Honours supervisors and projects

Patrick Baker

Tropical Forest Ecology

Telephone: 9905 0508
Email: patrick.baker@sci.monash.edu.au

I am interested in forest dynamics—how forests change in structure and composition over time. Much of my research has focused on the use of tree-rings to reconstruct the historical forest dynamics of species-rich tropical forests in South and Southeast Asia. I also participate in a large-scale, permanent forest dynamics plot project in Thailand. The study plot has 80,000 trees from ~250 tree species, all of which were measured in 1994, 1999, and 2004. Complementary phenological studies have been ongoing for 5 years. A wide range of potential projects exploring these datasets are available.

Potential Honours projects in my lab include, but are not limited to:

Reconstructing historical disturbance patterns in mixed deciduous forest in western Thailand

The role of disturbance in tropical forests is widely appreciated but poorly documented due to the lack of annual rings in most tropical tree species. In the seasonal tropics of Thailand, however, many tree species form annual growth rings. This project will use tree-ring analyses of ~15 tree species to reconstruct the disturbance history of a mixed deciduous forest over the past two centuries.

Identifying tropical tree species with dendroclimatic potential

Tropical tree species that form annual growth rings may be able to provide much needed data on historical interannual climate variation for tropical regions of the world. This project will compare long-term instrumental climate records (rainfall and temperature) with cross-dated tree-ring records for 10-20 tree species from western Thailand to assess the strength of correlations between climate and the tree-ring record.

The paradox of the Asian monsoon forests: a community-wide analysis of the timing of leaf flushing

A preliminary study in the seasonal tropics of Thailand suggested that many deciduous tree species flush new leaves in the middle of the dry season. Because of the high water requirements of new leaves and the intensity of the seasonal drought, this behaviour seems counter-intuitive. Indeed, in neotropical tree species it is extremely rare. This project would analyse a large, multi-year phenology dataset to determine the extent of dry season flushing in Thai tree species. The dataset could also be used to examine questions regarding interannual and intraspecific variation in the timing of flushing.