Response Plant Functional Types and Effect Plant Functional Types

One of the recurrent themes in plant ecology and range management is the need to scale information from specific case studies towards broader ecological patterns and processes. Information must be interpreted and applied at larger scales because the most serious challenges to natural resource management operate at regional and global scales. A central problem encountered when scaling vegetation responses to regional levels is our limited ability to quantify and interpret complex floristic responses involving a large number of individual species. This provides a strong justification for the development of a more generalized pattern of vegetation responses involving a manageable number of plant groups that have similar life history strategies and responses to environmental stress and disturbance (McIntyre, 1999). The concept of plant functional types provides a promising tool to bridge the gap between specific, detailed studies and broader scale problems. Plant functional types are sets of plants exhibiting similar responses to environmental conditions and having similar effects on the dominant ecosystem processes (Gitay and Noble, 1997). The classification of plant species into similar groups based on their morphological and physiological traits provides new insights into the dynamics of vegetation change and associated ecological processes.