| Literature DB >> 33483481 |
Martin Ehbrecht1, Dominik Seidel2, Peter Annighöfer3, Holger Kreft4,5, Michael Köhler6, Delphine Clara Zemp4, Klaus Puettmann7, Reuben Nilus8, Fred Babweteera9,10, Katharina Willim2, Melissa Stiers2, Daniel Soto11, Hans Juergen Boehmer12,13, Nicholas Fisichelli14, Michael Burnett15,16, Glenn Juday17, Scott L Stephens18, Christian Ammer2,5.
Abstract
The complexity of forest structures plays a crucial role in regulating forest ecosystem functions and strongly influences biodiversity. Yet, knowledge of the global patterns and determinants of forest structural complexity remains scarce. Using a stand structural complexity index based on terrestrial laser scanning, we quantify the structural complexity of boreal, temperate, subtropical and tropical primary forests. We find that the global variation of forest structural complexity is largely explained by annual precipitation and precipitation seasonality (R² = 0.89). Using the structural complexity of primary forests as benchmark, we model the potential structural complexity across biomes and present a global map of the potential structural complexity of the earth´s forest ecoregions. Our analyses reveal distinct latitudinal patterns of forest structure and show that hotspots of high structural complexity coincide with hotspots of plant diversity. Considering the mechanistic underpinnings of forest structural complexity, our results suggest spatially contrasting changes of forest structure with climate change within and across biomes.Entities:
Year: 2021 PMID： 33483481 PMCID： PMC7822964 DOI： 10.1038/s41467-020-20767-z
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Nat Commun ISSN： 2041-1723 Impact factor: 14.919