PLANT FUNCTIONAL CLASSIFICATIONS - FROM GENERAL GROUPS TO SPECIFIC GROUPS BASED ON RESPONSE TO DISTURBANCE

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.