Understanding the environmental regulation of annual growth cycle in trees

The thesis work is focused on modelling of tree phenology, i.e. the annual developmental cycle and its connection to climate. The growth experiments on Aspen trees with perturbations in specific genetic pathways grown under natural conditions in field trials and in chambers will provide phenological data to build a process-based phenological model. Modeling work will help to identify critical knowledge gaps in the regulation of phenological traits and the role of environmental signals, such as day length and temperature. The developed phenology model will be forced with state-of-the art climate model data to generate climate change impact assessments.