Primary Convener:
Jingfeng Xiao, University of New Hampshire

Convener:
Erin Crockett, University of Northern British Columbia
Qinfeng Guo, USDA Forest Service - Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center
Jeff Atkins, Virginia Commonwealth University

Chair:
Jingfeng Xiao, University of New Hampshire, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, Earth Systems Research Center
Jeff Atkins, Virginia Commonwealth University

Changes in forest structural diversity may affect many ecological functions and services. It encompasses attributes such as stand structure, composition, and canopy complexity, and its metrics include variation in tree heights and sizes, leaf density and clumping, canopy cover and arrangement, and heterogeneity and complexity. These metrics can be derived from forest inventories, modeling, and proximal (UAVs, terrestrial laser scanning), airborne (aerial lidar), and satellite (e.g., GEDI, ICESat-2) remote sensing. We encourage contributions that (1) discuss insights, views, and measures of structural diversity; (2) connect structural diversity to ecological processes (e.g., productivity, land/atmosphere exchange, biogeochemical cycling, disturbance); (3) explore relative importance of structural diversity and other measures of biodiversity in determining ecosystem functions or services; (4) examine how global change and management shape structural diversity; (5) scale up structural diversity from plot and local scales to regional/continental/global scales; (6) link changes in structure over time to changes in ecological attributes.

Index Terms
0410 Biodiversity
0426 Biosphere|atmosphere interactions
0439 Ecosystems, structure and dynamics
0480 Remote sensing

Neighborhoods:
3. Earth Covering

Cross-Listed:
GC - Global Environmental Change