Moor, Helen
- Stockholm University
Abstract
Wetlands provide multiple ecosystem services, the sustainable use of which requires knowledge of the underlying ecological mechanisms. Functional traits, particularly the community-weighted mean trait (CWMT), provide a strong link between species communities and ecosystem functioning. We here combine species distribution modeling and plant functional traits to estimate the direction of change of ecosystem processes under climate change. We model changes in CWMT values for traits relevant to three key services, focusing on the regional species pool in the Norrstrom area (central Sweden) and three main wetland types. Our method predicts proportional shifts toward faster growing, more productive and taller species, which tend to increase CWMT values of specific leaf area and canopy height, whereas changes in root depth vary. The predicted changes in CWMT values suggest a potential increase in flood attenuation services, a potential increase in short (but not long)-term nutrient retention, and ambiguous outcomes for carbon sequestration.
Keywords
Functional traits; Ecosystem services; Climate change; Species distribution modeling; Wetlands; Sweden
Published in
AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment
2015, volume: 44, number: Suppl 1, pages: S113-S126
Publisher: SPRINGER
SLU Authors
UKÄ Subject classification
Ecology
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0593-9
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/86877