Forest ecosystems are important to climate change mitigation, yet their functioning is increasingly affected by long-term warming and drying. In this seminar, I synthesize my previous studies examining whether biodiversity can mitigate climate change impacts on forest ecosystem functioning. I begin by introducing a conceptual framework proposing that plant diversity not only responds to environmental change but can also buffer its effects on productivity and carbon dynamics. I then present empirical evidence from long-term boreal forest inventories showing that species-rich forests grew more and suffered less mortality than species-poor forests over decades of environmental change. Moving beyond species richness, I partition diversity into functional diversity and functional identity to explore underlying mechanisms. In dryland forests undergoing rapid aridification, greater functional trait diversity enhanced long-term productivity and partly offset climate-driven declines. I conclude by briefly outlining ongoing work that expands this framework across broader climatic contexts to assess when diversity buffering effects are strong or limited. These studies highlight biodiversity as a key, context-dependent nature-based solution for sustaining forest functioning under climate change.

About the Speaker

Masumi Hisano is a forest ecologist and tenure-track Assistant Professor at Hiroshima University, Japan. His research seeks to understand how environmental change reshapes tree communities and how these shifts influence forest functioning, using long-term and large-scale data. He completed his PhD in Forest Sciences at Lakehead University, Canada (2020), followed by a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Tokyo and a period as a visiting researcher at ETH Zürich. His work also extends to wildlife ecology, including studies on urban adaptation of martens in Bulgaria and bird assemblage responses to agricultural land use in Japan. He currently serves as an editor for the Journal of Wildlife Management and Landscape Ecology.