Plants

Global Trait– Environment Relationships of Plant Communities

Plant functional traits directly affect ecosystem functions. At the species level, trait combinations depend on trade-offs representing different ecological strategies, but at the community level trait combinations are expected to be decoupled from …

Ecology: Ecosystem Responses to Climate Extremes

Extreme drought or wet conditions have now been found to strongly influence the vegetative development of ecosystems. Semi-arid regions are most affected - raising concerns about their vulnerability to long-term drought in the future. © 2015 …

Linking Plant and Ecosystem Functional Biogeography

Classical biogeographical observations suggest that ecosystems are strongly shaped by climatic constraints in terms of their structure and function. On the other hand, vegetation function feeds back on the climate system via biosphere-atmosphere …

Global Convergence in the Temperature Sensitivity of Respiration at Ecosystem Level

The respiratory release of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the land surface is a major flux in the global carbon cycle, antipodal to photosynthetic CO2 uptake. Understanding the sensitivity of respiratory processes to temperature is central for quantifying …