Functional diversity effects on productivity increase with age in a forest biodiversity experiment

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Forestry
• Biodiversity Science

Background:

• Forest restoration is key to increasing global forest area and ecosystem services like productivity and carbon storage.
• The impact of tree species' functional composition on ecosystem services during forest development remains understudied.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the relationship between tree community productivity and functional traits over a decade.
• To compare the influence of community-weighted mean (CWM) and functional diversity (FD) on forest productivity.

Main Methods:

• Utilized 10-year data from 478 plots containing 191,200 trees in a subtropical China forest biodiversity experiment.
• Analyzed the correlation between community productivity and community-weighted mean (CWM) or functional diversity (FD) values derived from 38 functional traits.

Main Results:

• Functional diversity (FD) effects on productivity surpassed community-weighted mean (CWM) effects after 7 years of forest development.
• FD became a more reliable predictor of productivity than CWM.
• FD consistently enhanced productivity across ten different species-pool subsets, unlike CWM.

Conclusions:

• Long-term forest productivity in restoration projects is significantly promoted by planting multispecies communities with high functional diversity.
• Emphasizes the importance of functional trait diversity over species-average traits for sustainable forest restoration outcomes.