Report of functional trait inter-relationships

Abstract

This report presents the statistical techniques and methods applied to the MEDIT dataset, aiming at revealing important trait relationships and thus identify potential conversion of life history strategies, as expressed via functional traits. A functional description of the key forest species found in Greece is presented, which can be used as a first proxy to describe important ecological processes. In addition the functional relationships identified here were used to parameterise and constrain key algorithms of the vegetation dynamics models used in deliverables D6.1 and D6.2. For the small scale vegetation dynamics model (GREFOS) species specific values of the traits of interest were used to parameterise the allometric relationships and the mortality function. For the large scale JULES models a set of plant functional types was defined and used to simulate gross primary productivity and net primary productivity across the Mediterranean basin. Finally for the hybrid TFS model the identified functional relationships were directly plugged into the model in order to simulate vegetation dynamics under both current and climate change conditions. All analyses were made with the R programming language (R Development Core Team, 2015).