Project Details
Projekt
SP4: Mapping Plant Functional Variation (MapFun)
Applicants
Dr. Joana Bergmann; Professor Dr. Till Kleinebecker
Subject Area
Ecology of Land Use
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 517723694
In line with the central hypotheses of FORMULA, the objective of MapFun is to link belowground and aboveground plant functional traits (FTs) and their spatial variation with leaf spectral traits in agroforestry systems. The project will make use of the concepts of the root economics space and the leaf economic spectrum as well as leaf biochemical traits in order to study relationships with hyperspectral traits of plants. We aim to characterize intraspecific functional variation perpendicular to the tree rows in crop and arable weed species, but also variation between the most abundant plant species including crops, arable weeds, trees and the herb species beneath the trees. This will be scaled up to the plant community level to evaluate the transferability of remote sensing as a technique to monitor spatial functional shifts, and to provide spatially explicit information to assist modelling of different aspects of agroforestry’s Nature’s Contributions to People. Based on these objectives, we will test the following main hypotheses: • Tree rows affect belowground functioning and mycorrhization of crops and arable weeds. • Inter- and intraspecific variation in below- and aboveground FTs will be functionally linked along gradients of plant economic trade-offs. • The variation of belowground FTs (indirectly) and aboveground FTs (directly) can be modelled using hyperspectral data and geostatistical methods. •The hyperspectral and geostatistical models are transferable in space and from leaf to canopy. The parallel investigation of mycorrhiza, root, leaf, and hyperspectral plant FTs represents a novel approach in agroforestry systems but also beyond. Investigation of interspecific, intraspecific and community level variation in FTs at such a holistic level has - to our knowledge - never been carried out. Agroforestry is on the one hand a perfect system for such a study, due to its clearly structured spatial design, but, on the other hand, will specifically gain from the results of this study since monitoring plant fitness and biodiversity from remote sensing data could support agroecological practices in the future. MapFun provides data and knowledge for synthesis with all other subprojects (SPs) of FORMULA at core transects. Furthermore, AMF diversity and composition, determined in SP3 has a high potential to be integrated into our data on mycorrhizal colonization and plant FTs and vice versa. Leaf economic and biochemical data will be provided for SP5 to enhance the mechanistic understanding of crop resource use efficiency. Canopy hyperspectral data, UAV data, mobile LiDAR point clouds and resulting maps will be provided to SPZ. Together with the mechanistic understanding of above-belowground linkages, aimed for MapFun, FORMULA will be able to study the spatial impact of tree rows and the potential of upscaling from spatially explicit data for modelling.
DFG Programme
Research Units
Co-Investigator
Dr. André Große-Stoltenberg
