Future changes in key plant traits across Central Europe vary with biogeographical status, woodiness, and habitat type

Autor(en)

Marina Golivets, Sonja Knapp, Franz Essl, Bernd Lenzner, Guillaume Latombe, Brian Leung, Ingolf Kühn

Abstrakt

Many plant traits covary with environmental gradients, reflecting shifts in adaptive strategies and thus informing about potential consequences of future environmental change for vegetation and ecosystem functioning. Yet, the evidence of trait–environment relationships (TERs) remains too heterogeneous for reliable predictions, partially due to insufficient consideration of trait syndromes specific to certain growth forms and habitats. Moreover, it is still unclear whether non-native and native plants' traits align similarly along environmental gradients, limiting our ability to assess the impacts of future plant invasions. Using a Bayesian multilevel modelling framework, we assess TERs for native and non-native woody and herbaceous plants across six broad habitat types in Central Europe at a resolution of c. 130 km² and use them to project trait change under future environmental change scenarios until 2081–2100. We model TERs between three key plant traits (maximum height, H_max; specific leaf area, SLA; seed mass, SM) and individual environmental factors (7 climate variables and % urban land cover) and estimate trait change summed across all environmental effects. We also quantify the change in the average trait difference between native and non-native plants. Our models depict multiple TERs, with important differences attributed to biogeographical status and woodiness within and across habitat types. The overall magnitude of trait change is projected to be greater for non-native than native taxa and to increase under more extreme scenarios. Native woody plant assemblages may generally experience a future increase across all three traits, whereas woody non-natives may decline in H_max and increase in SLA and SM. Herbaceous H_max is estimated to increase and SLA to decrease in most habitats. The obtained trait projections highlight conditions of competitive advantage of non-native plants over natives and vice versa and can serve as starting points for projecting future changes in ecosystem functions and services.

Organisation(en)

Department für Botanik und Biodiversitätsforschung

Externe Organisation(en)

Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung, Technische Universität Berlin, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), University of Edinburgh, McGill University, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

Journal

Science of the Total Environment

Band

907

Anzahl der Seiten

13

ISSN

0048-9697

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.167954

Publikationsdatum

01-2024

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

106003 Biodiversitätsforschung

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Environmental engineering, Environmental Chemistry, Waste Management and Disposal, Pollution

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 13 – Maßnahmen zum Klimaschutz, SDG 15 – Leben an Land

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/future-changes-in-key-plant-traits-across-central-europe-vary-with-biogeographical-status-woodiness-and-habitat-type(df45baba-7cf3-4ee5-934d-c0351638cea2).html