The TRY Plant Trait Database - a Tool to Characterize Plant Responses to Global Changes

Abstract:

Plant traits are fundamental for understanding and predicting vegetation responses to global changes, and they provide a promising basis towards a more quantitative and predictive approach to ecology. Plant traits have therefore been collected for a long time, but mostly been stored in small, separated and private databases, not accessible to the research community. The TRY initiative, a network of vegetation scientists (https://www.try-db.org), provides a global archive of plant traits, curated to be applicable for the characterization of species-specific responses in the context of terrestrial biosphere models. This contribution will (1) introduce the TRY initiative and the current state of the plant trait database, (2) provide examples of trait-based approaches to improve terrestrial biosphere models, (3) highlight future perspectives and challenges for trait based approaches in ecology and vegetation modeling.