Plant Functional Types: Their Relevance to Ecosystem Properties and Global Change

When predicting the effects of changing climate and carbon dioxide on plants at the global scale there is a major stumbling block—we have very little information, in many cases none, about how plants will respond in the future. In order to circumvent this problem, and until more information on species accumulates, we reduce the diversity of species to a diversity of functions and structures. The structures may be trees, shrubs, herbs and grasses. The functions may be types of photosynthetic...