title: Linking plant and ecosystem functional biogeography.
abstract: Classical biogeographical observations suggest that ecosystems are strongly shaped by climatic constraints in terms of their structure and function. On the other hand, vegetation function feeds back on the climate system via biosphere-atmosphere exchange of matter and energy. Ecosystem-level observations of this exchange reveal very large functional biogeographical variation of climate-relevant ecosystem functional properties related to carbon and water cycles. This variation is explained insufficiently by climate control and a classical plant functional type classification approach. For example, correlations between seasonal carbon-use efficiency and climate or environmental variables remain below 0.6, leaving almost 70% of variance unexplained. We suggest that a substantial part of this unexplained variation of ecosystem functional properties is related to variations in plant and microbial traits. Therefore, to progress with global functional biogeography, we should seek to understand the link between organismic traits and flux-derived ecosystem properties at ecosystem observation sites and the spatial variation of vegetation traits given geoecological covariates. This understanding can be fostered by synergistic use of both data-driven and theory-driven ecological as well as biophysical approaches.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, 07745 Jena, Germany; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, 04103 Leipzig, Germany; mreichstein@bgc-jena.mpg.de.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Reichstein
authors.affiliation: Institute of Ecology, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria; and.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bahn
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, 07745 Jena, Germany; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, 04103 Leipzig, Germany;
authors.forename: Miguel D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Mahecha
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, 07745 Jena, Germany; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, 04103 Leipzig, Germany;
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kattge
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.
authors.forename: Dennis D
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Baldocchi
mesh_terms: D017753:Ecosystem; D008954:Models, Biological; D058974:Phylogeography / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends*; D018521:Plant Physiological Phenomena; D010944:Plants
keywords: FLUXNET; biogeochemistry; carbon cycle; eddy covariance; plant traits