The 2018 summer drought illustrates that European forests are exposed to increasingly drier and warmer climatic conditions. There is thus a recognizable need for better understanding how different tree species will cope with present and future drying and warming, as these forests are providing essential ecosystem services to society. My main research interest is to unravel the interplay between forests and the Earth’s climate system. I moved from statistical analyses of annual tree-growth patterns in relation to climate, from tropical to temperate forests, to a mechanistic approach of explaining wood formation on finer time scales. This shift convinced me that we need to acquire more insight into physiological mechanisms driving tree hydraulics and growth.

Highlight

My current Postdoc project (TREEFLOW; https://www.plantecology.ugent.be/research/) at the Ghent University was sparked by the 2015 summer droughts which illustrated that European forests are exposed to increasingly drier and warmer climatic conditions. The project, funded through a prestigious fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation, aims at improving our understanding on how different tree species will cope with future drought stress, by establishing a pan-European forest monitoring network of dendrometer, sap flow and wood anatomical measurements. With expertise in forest ecology and dendrochronology, I was able to incorporate stem hydraulic processes into wood production modelling. These insights allowed me to start bridging the knowledge gap between strongly controlled experiments on physiological mechanisms and observational studies on natural and managed forests.

CV

1. Postdoc in Plant Ecology – Laboratory of Plant Ecology, Ghent University, Belgium;
2. Postdoc in Dendrosciences - Forest Dynamics, Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Switzerland;
3. Visiting Researcher in Dendrochronology - Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, USA;
4. PhD in Botany – Department of Environmental Sciences, Basel University, Switzerland;
5. Visiting Researcher in Tropical Forest Ecology – Forest Ecology and Management, Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands;
6. MSc in Environmental Science – Utrecht University, the Netherlands;
7. BSc in Biology – Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

Relevant publications

1. Peters RL, Speich M, Pappas C, Kahmen A, von Arx G, Graf-Pannatier E, Steppe K, Treydte K, Stritih A, Fonti P. 2019. Contrasting stomatal sensitivity to temperature and soil drought in mature alpine conifers. Plant, Cell & Environment 42: 1674–1689. https://doi.org/10.1111/pce.13500
2. Peters RL, Fonti P, Frank DC, Poyatos R, Pappas C, Kahmen A, Carraro V, Prendin AL, Schneider L, Baltzer JL, Baron-Gafford GA, Dietrich L, Heinrich I, Minor RL, Sonnentag O, Matheny AM, Wightman MG, Steppe K. 2018. Quantification of uncertainties in conifer sap flow measured with the thermal dissipation method. New Phytologist 219: 1283–1299. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15241
3. Peters RL, Balanzategui D, Hurley AG, von Arx G, Prendin AL, Cuny HE, Björklund J, Frank DC, Fonti P. 2018. RAPTOR: Row and position tracheid organizer in R. Dendrochronologia 47: 10–16. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dendro.2017.10.003
4. Peters RL, Klesse S, Fonti P, Frank DC. 2017. Contribution of climate vs. larch budmoth outbreaks in regulating biomass accumulation in high-elevation forests. Forest Ecology and Management 401: 147–158. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2017.06.032
5. Peters RL, Groenendijk P, Vlam M, Zuidema PA. 2015. Detecting long-term growth trends using tree rings: a critical evaluation of methods. Global Change Biology 21: 2040–2054. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12826

Personal heroes

• “Trees are wonderful things” (McCarroll & Loader 2004)