World's first global vegetation database
Which plant species grow where - and why?
An international research team, including from the University of Adelaide, has produced the world's first global vegetation database which contains over 1.1 million complete lists of plant species for all terrestrial ecosystems.
Published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, the researchers say the database could help better predict the consequences of global climate change.
The research has been led by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and includes data from over 90,000 intensively studied field sites provided by Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN).
“This was a massive global exercise, combining 1.1 million field sites and hundreds of contributors,” says Dr Greg Guerin, from the School of Biological Sciences and TERN. “It provides a major new resource for understanding how plants respond to their environments.”