Does biomass partitioning differ between plant functional types? Analysis of a global biomass and allometry database

(BAAD)

Remko Duursma, Daniel Falster

The importance of biomass partitioning

• The distribution of biomass between plant components (‘partitioning’) is of fundamental importance for• carbon and nutrient cycling• lifetime of carbon in the ecosystem• plant growth

• Global Vegetation Models (GVMs) all contain an allocation submodel, a very important model component (e.g. Friend et al. 2014 PNAS)

• These models are highly simplified, outdated, and based on very sparse input data or often 'best guesses'

• We need data

Some key knowledge gaps

• How does biomass partitioning (leaf vs. stem) differ between • Angiosperms vs. Gymnosperms• Deciduous vs. Evergreen

• Does higher leaf mass per area (lower SLA) lead to higher plant leaf mass, or lower leaf area?

• Does biomass partitioning depend on climate (mean annual rainfall, mean annual temperature)?

Data: GlopNET (Wright et al. 2004, Nature)

Leaf lifespan increases with LMAIf all else equal, longer-lived foliage implies higher total foliage biomass

The Biomass and Allometry Database (BAAD)

• data from published and unpublished sources, containing biomass and size metrics for woody plants

• Authors were contacted directly, and were asked for raw data + metadata• Individual plants, destructive harvest (not from allometric estimates)

Raw data Manipulate data (if needed) Extract variables included in BAAD (and assign unified variable names) Add new data (e.g. latitude, longitude, species) Store metadata (methods for data collection) Store study contacts

Clean data • Repeat for each separate study• Combine all clean datasets• Post-process (calculate derived

variables, check species names against databases, etc.)

BAAD

See also our post on https://ropensci.org/blog/

See also our post on https://ropensci.org/blog/

BAAD in numbers 20950 individual woody plants176 published or unpublished studies674 species from 120 taxonomic families

Height range from <1cm to 112m, weight from <1g to >300t.

Falster et al. 2015 (Ecology)

MAP and MAT of studies in BAAD compared to global land cover

Duursma & Falster in revision

Delagrange et al. 2004 Komiyama et al. 2002, 2003

Komiyama et al., Japan

Ribeiro et al. 2011

NT, Australia

Canada

Spain

Malaysia

Congo Estonia

Spain Argentina

Also : N content, wood density by component (limited)

Different scaling for leaf and woody biomass with plant height

Duursma & Falster in revision

Terminology

• We here considered aboveground biomass only(Analysis of root data showed no differences between PFTs)

Leaf Mass Fraction (LMF) = leaf mass / aboveground biomass

Leaf Area Ratio (LAR) = leaf area / aboveground biomass

Leaf Mass per Area (LMA) = leaf mass / leaf area

Least-square means

Leaf mass fraction : proportional to leaf mass per area across PFTs

PFTs have similar leaf area per unit biomass

Leaf area ratio does not differ between PFTs

Duursma & Falster in revision

• LMF and LAR are strongly dependent on height

• Leaf mass fraction can be further decomposed into

where AS is basal stem area

• Similar to LMF, foliage biomass per unit stem area was proportional to LMA

• These variables are only very weakly dependent on plant height

Duursma & Falster in revision

Weak and inconsistent effects of climate

• Biome and MAP or MAT tested

Duursma & Falster in revision

• Three plant functional types differ strongly in leaf mass supported at a total aboveground biomass or basal stem area

• At given plant height, LMF was proportional to LMA across PFTs• This also to some extent across species, although there is much

variation within PFTs not accounted for

• As a result, leaf area ratio was not different between PFTs

• No clear effects of climate on biomass partitioning

• These results can be used to constrain biomass partitioning estimates in global vegetation models, which routinely predict differences between PFTs

Conclusions

Getting BAAD and future contributions

• Data is released as an Ecology data paper (Falster et al. 2015), you can download it without restrictions

• The code repository (including all raw data and workflow) is also publicly available, as a github repository

• New data can be added and released publicly

AcknowledgmentsThanks to all 86 co-authors who contributed raw data, and provided answers to many data queries

BAAD Team:Daniel Falster Project lead, programming, workflowRemko Duursma Data quality, programming, analysisMasae Ishihara Japanese compilationDiego R. Barneche Data ingestion, programmingRich G. FitzJohn Workflow, programmingAngelica Vårhammar Data ingestion, metadata, etc.

BAAD : data contributors

Masahiro Aiba, Makoto Ando, Niels Anten, Jennifer L. Baltzer, Christopher Baraloto, John J. Battles, Benjamin Bond-Lamberty, Michiel van Breugel, Yves Claveau, Lluís Coll, Masako Dannoura, Sylvain Delagrange, Jean-Christophe Domec, Farrah Fatemi, Wang Feng, Veronica Gargaglione, Akio Hagihara, Jefferson S. Hall, Steve Hamilton, Degi Harja, Tsutom Hiura, Robert Holdaway, Lindsay Hutley, Tomoaki Ichie, Eric J Jokela, Anu Kantola, Jeff W. G. Kelly, Tanaka Kenzo, David King, Brian D Kloeppel, Takashi Kohyama, Akira Komiyama, Jean-Paul Laclau, Christopher H. Lusk, Doug Maguire, Guerric le Maire, Annikki Mäkelä, Lars Markesteijn, John Marshall, Katherine McCulloh, Itsuo Miyata, Karel Mokany, Shigeta Mori, Randall W. Myster, Masahiro Nagano, Shawna Naidu, Yann Nouvellon, Anthony P. O’Grady, Kevin L. O’Hara, Toshiyuki Ohtsuka, Noriyuki Osada, Olusegun O. Osunkoya, Pablo Luis Peri, Any Mary Petritan, Lourens Poorter, Angelika Portsmuth, Catherine Potvin, Johannes Ransijn, Douglas Reid, Sabina C. Ribeiro, Scott D. Roberts, Ignacio Santa-Regina Rodríguez, Rolando Rodríguez, Angela Saldaña-Acosta, Kaichiro Sasa, N. Galia Selaya, Stephen C. Sillett, Frank Sterck, Kentaro Takagi, Takeshi Tange, Hiroyuki Tanouchi, David Tissue, Tohru Umehara, Hajime Utsugi, Matthew A. Vadeboncoeur, Fernando Valladares, Petteri Vanninen, Jian R. Wang, Elizabeth Wenk, Dick Williams, Fabiano de Aquino Ximenes, Atsushi Yamaba, Toshihiro Yamada, Takuo Yamakura, Ruth Yanai, Robert A. York