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What species of plants grow where, beside which and why? The diversity of overall vegetation can be described on the basis of only a few traits of each species. This was revealed by a research team led by the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) in Halle-Jena-Leipzig.
In a new study published in the scientific journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, they present the world's first database on vegetation, which contains more than 1.1 million complete lists of plant species sampled in all ecosystems. Earth. The database could help better predict the consequences of global climate change.
All plants face the same challenges, whether they are small grasses, shrubs or trees. "For example, they need to find an effective way to conduct photosynthesis to get the energy they need, while competing with neighboring plants for limited resources in the soil, such as water and nutrients, "explains Professor Helge Bruelheide. of the Institute of Biology / Geobotany of the MLU and co-director of iDiv.
Currently, about 390,000 species of plants are known to science. Over time, each species has developed very different traits in response to factors external to their location. These include the size of the plant, the thickness and the chemical constituents of its leaves. These properties are also called functional plant characteristics. "These functional characteristics have a direct influence on the ecosystem function of a plant, for example the amount of biomass that it produces or the amount of carbon dioxide that it absorbs into a plant. the air, "says Bruelheide.
Until now, researchers have mainly studied different combinations of these functional traits from the point of view of individual plant species. "In reality, however, plant species are rare, plants live in communities," explains Bruelheide. Therefore, it is necessary to have vegetation databases containing data on all growing plants at a specific location.
The reference database on German vegetation is one example. It is managed at the MLU by Dr. Ute Jandt, a member of Helge Bruelheide's research group. It contains data on approximately 200,000 vegetation patches from published and unpublished vegetation studies. Similar databases exist or are being compiled in many other countries.
Until now, there was no database, to compile and harmonize all these different datasets. As a result, the "sPlot" initiative was launched at the iDiv Research Center to develop and implement the first global vegetation database, unifying and merging existing datasets.
"sPlot" currently contains more than 1.1 million lists of vegetation from all continents, gathered over the last decades by hundreds of researchers from around the world. "Every point of our database is a real place with precise coordinates and information about all the plant species that coexist there," explains Bruelheide.
The research group has combined this large data set with the world's largest database of plant characteristics, called "TRY", which is also an iDiv database platform. "This allowed us to answer questions that no one had been able to address before," continues Bruelheide. For example, research has investigated the extent to which global factors affect the functional traits of plant communities. Contrary to current opinion, they found that temperature and precipitation play a relatively limited role.
"Surprisingly, these two macro-factors are not so important.Our analysis shows, for example, that plant communities are not always characterized by thinner leaves as the temperature rises – from Arctic to the rainforest, "explains Bruelheide.
Instead, researchers have found a strong link between climatic variables and phosphorus intake in leaves, which is reflected in the ratio of nitrogen and phosphorus content in the leaf, which is an indicator of Nutritional status of plants. For example, the longer the growing season, the lower the phosphorus intake – which also affects the thickness of the leaves.
Local land use and the interaction of different plants at a specific location have a much greater impact on the functional traits of plant communities. According to Bruelheide, these results show that future calculations of crop production in a region can only be determined on the basis of simplistic temperature-precipitation models.
The study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution is the first of a series of forthcoming documents from the "sPlot" consortium. Available on request to other scientists, the "sPlot" database reveals unprecedented opportunities to address many biodiversity issues globally, including issues relating to the distribution of plant species non-native and similarities and differences of plant communities around the world. the regions.
Research Document
Related Links
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
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OpenForests launches the forest project platform explorer.land
Krefeld, Germany (SPX) Nov 12, 2018
OpenForests (https://openforests.com), a German consulting and innovative forest technology company, has released the explorer.land platform. The interactive, map-based platform is designed to present forest and landscape projects and tell their story, while connecting like-minded organizations and stakeholders from around the world.
"We believe that exploring.land will lead to a substantial paradigm shift in the way forest and sustainable landscape projects are presented to the world," said the … read more
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