Miss Catherine Mercer

The aim of my research is to better understand the impacts of climate change on forests across the globe.

My research has included:

• Climate-growth relations of Yellow-Cedar (Callitropsis nootkatensis) on Haida Gwaii (Canada)
• Fire emissions modelling in British Columbia (Canada)
• Assessing forest mortality due to drought in the Catalonian Pyrenees (Spain)
• Monitoring decline of rare arctic-alpine plants (UK)

Current research:

My current research focuses on understanding how forest distributions are changing in sub-tropical Taiwan (East Asia). The elevational gradient in Taiwan reaches from sea-level to peaks over 4000m. As temperatures increase due to global warming, tree species are expected to move upwards to cooler environments. Forest species already at the tops of mountains are not able to move further upslope and will have to acclimate and evolve quickly to the changing conditions in order to survive the warmer and drier climates. As many high elevation tree species in Taiwan have very small distributions that exist nowhere except the island, these species are at high risk of extinction. My project aims to model the vulnerability of these distributions to future climate warming, helping to inform conservation management.

Funded by NERC through the IAPETUS2 doctoral training programme.

I've worked with collaborators at:

• University of British Columbia Tree Ring Lab (Canada)
• University of Padova (Italy)
• Durham University (UK)
• National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (Taiwan)
• Endemic Species Research Institute (Taiwan)
• Guan-Sheng Ecosystem Ltd. (Taiwan)
• Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain)

I am also co-chair of the British Ecological Society ALDER Network and Website Developer for SatSchool Outreach.