Landuyt D, Perring M P, Seidl R, Taubert F, Verbeeck H, Verheyen K
Forest & Nature Lab, Department of Forest and Water Management, Ghent University, Geraardsbergsesteenweg 267, 9090 Melle-Gontrode, Belgium.
Ecosystem Restoration and Intervention Ecology Research Group, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.
Perspect Plant Ecol Evol Syst. 2018 Apr;31:44-54. doi: 10.1016/j.ppees.2018.01.002. Epub 2018 Jan 31.
The understorey harbours a substantial part of vascular plant diversity in temperate forests and plays an important functional role, affecting ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling and overstorey regeneration. Global change, however, is putting these understorey communities on trajectories of change, potentially altering and reducing their functioning in the future. Developing mitigation strategies to safeguard the diversity and functioning of temperate forests in the future is challenging and requires improved predictive capacity. Process-based models that predict understorey community composition over time, based on first principles of ecology, have the potential to guide mitigation endeavours but such approaches are rare. Here, we review fourteen understorey modelling approaches that have been proposed during the last three decades. We evaluate their inclusion of mechanisms that are required to predict the impact of global change on understorey communities. We conclude that none of the currently existing models fully accounts for all processes that we deem important based on empirical and experimental evidence. Based on this review, we contend new models are needed to project the complex impacts of global change on forest understoreys. Plant functional traits should be central to such future model developments, as they drive community assembly processes and provide valuable information on the functioning of the understorey. Given the important role of the overstorey, a coupling of understorey models to overstorey models will be essential to predict the impact of global change on understorey composition and structure, and how it will affect the functioning of temperate forests in the future.
林下植被承载着温带森林中很大一部分维管植物多样性，并发挥着重要的功能作用，影响着诸如养分循环和上层林冠更新等生态系统过程。然而，全球变化正使这些林下群落走上变化的轨迹，未来可能会改变并降低其功能。制定缓解策略以保护未来温带森林的多样性和功能具有挑战性，需要提高预测能力。基于生态学第一原理预测林下群落组成随时间变化的过程模型有潜力指导缓解措施，但此类方法很少见。在此，我们回顾了过去三十年中提出的十四种林下建模方法。我们评估了它们对预测全球变化对林下群落影响所需机制的纳入情况。我们得出结论，基于实证和实验证据，目前现有的模型都没有完全考虑到我们认为重要的所有过程。基于这项综述，我们认为需要新的模型来预测全球变化对森林林下植被的复杂影响。植物功能性状应成为此类未来模型开发的核心，因为它们驱动群落组装过程，并提供有关林下植被功能的有价值信息。鉴于上层林冠的重要作用，将林下模型与上层林冠模型耦合对于预测全球变化对林下组成和结构的影响以及它未来将如何影响温带森林的功能至关重要。
