Relationships between plant traits, soil properties and carbon fluxes differ between monocultures and mixed communities in temperate grassland.

ABSTRACT: The use of plant traits to predict ecosystem functions has been gaining growing attention. Above-ground plant traits, such as leaf nitrogen (N) content and specific leaf area (SLA), have been shown to strongly relate to ecosystem productivity, respiration and nutrient cycling. Furthermore, increasing plant functional trait diversity has been suggested as a possible mechanism to increase ecosystem carbon (C) storage. However, it is uncertain whether below-ground plant traits can be predicted by above-ground traits, and if both above- and below-ground traits can be used to predict soil properties and ecosystem-level functions.Here, we used two adjacent field experiments in temperate grassland to investigate if above- and below-ground plant traits are related, and whether relationships betwee

SUBMITTER: De Long JR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6617750 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature