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Speaker:  Martijn Slot, Earl S. Tupper Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama

Global warming may severely impact lowland tropical forests by bringing tropical trees closer to their physiological thresholds. Given the importance of tropical forests in regulating the earth’s climate, it is important to understand how rising temperatures affect the capacity of tropical trees to take up and store carbon.

Martijn will present a series of projects aimed at understanding the effects of temperature on gas exchange properties of tropical forest vegetation over different timescales. The results will be discussed in the context of predicting the future of tropical forests in a warming world.

Martijn Slot is currently an Earl S. Tupper postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, where he previously had a ForestGEO postdoctoral fellowship. He received his PhD in 2013 from the University of Florida, where he worked with Kaoru Kitajima on tropical plant ecophysiology.  He did a Masters of Research (MRes.) in Ecology and Environmental Management at the University of York, working with Owen Atkin and (externally) with Lourens Poorter, and studied forestry at Wageningen University.