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Prashant Paudel

Candidature

PhD Candidate

Thesis Title

Improved Modelling of Plant Competition through Traits

Research Project Summary

Prashant Paudel Competition between individuals and plant species plays a pivotal role in shaping vegetation’s structural and compositional dynamics, exerting a profound influence on ecosystem functioning. The nature and intensity of the competition depend on the environmental conditions, manifesting the distribution and abundance of plant traits and functional strategies impacting both individual and population performance.

Vegetation dynamics models, such as LPJ-GUESS, are vital tool for simulating and modelling global change impact and Earth systems. This model incorporates a fundamental framework representing competition for essential resources such as light, space, and soil resources among various plant functional types. However, mechanistic links between traits and competition in the model, an evaluation of the resulting emergent effects of competition on the outputs has been limited.

In doing so, this research endeavours to illuminate the intricate interplay of competition as an emergent phenomenon within the second-generation dynamic vegetation model, LPJ-GUESS, shedding light on the complex relationships between plant traits, environmental variables, and ecosystem functioning, all while examining the contrasting landscapes of rainfall patterns in Australia and temperature gradients in Nepal.

Supervisors

Professor Ben Smith, Professor Mark Tjoelker, Mikael Pontarp (Lund University, Sweden), Stefan Olin (Lund University, Sweden), Daniel Metcalfe (Umeå University, Sweden)