Climate shapes and shifts functional biodiversity in forests worldwide

Wieczynski, Daniel J.; Boyle, Brad; Buzzard, Vanessa; Durán, Sandra M.; Henderson, Amanda; Hulshof, Catherine M.; Kerkhoff, Andrew J.; McCarthy, Megan C.; Michaletz, Sean T.; Swenson, Nathan G.; Asner, Gregory P.; Bentley, Lisa Patrick; Enquist, Brian J.; Savage, Van M.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1813723116

Cited by 174 publications

(201 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Such next-generation global biosphere models are becoming available (Purves et al, 2013), but they are not yet coupled to other relevant parts of the Earth system. Our work highlights the need for further research on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, including how the interplay between range shift speeds, local trait diversity and ecosystem functioning (Isbell et al, 2017;Pecl et al, 2017;Wieczynski et al, 2019) can lead to an integrated understanding of biosphere response capacity in relation to climate change (Enquist et al, 2015). In the ocean, while it is traditionally assumed that heavily ballasted phytoplankton are responsible for the majority of carbon transfer via the biological pump, future climate-mediated changes to marine biota may lead to other organisms dominating carbon transfer (Segschneider & Bendtsen, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential feedbacks between loss of biosphere integrity and climate change

et al. 2019

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Non-technical abstractIndividual organisms on land and in the ocean sequester massive amounts of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere by humans. Yet the role of ecosystems as a whole in modulating this uptake of carbon is less clear. Here, we study several different mechanisms by which climate change and ecosystems could interact. We show that climate change could cause changes in ecosystems that reduce their capacity to take up carbon, further accelerating climate change. More research onand better governance ofinteractions between climate change and ecosystems is urgently required. Technical abstractIndividual responses of terrestrial and marine species to future climate change will affect the capacity of the land and ocean to store carbon. How system-level changes in the integrity of the biosphere interact with climate change is more uncertain. Here, we explore the consequences of different hypotheses on the interactions between the climate-carbon system and the integrity of the terrestrial and marine biospheres. We investigate mechanisms including impairment of terrestrial ecosystem functioning due to lagged ecosystem responses, permafrost thaw, terrestrial biodiversity loss and impacts of changes in marine biodiversity on the marine biological pump. To investigate climate-biosphere interactions involving complex concepts such as biosphere integrity, we designed and implemented conceptual representations of these climate-biosphere interactions in a stylized climate-carbon model. We find that all four classes of interactions amplify climate change, potentially contributing up to an additional 0.4°C warming across all representative concentration pathway scenarios by the year 2100 and potentially turning the terrestrial biosphere into a net carbon source, although uncertainties are large. The results of this preliminary quantitative study call for more research onand better integrated governance ofthe interactions between climate change and biosphere integrity, the two core 'planetary boundaries'. Social media summaryHealthy ecosystems are critical for combating climate change.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential feedbacks between loss of biosphere integrity and climate change

et al. 2019

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“…Plant traits have been used for describing multiple aspects of plant species' fitness and realized performance, including growth, survival, and reproduction (Grime, 1977;Calow, 1987;Geber & Griffen, 2003;Reich et al, 2003;Adler et al, 2014;Díaz et al, 2016). Moreover, traits can illustrate how species respond to environmental variability and disturbances (Grime, 1974;Keddy, 1992;Pausas et al, 2004;Bruelheide et al, 2018;Minden & Olde Venterink, 2019;Wieczynski et al, 2019) and reveal species effects on ecosystem functions (Díaz & Cabido, 2001;Lavorel & Garnier, 2002;Breitschwerdt et al, 2018;Craven et al, 2018). While root traits are likely to capture key dimensions of plant form and function, plant evolutionary history, and responses to environmental variability (Bardgett et al, 2014;Laliberté, 2016;Valverde-Barrantes et al, 2017;Ma et al, 2018;Kong et al, 2019), they remain underrepresented in large-scale comparative studies and global models.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Root Traits (GRooT) Database

