George Furey, Line Nybakken and Johan Asplund have received a two-year MSCA fellowship titled, “BEREFT: Bilberry Ecology and the Regeneration of forest Ecosystem Functioning”
Human impacts such as clearcut harvesting may leave forests bereft of some of the organisms that underpin their functioning. The decline of key plant species may reduce the capacity of forests to store carbon (C) and provide ecosystem services to the people of Europe. The restoration of forest ecosystem functioning requires a deeper understanding of how the traits of its species can be linked to ecosystem processes.
Combining chemical ecology and an innovative experimental design
The BEREFT project aims to elucidate how the plant traits of bilberry, Vaccinium myrtillus, modulate the dynamics of C and nitrogen (N) within the boreal forest. The project combines advances in chemical ecology and is nested within the existing EcoForest project hosted at MINA that pairs experimental plots in formerly clearcut forests with those from near-natural forests.
How to link species traits to the generation of ecosystem functioning?
Furey will collect a comprehensive set of bilberry's chemical traits and test both in-situ and in-vitro experiments to determine the underlying mechanism linking bilberry traits to ecosystem biogeochemistry. The project, interdisciplinary in its focus, aims to combine the expertise in chemical analyses, soil science and ecology within the MINA faculty.
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