Vegetation ecology meets ecosystem science: Permanent grasslands as a functional biogeography case study

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Biogeography
• Environmental Science

Background:

• Biodiversity significantly impacts ecosystem functioning, with species' functional traits playing a key role.
• Bridging biodiversity and ecosystem science at biogeographic scales is crucial but remains underdeveloped.
• Functional biogeography emerges as a field to address this gap, leveraging large datasets.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a framework for functional biogeography research at a country-wide scale.
• To integrate diverse datasets for assessing ecosystem properties and services in C3 permanent grasslands.
• To improve regional models for climate and land use change impacts.

Main Methods:

• Collation and integration of large databases: vegetation relevés, plant traits, and environmental layers.
• Development of ecoinformatics approaches to handle Big Data challenges.
• Upscaling of ecosystem-level properties, demonstrated with leaf dry matter content.

Main Results:

• Country-wide assessment of ecosystem properties in C3 permanent grasslands.
• Prediction of forage digestibility across the country.
• Demonstration of framework feasibility for large-scale functional biogeography.

Conclusions:

• The developed framework enables hypothesis testing in functional biogeography and earth system modeling.
• Large-scale data integration is essential for understanding biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships.
• This initiative provides a foundation for improved regional climate and land-use change modeling.