Guerrero‐Ramírez

Mommer²,

Freschet

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Motivation: Trait data are fundamental to quantitatively describe plant form and function. Although root traits capture key dimensions related to plant responses to changing environmental conditions and effects on ecosystem processes, they have rarely been included in large-scale comparative studies and global models. For instance, root traits remain absent from nearly all studies that define the global spectrum of plant form and function. Thus, to overcome conceptual and methodological roadblocks preventing a widespread integration of root trait data into large-scale analyses we created the Global Root Trait (GRooT) Database. GRooT provides ready-to-use data by combining the expertise of root ecologists with data mobilization and curation. Specifically, we (i) determined a set of core root traits relevant to the description of plant form and function based on an assessment by experts, (ii) maximized species coverage through data standardization within and among traits, and (iii) implemented data quality checks. Main types of variables contained:GRooT contains 114,222 trait records on 38 continuous root traits. Spatial location and grain:Global coverage with data from arid, continental, polar, temperate, and tropical biomes. Data on root traits derived from experimental studies and field studies. Time period and grain: Data recorded between 1911 and 2019Major taxa and level of measurement: GRooT includes root trait data for which taxonomic information is available. Trait records vary in their taxonomic resolution, with sub-species or varieties being the highest and genera the lowest taxonomic resolution available. It contains information for 184 sub-species or varieties, 6,214 species, 1,967 genera and 254 families. Due to variation in data sources, trait records in the database include both individual observations and mean values. Software format:GRooT includes two csv file. A GitHub repository contains the csv files and a script in R to query the database.

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“…This unexplained change could be an effect of some global change driver we did not include in the models. Since warmer climates are generally associated with faster leaf economics (Bjorkman, Myers-Smith, Elmendorf, Normand, Weiher, et al, 2018;Wieczynski et al, 2019) , which would correspond with lower LDMC, climate change is not a likely driver for this trend.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trait-based responses to land use and canopy dynamics modify long-term diversity changes in forest understories

Happonen

Muurinen

Virtanen

et al. 2020

Preprint

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The current biodiversity decline is primarily caused by human land use. Boreal forests have been managed for a long time, but the long-term effects of this management on boreal forest understories remain unclear. Changes apart from trends in species richness are especially poorly understood. To increase understanding about the effects of common land-use practices in boreal forests we resurveyed 245 vegetation plots in boreal herb-rich forest understories, originally sampled in 1968-1975, and investigated the effects of forest management and semi-domesticated reindeer herding on changes in seven community-level metrics: species richness, Shannon diversity, species evenness, vegetation height, leaf dry matter content (LDMC), specific leaf area (SLA), and temporal turnover. Changes in species evenness and Shannon diversity correlated negatively with shifts in vegetation height, resulting in increased diversity inside the reindeer herding area. Canopies in managed forests had higher cover in the long-term, which correlated with higher SLA and lower LDMC of the understory vegetation. Forest management intensity also correlated negatively with understory species richness trends. Compositional turnover was higher in managed forests, and lower inside the reindeer herding area. The apparent stability of understory species richness, SLA and height at the scale of the entire study area resulted from opposing trends in different parts of the study area cancelling each other out when viewed at a larger scale. We conclude that even though the long-term effects of human land use on plant communities can be complex, complementing approaches based on species richness and dissimilarity metrics with functional trait-based perspectives has the potential to unearth mechanistic explanations for observed patterns, such as livestock grazing selectively affecting plants based on their height, and forest management filtering species based on their light-interception traits.

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Climate shapes and shifts functional biodiversity in forests worldwide

Cited by 174 publications

References 45 publications

Potential feedbacks between loss of biosphere integrity and climate change

Potential feedbacks between loss of biosphere integrity and climate change

Global Root Traits (GRooT) Database

Trait-based responses to land use and canopy dynamics modify long-term diversity changes in forest understories

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