An operational definition of the biome for global change research

Biomes are constructs for organising knowledge on the structure and functioning of the world’s ecosystems, and serve as useful units for monitoring how the biosphere responds to anthropogenic drivers, including climate change. The current practice of delimiting biomes relies on expert knowledge. Rec...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The New phytologist 2020-09, Vol.227 (5), p.1294-1306
Main Authors: Conradi, Timo, Slingsby, Jasper A., Midgley, Guy F., Nottebrock, Henning, Schweiger, Andreas H., Higgins, Steven I.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Africa
Anthropogenic factors
biome
Biosphere
Climate Change
Ecology
Ecosystem
ecosystem assembly
Ecosystems
Environmental changes
Flowers & plants
Geographical distribution
growth form
Plants
Species
species distribution modelling
TTR‐SDM
Viewpoints
Workflow
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Biomes are constructs for organising knowledge on the structure and functioning of the world’s ecosystems, and serve as useful units for monitoring how the biosphere responds to anthropogenic drivers, including climate change. The current practice of delimiting biomes relies on expert knowledge. Recent studies have questioned the value of such biome maps for comparative ecology and globalchange research, partly due to their subjective origin. Here we propose a flexible method for developing biome maps objectively. The method uses range modelling of several thousands of plant species to reveal spatial attractors for different growth-form assemblages that define biomes. The workflow is illustrated using distribution data from 23 500 African plant species. In an example application, we create a biome map for Africa and use the fitted species models to project biome shifts. In a second example,wemap gradients of growth-form suitability that can be used to identify sites for comparative ecology. This method provides a flexible framework that (1) allows a range of biome types to be defined according to user needs and (2) enables projections of biome changes that emerge purely from the individualistic responses of plant species to environmental changes.
ISSN:0028-646X
1469-8137
DOI:10.1111/nph.16580