Plants are key to productivity in terrestrial ecosystems, and play a vital role in sequestering our carbon emissions and mitigating climate change. Global climate models predicting future CO² concentrations need to account for carbon fluxes in ecosystems. However, as plants are inherently sensitive to changes in climate, estimating ecosystem productivity in future climates remain a challenge. Future temperatures, CO² concentrations and water availability can have direct impacts on plants, favouring some species whilst driving others to extinction, and loss of common species due to climate change poses a real threat to ecosystem functioning. Subsequent changes in plant community composition can then produce indirect impacts mediated by species interactions.

In this project, we are teaming up with Mark Hovenden (UTAS) and the Warming x Species Removal Network (WSR), to examine how changes in climate and species abundance patterns affect trait distributions and ecosystem functioning in alpine plant communities.

The WSR network provides an excellent opportunity to broadly test whether plantcommunities are inherently resilient to the extinctions of key species and will help improve our understanding of how community trait diversity shapes ecosystem resilience and function in the face of climate change.

Project Collaborators

Margie Mayfield
The University of Queensland

Mark Hovenden
University of Tasmania

Nathan Sanders
University of Copenhagen

Aimee Classen
University of Copenhagen
University of Tennessee
Ecological Society of America

Student

Travis Britton (Honours, 2017)