Advances in intensive monitoring plots of Quercus suber

Abstract

In Iberian Peninsula, the effects of climate change altered both precipitation and temperature regimes increasing the aridity in all territory. The extreme events are also increased with particular relevance to high temperature periods and prolonged drought. The new climatic dynamics and its unknow contribution to the forest systems functioning led to the necessity of new modelling approaches based on structural functional rational, more in line with basic sciences. For that modelling purpose, a set of intensive monitoring plots where installed with continuous monitoring systems of radiation absorption, interception of precipitation, evapotranspiration, nutrient uptake, photosynthesis, respiration, photosynthate allocation, senescence and mortality in addition with the tree 3D periodic dendrometric data all collected in long term ecological Mediterranean forest research plots. In the present work it is presented the complex data structure rational and the synchronic/diachronic statistics used for the presentation and analysis of the first results in cork oak forest systems. The results show the contribution of the functional structural variables on tree growth responses and permitted to develop the presented new modelling strategies