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Plants employ multiple strategies to adapt to their growth environment. Characterizing key dimensions in plant trait space is important for understanding functional diversity within ecosystems. Leaf and root functional traits have been studied in the context of resource economics, but whether they covary, and through which mechanisms, is still debated. We investigated this in subtropical forests by sampling root and leaf trait...
Influence of global climate modes on wildfire occurrence in the contiguous United States under recent and future climatesNARA Subscribed
Predictable modes of climate variability, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), have a major influence on regional weather patterns, an important control on wildfire occurrence. Although these global climate modes have been associated with historical variability in wildfire occurrence in the United States and are used to forecast seasonal wildfire risk, precise information about the spatial pattern and magnitude of...
Global Assessment of Environmental and Plant‐Trait Influences on Root: Shoot Biomass RatiosNARA Subscribed
The distribution of assimilated carbon (C) among roots, stems, and leaves is a central process in terrestrial ecosystem dynamics. Yet the biomass allocation schemes used in current global vegetation and land surface models pre‐date the existence of large plant‐trait data sets and remain largely untested. Here we formulate hypotheses on the controls of root: shoot biomass ratios (R:S), based on eco‐evolutionary optimality princ...
Leaf phenology, represented at the ecosystem scale by the seasonal dynamics of leaf area index (LAI), is a key control on the exchanges of CO 2 , energy, and water between the land and atmosphere. Robust simulation of leaf phenology is thus important for both dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) and land‐surface representations in climate and Earth System models. There is no general agreement on how leaf phenology should b...
The Response of Carbon Uptake to Soil Moisture Stress: Adaptation to Climatic AridityNARA Subscribed
The coupling between carbon uptake and water loss through stomata implies that gross primary production (GPP) can be limited by soil water availability through reduced leaf area and/or stomatal conductance. Ecosystem and land‐surface models commonly assume that GPP is highest under well‐watered conditions and apply a stress function to reduce GPP as soil moisture declines. Optimality considerations, however, suggest that the s...
Soil Nitrogen Supply Exerts Largest Influence on Leaf Nitrogen in Environments with the Greatest Leaf Nitrogen DemandNARA Subscribed
Accurately representing the relationships between nitrogen supply and photosynthesis is crucial for reliably predicting carbon–nitrogen cycle coupling in Earth System Models (ESMs). Most ESMs assume positive correlations amongst soil nitrogen supply, leaf nitrogen content, and photosynthetic capacity. However, leaf photosynthetic nitrogen demand may influence the leaf nitrogen response to soil nitrogen supply; thus, responses...
Holocene vegetation dynamics of the Eastern Mediterranean region: Old controversies addressed by a new analysisNARA Subscribed
Aim We reconstruct vegetation changes since 12 ky in the Eastern Mediterranean to examine four features of the regional vegetation history that are controversial: the extent of non‐analogue vegetation assemblages in the transition from the Late Glacial to the early Holocene, the synchroneity of postglacial forest expansion, the geographical extent of temperate deciduous forest during the mid‐Holocene and the timing and trigger...
Global leaf‐trait mapping based on optimality theoryNARA Subscribed
Aim Leaf traits are central to plant function, and key variables in ecosystem models. However recently published global trait maps, made by applying statistical or machine‐learning techniques to large compilations of trait and environmental data, differ substantially from one another. This paper aims to demonstrate the potential of an alternative approach, based on eco‐evolutionary optimality theory, to yield predictions of sp...
Optimality-based modelling of wheat sowing dates globallyNARA Subscribed
“Least‐cost theory” posits that C 3 plants should balance rates of photosynthetic water loss and carboxylation in relation to the relative acquisition and maintenance costs of resources required for these activities. Here we investigated the dependency of photosynthetic traits on climate and soil properties using a new Australia‐wide trait dataset spanning 528 species from 67 sites. We tested the hypotheses that plants on rela...
