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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. |
- Lee, Heera, et al.
(författare)
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Three billion new trees in the EU’s biodiversity strategy : low ambition, but better environmental outcomes?
- 2023
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 18:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The EU Biodiversity strategy aims to plant 3 billion trees by 2030, in order to improve ecosystem restoration and biodiversity. Here, we compute the land area that would be required to support this number of newly planted trees by taking account of different tree species and planting regimes across the EU member states. We find that 3 billion trees would require a total land area of between 0.81 and 1.37 Mha (avg. 1.02 Mha). The historic forest expansion in the EU since 2010 was 2.44 Mha, meaning that despite 3 billion trees sounding like a large number this target is considerably lower than historic afforestation rates within the EU, i.e. only 40% of the past trend. Abandoned agricultural land is often proposed as providing capacity for afforestation. We estimate agricultural abandoned land areas from the HIstoric Land Dynamics Assessment+ database using two time thresholds (abandonment since 2009 or 2014) to identify potential areas for tree planting. The area of agricultural abandoned land was 2.6 Mha (potentially accommodating 7.2 billion trees) since 2009 and 0.2 Mha (potentially accommodating 741 million trees) since 2014. Our study highlights that sufficient space could be available to meet the 3 billion tree planting target from abandoned land. However, large-scale afforestation beyond abandoned land could have displacement effects elsewhere in the world because of the embodied deforestation in the import of agricultural crops and livestock. This would negate the expected benefits of EU afforestation. Hence, the EU’s relatively low ambition on tree planting may actually be better in terms of avoiding such displacement effects. We suggest that tree planting targets should be set at a level that considers physical ecosystem dynamics as well as socio-economic conditions.
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