Professor Patrick Meir

I am interested in the functioning of forest ecosystems and how this varies with species composition, climate and soil resources. My main focus has been the ecophysiology of plants and soil although my work, and that of my team, has ranged from investigating plant and soil processes to vegetation modelling and remote sensing. I have led analysis of the impacts of drought on the Amazon rainforest carbon cycle through use of a large-scale field-experimental approach and associated modelling collaborations. Understanding responses to warming and drought is critical to our assessment of rainforests as key elements of the Earth system, and I am now extending some of these studies in SE Asia and Australia.

In related work, I have identified nutrient- and climate-related constraints to photosynthesis and respiration in tropical foliage and woody tissue, challenging widely-used modelling assumptions. I have also developed new understanding of soil respiration in tropical soils using a large-scale soil translocation experiment in the Peruvian Andes to address the roles of temperature, moisture, soil physical properties and soil community diversity in constraining decomposition rates. In recent years my group has also published on root ecology, soil carbon storage, the use of radar to quantify tropical biomass for land use planning, and on the vulnerability and use of ‘ecosystem services’ in tropical ecosystems.

Projects

Supervisor

• Amazalert: raising the alert about critical feedbacks between climate and land use change in Amazonia

• Biological controls on soil respiration and its climatic response across a large tropical elevation gradient

• Disentangling climate and evolutionary controls over the temperature-dependence of leaf respiration

• The causes and effects of mortality in tropical Australian trees

• Understanding how drought affects the risk of increased mortality in tropical rain forests

• Understanding range limits and plant migration in response to climate change in Neotropical montane forests: moving from observational models to mechanisms

Researcher

• Amazalert: raising the alert about critical feedbacks between climate and land use change in Amazonia

• Biological controls on soil respiration and its climatic response across a large tropical elevation gradient

• Disentangling climate and evolutionary controls over the temperature-dependence of leaf respiration

• The causes and effects of mortality in tropical Australian trees

• Understanding how drought affects the risk of increased mortality in tropical rain forests

• Understanding range limits and plant migration in response to climate change in Neotropical montane forests: moving from observational models to mechanisms