part of the year. The forests are flooding during the European winter and the water levels therefore rise. Once fully flooded, most of the forests where I do most of my fieldwork will stand under up to 10 meters of water. These forests are thus very special and many of the tree species found in these forests depend on fish for their dispersal just as many species of fish depend on the Várzea for foraging and spawning.
The focus of my work is to investigate the contribution of Várzea to the global carbon cycle by estimating the above ground biomass and carbon stored in the living trees. Moreover, to explore some of the forest dynamics and how tree species and carbon stocks are distributed along the flooding gradient. The need to focus on várzea is of course linked to the threats posed to these unique forests and the need to preserve them (e.g. apart from climate change, some of the obvious threats are logging, over fishing, and hunting), and preserving the várzea ultimately will depend on understanding and sustainably managing the different human interests and resource uses within the várzea.