CANOPI - Central African Network of Observatories of troPIcal tree and forest functioning (FWO/FNRS EOS)

Date
October 2022 to December 2025
Keywords
resilience
African forests
climate change
deforestation
forest degradation
phenology
foliar water uptake
seasonal drought
bark photosynthesis
Central Africa
carbon stocks and sequestration
tropical forest
species distribution
drought physiology
Institutions
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique (CENAREST) (Gabon)
Institut National des Etudes et Recherches Agronomique (INERA) (Congo-Kinshasa)
Research fields
Biology and Life Sciences
Earth and Environmental Sciences

The CANOPI project is funded under the "EOS - Excellence of Science" 2021 call of FWO and FNRS (EOS reference number: O.0026.22). This is a consortium project between ULiège (main PI Adeline Fayolle, co-PI Jean-François Bastin), UGent (co-PI’s Wannes Hubau and Kathy Steppe), CENAREST-Gabon (co-PI’s Katharine Abernethy and Alfred Ngomanda) and INERA-DRCongo (co-PI Bhély Angoboy). The general ambition of the CANOPI project is to contribute to understanding resilience of central African forests to climate change. While deforestation and forest degradation remain the top human threats on tropical forests, climate is expected to progressively shift to drier conditions in the tropical belt, adding an extra pressure on the system with large-scale die-back of tropical trees. The situation might be even more alarming in Africa, where climate is already drier and more seasonal than in the other tropical regions. Whether tropical forests in central Africa will be sensitive to drier conditions –because trees are already limited by water availability– or resistant –because species are adapted to seasonal drought– is the ambitious challenge CANOPI aims to tackle. We propose a pioneering, transdisciplinary approach that will address four pressing fundamental scientific questions in specific work packages (WP) with a fifth WP dedicated to upscaling.