Extreme events can abruptly reduce forest functions and their capacity to provide ecosystem services especially to people intimately linked to their environs. For example, climate extremes can trigger extensive tree mortality (Bojórquez et al. 2019), converting large amounts of biomass to necromass, which alters forest carbon stocks, successional pathways and resources available to local people. Furthermore, extreme climatic events can interact with anthropogenic disturbances (or their legacy: secondary forests) to produce synergistic outcomes with yet unknown consequences for many ecosystems and the people that depend on them (Álvarez-Yépiz et al. 2018). In this context, we are combining scientific and local ecological knowledge to develop strategies that increase the adaptive capacity of rural communities to novel future climates.

The understanding of plant community patterns and the underlying processes that drive them is rapidly increasing partly due to new approaches such as trait-environment analysis that provide novel insights into the predominant community assembly processes (e.g., environmental filtering, competition). Our studies in tropical dry forests suggest that different interacting processes influence the assembly of plant communities: competition, facilitation and dispersal seem to prevail at local scales and species-habitat associations at larger scales (Álvarez-Yépiz et al. 2014a, 2017). Little is known about how communities re-assembly after extreme events. Under field and experimental settings, we are studying the re-assembly mechanisms of plant communities after severe frost and drought.

The study of species of high conservation concern requires a comprehensive understanding of the population dynamics and environmental factors that influence long-term species persistence. Our studies using our model species, the endangered cycad Dioon sonorense, have shown that by combining traditional and trait-based research approaches we can develop a more comprehensive framework to guide conservation strategies, especially under rising global environmental threats such as land-use and climatic changes (Álvarez-Yépiz et al. 2019). This integrative framework can be used in other species or groups of species of high conservation concern such as cacti, orchids, or invasive species.