TY - JOUR
T1 - Large-scale climatic and geophysical controls on the leaf economics spectrum
AU - Asner, Gregory P.
AU - Knapp, David E.
AU - Anderson, Christopher B.
AU - Martin, Roberta E.
AU - Vaughn, Nicholas
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank R. Tupayachi, F. Sinca, N. Jaramillo, L. Carranza-Jimenez, P. Martinez, and others in the Carnegie field team for supporting underpinning aspects of this work; and P. Taylor and the two reviewers for constructive comments on the manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge our long-term collaboration with the Peruvian Ministry of Environment. This study was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Carnegie Airborne Observatory is made possible by the Avatar Alliance Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, Mary Anne Nyburg Baker and G. Leonard Baker Jr., and William R. Hearst III.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
PY - 2016/7/12
Y1 - 2016/7/12
N2 - Leaf economics spectrum (LES) theory suggests a universal trade-off between resource acquisition and storage strategies in plants, expressed in relationships between foliar nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), leaf mass per area (LMA), and photosynthesis. However, how environmental conditions mediate LES trait interrelationships, particularly at large biospheric scales, remains unknown because of a lack of spatially explicit data, which ultimately limits our understanding of ecosystem processes, such as primary productivity and biogeochemical cycles. We used airborne imaging spectroscopy and geospatial modeling to generate, to our knowledge, the first biospheric maps of LES traits, here centered on 76 million ha of Andean and Amazonian forest, to assess climatic and geophysical determinants of LES traits and their interrelationships. Elevation and substrate were codominant drivers of leaf trait distributions. Multiple additional climatic and geophysical factors were secondary determinants of plant traits. Anticorrelations between N and LMA followed general LES theory, but topo-edaphic conditions strongly mediated and, at times, eliminated this classic relationship. We found no evidence for simple P-LMA or N-P trade-offs in forest canopies; rather, we mapped a continuum of N-P-LMA interactions that are sensitive to elevation and temperature. Our results reveal nested climatic and geophysical filtering of LES traits and their interrelationships, with important implications for predictions of forest productivity and acclimation to rapid climate change.
AB - Leaf economics spectrum (LES) theory suggests a universal trade-off between resource acquisition and storage strategies in plants, expressed in relationships between foliar nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), leaf mass per area (LMA), and photosynthesis. However, how environmental conditions mediate LES trait interrelationships, particularly at large biospheric scales, remains unknown because of a lack of spatially explicit data, which ultimately limits our understanding of ecosystem processes, such as primary productivity and biogeochemical cycles. We used airborne imaging spectroscopy and geospatial modeling to generate, to our knowledge, the first biospheric maps of LES traits, here centered on 76 million ha of Andean and Amazonian forest, to assess climatic and geophysical determinants of LES traits and their interrelationships. Elevation and substrate were codominant drivers of leaf trait distributions. Multiple additional climatic and geophysical factors were secondary determinants of plant traits. Anticorrelations between N and LMA followed general LES theory, but topo-edaphic conditions strongly mediated and, at times, eliminated this classic relationship. We found no evidence for simple P-LMA or N-P trade-offs in forest canopies; rather, we mapped a continuum of N-P-LMA interactions that are sensitive to elevation and temperature. Our results reveal nested climatic and geophysical filtering of LES traits and their interrelationships, with important implications for predictions of forest productivity and acclimation to rapid climate change.
KW - Amazon basin
KW - Functional biogeography
KW - Leaf traits
KW - Plant traits
KW - Tropical forests
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U2 - 10.1073/pnas.1604863113
DO - 10.1073/pnas.1604863113
M3 - Article
C2 - 27354534
AN - SCOPUS:84978062267
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 113
SP - E4043-E4051
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 28
ER -