Modes of functional biodiversity control on tree productivity across the European continent
Authors
Ratcliffe, Sophia; Ruiz Benito, Paloma; Madrigal González, Jaime; Liebergesell, M; Muñoz Castañeda, José; [et al.]Identifiers
Permanent link (URI): http://hdl.handle.net/10017/37649DOI: 10.1111/geb.12406
ISSN: 1466-822X
Date
2016Funders
European Union
European Commission
Bibliographic citation
Global Ecology and Biogeography, 2016, v. 25, n. , p. 251-256
Keywords
Climatic gradient
Environmental filtering
Forest succession
Landscape scale
Plant functional traits
Tree productivity
Project
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/ENV-2010-265171/Functional significance of forest biodiversity in Europe/FunDivEUROPE
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/ENV-2010-265171/Functional significance of forest biodiversity in Europe/FunDivEUROPE
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EU/FP7-PEOPLE-2010-COFUND/PCOFUND-GA-2010-267243/EU/Plant Fellows
Document type
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Version
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Access rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Abstract
The relative contribution of community functional diversity and composition to ecosystem functioning is a critical question in ecology in order to enable better predictions of how ecosystems may respond to a changing climate. However, there is little consensus about which modes of functional biodiversity are most important for tree growth at large spatial scales. Here we assessed the relative importance of climate, functional diversity and functional identity (i.e. the community mean values of four key functional traits) for tree growth across the European continent, spanning the northern boreal to the southern Mediterranean forests. Using data from five European national forest inventories we applied a hierarchical linear model to estimate the sensitivity of tree growth to changes in climate, functional diversity and functional identity along a latitudinal gradient. Functional diversity was weakly related to tree growth in the temperate and boreal regions and more strongly in the Mediterranean region. In the temperate region, where climate was the most important predictor, functional diversity and identity had a similar importance for tree growth. Functional identity was strongest at the latitudinal extremes of the continent, largely driven by strong changes in the importance of maximum height along the latitudinal gradient.
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modes_ratcliffe_GEB_2016.pdf | 4.518Mb |
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modes_ratcliffe_GEB_2016.pdf | 4.518Mb |
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