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- Kattge, Jens, et al.
(författare)
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TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access
- 2020
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 26:1, s. 119-188
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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| 2. |
- Kuijper, Dries P. J., et al.
(författare)
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Bottom-up and top-down forces shaping wooded ecosystems : lessons from a cross-biome comparison
- 2015
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Ingår i: Trophic ecology. - Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. - 9781139924856 - 9781107434325 ; , s. 107-133
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Introduction: Different climatic regions across the globe are associated with biomes that differ in their cover of woody plants, such as grasslands, savannas, and forests (Whitaker, 1962). For a long time, researchers have assumed that abiotic factors control the spatial distribution of woody plant-dominated ecosystems or biomes. According to this idea, rainfall and temperature determine the transitions from deserts to grasslands to savannas and eventually to forests (e.g., Prentice et al., 1992). However, we increasingly realize that biomes may be far less fixed entities than previously assumed. An alternative view for many regions might be that of “ecosystems uncertain,” which Whittaker (1975) defined as zones “in which either grassland or one of the types dominated by woody plants” may occur under the same climatic conditions. As Bond (2005) discusses, many of these “ecosystems uncertain” may be seen as “consumer-controlled ecosystems” where plant consumers, such as herbivores and fire, prevent a closed forest from developing and are a major determinant of the ecosystem state. Bond (2005) showed that such “ecosystems uncertain” may in fact cover a very large part of the world (Fig. 5.1). More recently, several global analyses confirmed that across a large part of the global land surface, tree cover is indeed bimodal (Staver et al., 2011) or even trimodal (Scheffer et al., 2012). This means that under the same climatic conditions, a system may be in a treeless, savanna, or forest state; this pattern has been described for (sub)tropical (Hirota et al., 2011; Staver et al., 2011), as well as boreal (Scheffer et al., 2012), parts of the world. From this, we can conclude that, rather than being purely controlled from the bottom up, ecosystems, and even biomes, are shaped by interacting bottom-up and top-down factors (Polis and Strong, 1996). There is general agreement that both bottom-up and top-down factors affect plant communities (Polis and Strong, 1996), but the question remains what the relative strengths of such top-down and bottom-up processes are and whether we can find general spatial and temporal patterns in their effects (Gripenberg and Roslin, 2007).
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| 3. |
- Simba, Lavhelesani D., et al.
(författare)
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Wilder rangelands as a natural climate opportunity : linking climate action to biodiversity conservation and social transformation
- 2024
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Ingår i: Ambio. - : Springer Science+Business Media B.V.. - 0044-7447 .- 1654-7209.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Rangelands face threats from climate and land-use change, including inappropriate climate change mitigation initiatives such as tree planting in grassy ecosystems. The marginalization and impoverishment of rangeland communities and their indigenous knowledge systems, and the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, are additional major challenges. To address these issues, we propose the wilder rangelands integrated framework, co-developed by South African and European scientists from diverse disciplines, as an opportunity to address the climate, livelihood, and biodiversity challenges in the world’s rangelands. More specifically, we present a Theory of Change to guide the design, monitoring, and evaluation of wilder rangelands. Through this, we aim to promote rangeland restoration, where local communities collaborate with regional and international actors to co-create new rangeland use models that simultaneously mitigate the impacts of climate change, restore biodiversity, and improve both ecosystem functioning and livelihoods.
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