Carlos Perez Carmona

Forecasting global change impacts on ecosystems using a unified plant functional spectrum

Functional traits of organisms determine their responses to their environment, disturbances, biotic interactions, and their effects on ecosystem processes. Trait-based approaches could advance our understanding of complex ecological questions, but straightforward approaches for accurate predictions of community composition and ecosystem function based on traits are not yet available. Trait-based predictions need a holistic approach incorporating all aspects of the functional structure of plant communities within a unified plant functional space (UPFS) that considers the independent information provided by above- and below-ground traits. PLECTRUM takes advantage of the UPFS and provides solutions to three problems of trait-based ecology: the dimensionality of functional variation across ecosystems, predicting functional structure from environmental variables, and using this knowledge to forecast the effects of global change on functional structure, ecosystem functioning, and species’ extinction risk.

Result

The project begun in the summer of 2024, and thus it is too early to speak of meaningful results. To achieve the research goals, the team aims to combine information from massive datasets of vegetation plots and plant traits with the first global standardised sampling of key above- and below-ground traits. These data will be used to quantify functional dimensionality across ecosystems and estimate the position of thousands of species in the UPFS. The species distributions will then be used in the UPFS analogous to images, and deep learning methods will be applied to link the functional structure of communities to ecosystem functioning and environmental change. The methodological toolbox developed in the project, combined with the synergy of above-ground and root traits, will allow the team to forecast the effects of different global change scenarios on plant communities and their functioning across scales.

Impact

The potential applications include improving conservation strategies, enhancing land management practices, and informing policies to combat environmental change. Society will benefit through better preservation of biodiversity, more resilient ecosystems, and sustained ecosystem services like carbon storage, water purification, and soil health, which are vital for human survival and well-being.