4 ° + : Ecosystem Resilience and Predictability

Introduction Due to the unprecedented speed of temperature change expected over the course of the 21st century and the lack of direct experience from past changes, models are used to assess the impacts of different scenarios of climate change. Recent research, however, revealed that inconclusive outputs of ecosystem models may occur as a result of instable model dynamics [1-3]. This research presents numerical measures of predictability and resilience of the rain forest and savannah biomes in the Congo basin under past, present and 4°+ climate conditions. Research area During the Holocene the distribution of savannas and rainforests in the Congo basin changed with changing climate. In some regions rainforest and savannas replaced each other [4-6] while on some sites one vegetation type persisted. For this study we use two regions located along a W-E gradient in annual precipitation and dry season length in Gabon [7] (see fig. 1).