Environmental controls on the light use efficiency of terrestrial gross primary productionNARA Subscribed
Gross primary production (GPP) by terrestrial ecosystems is a key quantity in the global carbon cycle. The instantaneous controls of leaf‐level photosynthesis are well established, but there is still no consensus on the mechanisms by which canopy‐level GPP depends on spatial and temporal variation in the environment. The standard model of photosynthesis provides a robust mechanistic representation for C 3 species; however, add...
Optimality principles explaining divergent responses of alpine vegetation to environmental changeNARA Subscribed
Recent increases in vegetation greenness over much of the world reflect increasing CO 2 globally and warming in cold areas. However, the strength of the response to both CO 2 and warming in those areas appears to be declining for unclear reasons, contributing to large uncertainties in predicting how vegetation will respond to future global changes. Here, we investigated the changes of satellite‐observed peak season absorbed ph...
A new method based on surface‐sample pollen data for reconstructing palaeovegetation patternsNARA Subscribed
Aim Biomisation has been the most widely used technique to reconstruct past regional vegetation patterns because it does not require an extensive modern pollen dataset. However, it has well‐known limitations including its dependence on expert judgement for the assignment of pollen taxa to plant functional types (PFTs) and PFTs to biomes. Here we present a new method that combines the strengths of biomisation with those of the...
Vegetation responses to climate extremes recorded by remotely sensed atmospheric formaldehydeNARA Subscribed
Accurate monitoring of vegetation stress is required for better modelling and forecasting of primary production, in a world where heatwaves and droughts are expected to become increasingly prevalent. Variability in formaldehyde (HCHO) concentrations in the troposphere is dominated by local emissions of short‐lived biogenic (BVOC) and pyrogenic volatile organic compounds. BVOCs are emitted by plants in a rapid protective respon...
Global decadal variability of plant carbon isotope discrimination and its link to gross primary productionNARA Subscribed
Carbon isotope discrimination (Δ 13 C) in C 3 woody plants is a key variable for the study of photosynthesis. Yet how Δ 13 C varies at decadal scales, and across regions, and how it is related to gross primary production (GPP), are still incompletely understood. Here we address these questions by implementing a new Δ 13 C modelling capability in the land‐surface model JULES incorporating both photorespiratory and mesophyll‐con...
Impacts of soil water stress on the acclimated stomatal limitation of photosynthesis: Insights from stable carbon isotope dataNARA Subscribed
Atmospheric aridity and drought both influence physiological function in plant leaves, but their relative contributions to changes in the ratio of leaf internal to ambient partial pressure of CO 2 ( χ ) – an index of adjustments in both stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rate to environmental conditions – are difficult to disentangle. Many stomatal models predicting χ include the influence of only one of these drivers. In...
The climatic space of European pollen taxaNARA Subscribed
Pollen data are widely used to reconstruct past climate changes, using relationships between modern pollen abundance in surface samples and climate at the surface‐sample sites as a calibration. Visualization of modern pollen data in multidimensional climate space provides a way to establish that taxon abundances are well behaved before using them in climate reconstructions. Visualization is also helpful for ecological interpre...
Plant respiration is an important contributor to the proposed positive global carbon‐cycle feedback to climate change. However, as a major component, leaf mitochondrial (‘dark’) respiration ( R d ) differs among species adapted to contrasting environments and is known to acclimate to sustained changes in temperature. No accepted theory explains these phenomena or predicts its magnitude. Here we propose that the acclimation of...
Plant respiration: Controlled by photosynthesis or biomass?NARA Subscribed
Two simplifying hypotheses have been proposed for whole‐plant respiration. One links respiration to photosynthesis; the other to biomass. Using a first‐principles carbon balance model with a prescribed live woody biomass turnover, applied at a forest research site where multidecadal measurements are available for comparison, we show that if turnover is fast the accumulation of respiring biomass is low and respiration depends p...
TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open accessNARA Subscribed
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 biodivers...