S. Lavorel et al., PLANT FUNCTIONAL CLASSIFICATIONS - FROM GENERAL GROUPS TO SPECIFIC GROUPS BASED ON RESPONSE TO DISTURBANCE, Trends in ecology & evolution, 12(12), 1997, pp. 474-478
Predicting the effects of anthropogenic changes in climate, atmospheri
c composition and land use on vegetation patterns has been a central c
oncern of recent ecological research. This aim has revived the search
for classification schemes that can be used to group plant species acc
ording to the response to specified environmental factors. One way for
ward is to adopt a hierarchical classification, where different sets o
f traits are examined depending on growth form. Also, at the level of
interpretation, the environmental context and purpose of functional cl
assifications need to be specified explicitly, so that global generali
zations can be made by comparing across environments functional classi
fications derived from similar methodologies.