Towards Resilient Forests: Uncovering the Role of Plant Traits and Functional Diversity

Plant traits connect individual organisms to ecosystem functions and offer a valuable perspective on ecosystem responses to rapid global change. This talk highlights the potential of flexible-trait modelling to advance our understanding of trait ecology and forest stability.

The flexible-trait model LPJmL-FIT, which was built upon data from the TRY Plant Trait Database, enables us to explore how key plant traits and their interactions over space and time. By integrating process-based vegetation models with machine learning and advanced statistics, we demonstrate how this approach can complement observations to uncover links between biodiversity, plant traits, and ecosystem functioning.

The talk will share key insights from studies on the role of functional diversity in enhancing forest resilience to climate change (Billing et al., 2022, 2024; Sakschewski et al., 2015; Thonicke et al., 2020). Our findings demonstrate that functional trait diversity supports long-term forest biomass, particularly through mechanisms such as functional complementarity. However, the benefits of diversity diminish under extreme warming and vary across site conditions, underscoring the context-dependent nature of these dynamics and the need for continued model development. Further progress in trait-based modelling depends on broader datasets, particularly for belowground traits, which remain underrepresented in current measurements. These efforts might bridge key gaps and refine our understanding of future plant dynamics.

Billing, M., Sakschewski, B., Werner Von Bloh, , Vogel, Johannes, & Thonicke, K. (2024). ‘How to adapt forests?’—Exploring the role of leaf trait diversity for long-term forest biomass under new climate normals. Global Change Biology, 30(4), e17258. https://doi.org/10.1111/GCB.17258

Billing, M., Thonicke, K., Sakschewski, B., von Bloh, W., & Walz, A. (2022). Future tree survival in European forests depends on understorey tree diversity. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-25319-7

Sakschewski, B., von Bloh, W., Boit, A., Rammig, A., Kattge, J., Poorter, L., Peñuelas, J., & Thonicke, K. (2015). Leaf and stem economics spectra drive diversity of functional plant traits in a dynamic global vegetation model. Global Change Biology, 21(7), 2711–2725. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12870

Thonicke, K., Billing, M., von Bloh, W., Sakschewski, B., Niinemets, Ü., Peñuelas, J., Cornelissen, J. H. C., Onoda, Y., van Bodegom, P., Schaepman, M. E., Schneider, F. D., & Walz, A. (2020). Simulating functional diversity of European natural forests along climatic gradients. Journal of Biogeography, 47(5), 1069–1085. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13809