The biodiversity-productivity relationship (BPR) is foundational to our understanding of the global extinction crisis and its impacts on ecosystem functioning. Understanding BPR is critical for the accurate valuation and effective conservation of biodiversity. Using ground-sourced data from 777,126 permanent plots, spanning 44 countries and most terrestrial biomes, we reveal a globally consistent positive concave-down BPR, showing that continued biodiversity loss would result in an accelerating decline in forest productivity worldwide. The value of biodiversity in maintaining commercial forest productivity alone—US$166 billion to 490 billion per year according to our estimation—is more than twice what it would cost to implement effective global conservation. This highlights the need for a worldwide reassessment of biodiversity values, forest management strategies, and conservation priorities. (Résumé d'auteur

Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects.We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives. Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) and DIVERSITAS, the TRY database (TRY-not an acronym, rather a statement of sentiment; https ://www.try-db.org; Kattge et al., 2011) was proposed with the explicit assignment to improve the availability and accessibility of plant trait data for ecology and earth system sciences. The Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI-BGC) offered to host the database and the different groups joined forces for this community-driven program. Two factors were key to the success of TRY: the support and trust of leaders in the field of functional plant ecology submitting large databases and the long-term funding by the Max Planck Society, the MPI-BGC and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, which has enabled the continuous development of the TRY database.

The global extent and distribution of forest trees is central to our understanding of the terrestrial biosphere. We provide the first spatially continuous map of forest tree density at a global scale. This map reveals that the global number of trees is approximately 3.04 trillion, an order of magnitude higher than the previous estimate. Of these trees, approximately 1.39 trillion exist in tropical and subtropical forests, with 0.74 trillion in boreal regions and 0.61 trillion in temperate regions. Biome-level trends in tree density demonstrate the importance of climate and topography in controlling local tree densities at finer scales, as well as the overwhelming effect of humans across most of the world. Based on our projected tree densities, we estimate that over 15 billion trees are cut down each year, and the global number of trees has fallen by approximately 46% since the start of human civilization.

Lysenko 91,92 | Armin Macanović 93 | Parastoo Mahdavi 94 | Peter Manning 35 | Corrado Marcenò 13 | Vassiliy Martynenko 95 | Maurizio Mencuccini 96 | Vanessa Minden 97 | Jesper Erenskjold Moeslund 54 | Marco Moretti 98 | Jonas V. Müller 99 | Abstract Aims: Vegetation-plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance of plants co-occurring in the same community. Vegetation-plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers and, thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database, which collates vegetation plots worldwide to allow for the exploration of global patterns in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity at the plant community level.Results: sPlot version 2.1 contains records from 1,121,244 vegetation plots, which comprise 23,586,216 records of plant species and their relative cover or abundance in plots collected worldwide between 1885 and 2015. We complemented the information for each plot by retrieving climate and soil conditions and the biogeographic context (e.g., biomes) from external sources, and by calculating community-weighted means and variances of traits using gap-filled data from the global plant trait database TRY. Moreover, we created a phylogenetic tree for 50,167 out of the 54,519 species identified in the plots. We present the first maps of global patterns of community richness and community-weighted means of key traits. Conclusions: The availability of vegetation plot data in sPlot offers new avenues for vegetation analysis at the global scale. K E Y W O R D S biodiversity, community ecology, ecoinformatics, functional diversity, global scale, macroecology, phylogenetic diversity, plot database, sPlot, taxonomic diversity, vascular plant, vegetation relevé 166 |

Resumo -O objetivo do presente trabalho é contribuir à discussão sobre inventários florestais de abrangência regional e nacional, com enfoque em suas metodologias e em sua execução. O Inventário Florístico Florestal de Santa Catarina (IFFSC), iniciativa do governo estadual, foi concebido em 2003 para atender exigências da legislação ambiental. Após o inventário-piloto em 2005, a metodologia foi adequada em 2007 de acordo com a proposta do Inventário Florestal Nacional (IFN-BR), à época, sob discussão. O IFFSC, em execução desde 2007, abrange todas as regiões fitoecológicas, incluindo levantamento florístico (coleta de amostras das espécies férteis encontradas no interior e entorno dos fragmentos visitados) e levantamento de epífitas vasculares por equipes especializadas. A distribuição das unidades amostrais é sistemática, a partir de uma grade de pontos com distância de 10 km x 10 km, cobrindo todo o estado e de 5 km x 5 km na reduzida Floresta Estacional Decidual. O método de amostragem é o de área fixa em conglomerados compostos por quatro subunidades com área de 1.000 m² (20 m x 50 m), perpendiculares a partir de um ponto central. As abordagens metodológicas e operacionais são discutidas a partir do trabalho efetuado entre 2007 e 2010. O aumento da intensidade amostral e a diminuição dos limites de inclusão de diâmetro e altura nos estratos arbóreo e da regeneração, em relação à proposta do IFN-BR, bem como a realização do levantamento florístico mostraram-se importantes para o registro da diversidade vegetal das florestas catarinenses. Termos para indexação:Abstract -The purpose of this study is to contribute to the discussion on regional and national forest inventories, aiming mainly on aspects of methodos and operational. The Floristic and Forest Inventory of Santa Catarina State (IFFSC) is an initiative of the state government and it was conceived in order to attend requirements of environmental laws. A pilot inventory took place in 2005; then the methodology was fitted to the proposal of the National Forest Inventory (IFN-BR) in discussion at the time. IFFSC is carried out since 2007 in all natural forest formations all over the state's territory, including floristic sampling (collection of fertile trees, shrubs and herbs within the sample unit and in its surroundings) and survey of vascular epiphytes by specialized crews. The inventory applies a systematic sampling, with sample units containing clusters of four crosswise 1,000 m² plots (20 m x 50 m), distributed systematically at the intersections of a 10 km x 10 km grid all over the state's territory (a 5 km x 5 km grid is applied on highly fragmentized Seasonal Deciduous Forests). Methodological details and some important operational issues are discussed beyond the four years experience of IFFSC. Major sampling intensity and lower diameter and height thresholds (in the arboreal and regeneration strata) than in the nationwide inventory proposal (IFN-BR), as well as the execution of a floristic survey within and around the sample plots, showed to be imp...