Partners

• CIFOR (Centre for International Forestry Research, basé en Indonesia)
• CIRAD
• CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, France)
• FRM (Forêts ressources management, France)
• FUSAGx (Faculté universitaire des sciences agronomiques de Gembloux, Belgique)
• IRD (Institut de recherche pour le développement, France)
• IRET (Institut de recherche en écologie tropicale, Gabon)
• JRC (Joint Common Research Centre, based in Brussels)
• MINRST (Ministry of Scientific Research and Technical Innovation, Congo)
• University of Aberdeen (United Kingdom)
• University of Oxford (United Kingdom)
• University of Bangui (Central African Republic)
• University of Yaoundé I (Cameroon)
• Marien Ngouabi University (Congo)

The CoForChange project is also backed by several private firms, which have provided it with their forest inventory data for the region.

Research units

Dynamics of Natural Forests

Contact

Sylvie Gourlet-Fleury
E-mail

Global change: what impact is it having on diversity in the forests of the Congo Basin?

13/03/2009 - Article

Sustainable management of large forest areas requires prior knowledge of their capacity to adapt to global change. The CoForChange project, coordinated by CIRAD, associates eight European partners, five African organizations and an international research centre, all of which are keen to take up this challenge.

Clearing, logging, an increasingly dry climate, etc, etc: the future of the forests of the Congo Basin, the second largest tropical forest area in the world after Amazonia, looks uncertain. These forests are a major source of income, goods and services for local people, and also for the international community (biodiversity and carbon). Can we now determine the main ways in which they are likely to change? This is the challenge to be taken up by CIRAD, associated with eight European partners, five African organizations and an international research centre, through the CoForChange project, which has just been launched.
Analysing past and present situations so as to suggest scenarios for future change
The investigations will centre on the forest region known as the "Sangha River Interval", which straddles three countries: Cameroon, Congo and the Central African republic. The zone, which covers several million hectares, saw periods of savannization in the past that have made it a model area for gaining a better understanding of the relations between environmental pressure and changes in forest formations. However, the results of the project will be of interest for the Congo Basin as a whole, since besides providing a comprehensive map of the current vegetation in the region, it should also shed light on how forest species react to global change.
The variability of these forests in terms of structure and floristic composition, and the causes of that variability, are to be studied in detail. In particularly, the aim will be to determine whether it is determined by water availability, which depends on climate change, or by changes in exposure to light as a result of human activity.
To this end, the researchers involved are planning to compare the characteristics of forest formations with a series of data on the physical environment: relief and soils, soil water availability, and susceptibility to variations in rainfall pattern. They will also be looking at the disturbances that have occurred over the past four millennia. Ancient disturbances will be assessed by studying pollens, phytoliths and charcoal. More recent disturbances will be characterized by cross-analyses of satellite images and available maps. In the field, the researchers will be inventorying regeneration, with a view to analysing the changes under way in terms of forest formation composition. Lastly, additional experiments will be conducted to determine the degree to which the main species found in the region are demanding in terms of light and of shade tolerance.

Decision support tools that take account of how forests respond to global change
The research teams will be using these results to model the possible future of the forest formations in the region, according to different scenarios for change in terms of climate and manmade pressure. Eventually, the project should be able to provide decision support tools for drafting national, regional and European forest management and biodiversity conservation strategies that allow for adaptation to global change.
CoForChange was selected under the ERA-NET BiodivERsA call for proposals, supported by the Agence nationale de la recherche. This ambitious project is scheduled to run for four years (2009-2012), and carries on from other projects already conducted by CIRAD with a view to better forest management in the Congo Basin: the FORAF project, the creation of a Congo Basin forest observatory, and the PARPAF project in the Central African Republic.

On the Internet
Dynamics of Natural Forest Research Unit
The CoForChange research project launch meeting was held in Montpellier from 3 to 6 February 2009. It was attended by thirty participants from most of the organizations involved.
The results of the project will be released regularly via a website that should be accessible in the next few weeks. URL available here shortly.

Literature
Delcamp M., Gourlet–Fleury S., Flores O., Garnier E., 2008. Can functional classification of tropical trees predict population dynamics after disturbance? Journal of Vegetation Science, 19: 209-220.
Engelbrecht B.M.J., Comita L.S., Condit R., Kursar T.A., Tyree M.T., Turner B.L., Hubbell S.P., 2007. Drought sensitivity shapes species distribution patterns in tropical forests. Nature, 447: 80-822.
Flores O., Gourlet-Fleury S., Picard N., 2006. Local disturbance, forest structure and dispersal effects on sapling distribution of light-demanding and shade-tolerant species in a French Guianan forest. Acta Oecologica, 29(2): 141-154.
Favier C., Chave J., Fabing A., Schwartz D., Dubois M.A., 2003. Modelling forest-savanna mosaic dynamics in man-influenced environments: effects of fire, climate and soil heterogeneity. Ecological Modelling, 171: 85-102.