396 Results Found

Few plant functional types (PFTs) with fixed average traits are used in land surface models (LSMs) to consider feedback between vegetation and the changing atmosphere. It is uncertain if highly diverse vegetation requires more local PFTs. Here, we an...

Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is a major atmospheric pollutant and abiotic stressor. Although physiological studies on abiotic stressors have focused on fully expanded leaves, the resistance of leaf functional traits to SO2 during individual leaf development...

Organisms are adapted to their environment through a suite of anatomical, morphological, and physiological traits. These functional traits are commonly thought to determine an organism’s tolerance to environmental conditions. However, the diffe...

Urban expansion alters environmental conditions, influencing tree physiology and performance. Urban trees provide cooling, sequester carbon, support biodiversity, filter contaminants, and enhance human health. This study examines how two common urban...

Mixing and matching N2-fixing leguminous species is a crucial strategy to enhance quality and efficiency in sustainable forestry. Tree leaves and rhizosphere are primary sites for matter and energy exchange, functioning as key assimilation organs tha...

Despite the accumulating evidence of the beneficial effects of diverse mixed species forests on ecosystem functioning and services, foresters in subtropical forest cultivation in China still prefer easily managed monocultures, which is also due to th...

Enhancing forest biodiversity and carbon sinks in the face of climate change is a high priority on the global agenda. The aim of our study was to explore the feasibility and potential of enhancing biodiversity and stand biomass productivity, which ar...

Forest ecosystem restoration involves establishing mixes of tree species representing various successional stages of the reference forest. When selecting species, conceptualizing successional status as a gradient of guilds is more appropriate than th...

Despite the progress to understand drought tolerance worldwide, the response of urban trees to the increased frequency and severity of droughts, particularly in tropical regions, remains unclear. Such an evaluation is essential for predicting future...

In the fire-prone tropical savanna landscapes of northern South America, forest edge effects significantly shape tree structural integrity and functional traits, with implications for ecosystem resilience, carbon storage, and biodiversity. This study...

Decomposition of plant roots and their related fungal mutualists is a fundamental process of ecosystem material cycles. Despite the fact that fine roots are the dominant source of soil organic carbon (SOC) storage, our understanding of the functional...

Phosphorus (P) is essential for cellular processes, and P fractions within leaf tissues reflect distinct biochemical functions. However, the relationship among foliar P allocation, leaf functional traits, and soil properties in subtropical China rema...

The increasing frequency and severity of drought, driven by global climate change, has emerged as a critical factor constraining the growth of landscaping trees in urban ecosystems. The local or non-local status of tree species is an important driver...

Plant functional traits are rarely used in tree species classification, and the impact of vertical canopy positions on collecting samples for classification also remains unclear. We aim to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of leaf traits in c...

The soil microbial community structure is critical to the cycling of carbon and nitrogen in forest soils. As afforestation practices increasingly promote different functional traits of tree species, it has become critical to understand how they influ...

The close-to-Nature management method of interplanting broad-leaved trees after thinning of monoculture plantations is an important mixed species restoration model to improve the ecological service and functions effectively as well as to reduce the p...

Urban trees contribute to urban well-being but face challenging environments that can reduce their lifespan and increase young tree mortality. Although many studies have used remote sensing data to monitor the functional status of trees in rural area...

Nitrogen (N) is one of the limiting nutrients for plant growth and metabolism in terrestrial ecosystems. Numerous studies have explored the effects of N addition on the eco-physiological traits and biomass production of plants, but the underlying mec...

Increasingly, tropical studies based on aboveground traits have suggested that lianas have a more acquisitive strategy than trees, thereby possibly explaining the increase in lianas relative to trees in many tropical forests under global change. Howe...

As cyclonic wind storms (hurricanes and typhoons) increase in frequency and intensity with climate change, it is important to understand their effects on the populations and communities of tropical trees they impact. Using tree demographic data from...

Trait-based approaches to calculate ecological strategy is important for understanding forest succession dynamics. However, the functional traits and ecological strategy change during succession remain poorly understood. We measured key leaf traits a...

The olive tree (Olea europaea L.) is a keystone species in Mediterranean agroecosystems, where it plays a central economic and cultural role. However, the Mediterranean Basin is increasingly exposed to climate change, with rising temperatures and pro...

Phosphorus (P) availability is a major constraint on plant growth in many forest ecosystems, yet the strategies by which different tree species acquire and utilize various forms of soil phosphorus remain poorly understood. This study investigated how...

Predicting how biodiversity affects ecosystem functioning requires a multifaceted approach based on the partitioning of diversity into its taxonomic and functional facets and thus redundancy. Here, we investigated how species richness (S), functional...

Many lowland rainforests in Southeast Asia are severely altered by selective logging and there is a need for rapid assessment methods to identify characteristic communities of old growth forests and to monitor restoration success in regenerating fore...

