Global Plant Database Set to Promote Biodiversity Research and Earth-System Sciences
July 1, 2011| |
TRY, the world's largest database on plants' functional properties, or traits has been recently published. The project is hosted at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany and led by Jens Kattge who with a team of scientists from 106 institutions conducted four years of intensive development. The database holds three million traits for 69,000 out of the approximately 300,000 plant species.
"This huge advance in data availability will lead to more reliable predictions of how vegetation boundaries and ecosystem properties will shift under future climate and land-use change scenarios," points out Dr. Ian Wright from Macquarie University. He added that, "The TRY global database also promises to revolutionize biodiversity research, leading to a new understanding of how not only the numbers of species (biodiversity) but also the variation among species in their traits (functional diversity), together effect ecosystem functions and services."
For more on this news, visit http://www.wur.nl/UK/newsagenda/news/Global_plant_database__.htm
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