A trait-based approach for forest ecosystem management

One of my more recent co-authored research articles has been selected as ‘Editor’s Choice’ in The Applied Ecologist’s Blog . The paper, Maintaining ecosystem properties after loss of ash in Great Britain by Louise Hill et al, focusses on the importance of using plant functional traits to predict potential changes to an ecosystem, following the loss of a key species.

“With an impressive data set at hand across whole of Great Britain, Hill et al. developed and applied an innovative analytic approach, Analytical Hierarchy Process (a tool borrowed from the social sciences), and used plant functional traits, which allowed them to predict changes in ecosystem properties due to ash loss (the ecology part), optimized by a hierarchy of traits’ importance. From this they could offer recommendations to managers and decision makers about how to avoid the disappearance of ash and the ecosystem services it provides.  Here, plant functional traits are essential in the link between biodiversity and ecosystem properties.”

The Editor’s Choice for issue 56:2 is written by Associate Editor, Alex Fajardo.  

Read the full article at Editor’s Choice 56:2 – A trait-based approach for forest ecosystem management