Climate change poses significant threats to urban tree health and survival worldwide. This study evaluates climate suitability risks for 12 common tree species in Wuhan, a Chinese metropolis facing escalating climate challenges. We analyzed risk dyna...

Species and phylogenetic lineages have evolved to differ in the way that they acquire and deploy resources, with consequences for their physiological, chemical and structural attributes, many of which can be detected using spectral reflectance form l...

Linden, ash, and pine are ubiquitous ornamental trees due to their ability to adapt to the urban environment. They have been key species in urban green infrastructure from more than hundreds of years and play an active role in maintaining ecosystem s...

Fast-growing tree species, including Eucalyptus sp. and Acacia sp., are widely used to rehabilitate degraded tropical forestland quickly, while mitigating climate change. However, the extent of carbon losses through soil respiration (RS) often remain...

Nutritional content of host plants is expected to drive caterpillar species assemblages and their trait composition. These relationships are altered by tree richness-induced neighborhood variation and a seasonal decline in leaf quality. We tested how...

Plant traits are often measured in the field or laboratory to characterize stress responses. However, direct measurements are not always cost effective for broader sampling efforts, whereas indirect approaches such as reflectance spectroscopy could o...

Northeast China is persistently affected by heavy nitrogen (N) deposition. Studying the induced variation in leaf traits is pivotal to develop an understanding of the adaptive plasticity of affected species. This study thus assesses effects of increa...

Understanding species-specific mechanisms governing symbiotic fungal responses to plant traits and soil factors is critical for optimizing urban tree “plant-soil-fungus” systems under pollution stress. To address this gap, we combined &de...

Elevated temperatures and extended drought periods are driving significant changes in the structure and function of forest ecosystems. High-elevation alpine ash forests (Eucalyptus delegatensis R.T. Baker) in Australia are an example of forests that...

Semi-arid environments characterized by low rainfall are subject to soil desertification processes. These environments have heterogeneous landscapes with patches of vegetation known as resource islands that are generated by nurse species that delay t...

Ozone pollution and global warming are affecting plant growth and ecosystem functions considerably. However, the information is limited on the effects of these factors on foliar traits and carbon sequestration (CS). This study evaluated the effects o...

Traditional centennial olive groves represent ecologically valuable agroecosystems that support both biodiversity and cultural heritage across Mediterranean landscapes. On Lesvos Island, Greece, which marks the westernmost limit of the Persian squirr...

Fire is nearly ubiquitous in the terrestrial biosphere, with profound effects on earth surface carbon storage, climate, and forest functions. Fuel quality is an important parameter determining forest fire behavior, which differs among both tree speci...

Nature-based solutions have been identified by the European Union as being critical for the enhancement of environmental qualities in cities, where urban and peri-urban forests play a key role in air quality amelioration through pollutant removal. A...

Oaks are a dominant woody plant genus in the northern hemisphere that occupy a wide range of habitats and are ecologically diverse. We implemented a functional trait approach that included nine functional traits related to leaves and stems in order t...

Canopy species need to shift their adaptive strategy to acclimate to very different light environments as they grow from seedlings in the understory to adult trees in the canopy. However, research on how to quantitively detect ecological strategy shi...

The potential of urban greening plants to capture particulate matter (PM) from the ambient atmosphere is contingent on interactions between the level of pollution and leaf surfaces. For this study, thirteen plant species were investigated to quantify...

Lianas are predicted to perform better than trees during seasonal drought among tropical forests, which has substantial implications for tree and forest dynamics. Here, we use whole-plant trait comparison to test whether lianas allocated on the resou...

(1) Background: leaf structure traits are closely related to leaf photosynthesis, reflecting the ability of trees to obtain external resources in the process of growth. (2) Methods: We studied the morphological, chemical, anatomical, stomatal traits...

Vertical stratification in trees may respond to selective pressures to enhance light interception and utilization; therefore, the vertical functional variation in leaf traits may indicate niche partitioning within forests. In this study, vertical var...

Trait matching between interacting species may foster diversity. Thus, high epiphyte diversity in tropical forests may be partly due to the high diversity of trees and some degree of host specificity. However, possible trait matching between epiphyte...

Research Highlights: We try to evaluate the relative contribution of environmental factors and functional traits on aboveground biomass in a species rich tropical forest ecosystem after a 40-years natural recovery. Background and Objectives: Function...

The interspecific relationship between functional traits and tree seedling performance can be inconsistent, potentially due to site-to-site or microsite variation in environmental conditions. Studies of seedling traits and performance often focus on...

Hydraulic functionality is crucial for tree productivity and stress tolerance. According to the theory of the fast–slow economics spectrum, the adaptive strategies of different tree species diverge along a spectrum defined by coordination and t...

The mycorrhizal type affects the structure and functions of tree roots. Therefore, the mechanical traits of the roots of tree species with different types of mycorrhizal fungi may be linked to different root functional traits. Fine roots, in particul...