Global seed supply is too poorly understood to even speculate on its contribution to the regeneration of forests that are increasingly lost to disturbance, climate change, and extensive human management. Through collaborations with more than 100 international researchers, the MASTIF project has been established to assimilate seed production data for 12.1 million tree-years in more than 1000 species from all vegetated continents. The MASTIF is funded by Nation Science Foundation (NSF) to Jim Clark since 1990s. PI Qiu and Clark are now linking seed production to seedling recruits by synthesizing satellite and airborne remote sensing with the MASTIF network. This new project is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), with end-user from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (PA DCNR). PA DCNR will contribute both in-kind and computing support and collaborate with us to develop the decision-making tools. So far, we have addressed the following questions:
Currently, there are six published papers listed in the following. There is a view point paper, two papers in progress, and one manuscript in revision, with results available from contacting the PI Qiu.
This paper aims to understand the size-numbers trade-off in species seed production and how species traits have mediate the trade-off. The paper also reveals the effects of soil fertility on both individual and community fecundity at a global scale.
This paper confirmed the seed number-size trade-off across the trait spectrum based on the Species Seed Production (SSP) developed in Qiu et al. (2022), Nature Communications
This paper aims to understand the size-numbers trade-off in species seed production and how species traits have mediate the trade-off. The paper also reveals the effects of soil fertility on both individual and community fecundity at a global scale.
The orders of magnitude of differences in seed production from dry tundra to tropical rainforest beyond which can be explained by the Net Primary Production (NPP).
A global analysis finds that fecundity decline in large trees is pervasive, consistent with physiological decline, thus providing new evidence for tree senescence. For the 20% of species not showing fecundity declines, this lack of evidence was linked not to specific species groups, but rather to lack of large trees in the data.