aerial view of forest

NGEE-Tropics Project

 

What is NGEE-Tropics?

The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments–Tropics, or NGEE-Tropics, is a ten-year, multi-institutional project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER).  NGEE-Tropics aims to fill the critical gaps in knowledge of tropical forest-climate system interactions.  The overarching goal of NGEE-Tropics is to develop a predictive understanding of how tropical forest carbon balance and climate system feedbacks will respond to changing environmental drivers over the 21st Century.  

In its current Phase 1, NGEE-Tropics is assessing what is known about tropical forest ecosystems and how well these processes are represented in Earth system models (ESMs). Uncertainty assessments are informing field and laboratory studies that will provide new, high-priority data for forest ecosystem models.  Several initial field studies are underway at key sites, including pilot studies in Brazil, Panama, and Puerto Rico, and a select group of ForestGEO sites across the tropics. Measurements at these sites address:

•   Forest carbon cycle−hydrology interactions
•   Nutrient limitations in tropical secondary forests
•   Plant functional diversity response to climate change
•   Regional variation in the causes of tree mortality