The Amazonian Landscapes in Transitions (ALT) project seeks to address the a fundamental question as to whether Amazonian forests will be able to withstand the simultaneous impacts of climate and local anthropogenic disturbances. This question is of global relevance, as France is directly involved in negotiations on the potential of its forests to both offset carbon emissions and mitigate the biodiversity crisis.

The project approach was to calibrate detailed forest dynamic models to generate maps of ecological indicators that will account for forest vulnerability, in addition to current forest indicators. Such territorial model-based estimates of ecological indicators for French Guiana will be associated with uncertainty maps. This strategy depends on the consolidation of a solid knowledge based of accurate forest inventories, including trees in the forest understory, which condition the future of forest regeneration, on information on plant functional diversity, and on patterns and processes of tree mortality.