Combining multiple investigative approaches to unravel functional responses to global change in the understorey of temperate forests

作者：Dries Landuyt, Michael P. Perring, Haben Blondeel, Emiel De Lombaerde, Leen Depauw, Eline Lorer, Sybryn L. Maes, Lander Baeten, Laurent Bergès, Markus Bernhardt‐Römermann, Guntis Brūmelis, Jörg Brunet, Markéta Chudomelová, Janusz Czerepko, Guillaume Decocq, J. den Ouden, Pieter De Frenne, Thomas Dirnböck, Tomasz Durak, Andreas Fichtner, Radosław Gawryś, Werner Härdtle, Radim Hédl, Steffi Heinrichs, Thilo Heinken, Bogdan Jaroszewicz, K. J. Kirby, Martin Kopecký, Frantíšek Máliš, Martin Macek, Fraser Mitchell, Tobias Naaf, Petr Petřík, Kamila Reczyńska, Wolfgang Schmidt, Tibor Standovár, Krzysztof Świerkosz, Simon M. Smart, Hans Van Calster, Ondřej Vild, Donald M. Waller, Monika Wulf, Kris Verheyen · 发表于：Global Change Biology · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1111/gcb.17086 · 被引用次数：9 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Species Distribution and Climate Change、Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics

Plant communities are being exposed to changing environmental conditions all around the globe, leading to alterations in plant diversity, community composition, and ecosystem functioning. For herbaceous understorey communities in temperate forests, responses to global change are postulated to be complex, due to the presence of a tree layer that modulates understorey responses to external pressures such as climate change and changes in atmospheric nitrogen deposition rates. Multiple investigative approaches have been put forward as tools to detect, quantify and predict understorey responses to these global-change drivers, including, among others, distributed resurvey studies and manipulative experiments. These investigative approaches are generally designed and reported upon in isolation, while integration across investigative approaches is rarely considered. In this study, we integrate three investigative approaches (two complementary resurvey approaches and one experimental approach) to investigate how climate warming and changes in nitrogen deposition affect the functional composition of the understorey and how functional responses in the understorey are modulated by canopy disturbance, that is, changes in overstorey canopy openness over time. Our resurvey data reveal that most changes in understorey functional characteristics represent responses to changes in canopy openness with shifts in macroclimate temperature and aerial nitrogen deposition playing secondary roles. Con...