Plant traits – the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants and their organs – determine how primary producers respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, influence ecosystem processes and services and provide a link from species richness to ecosystem functional diversity. Trait data thus represent the raw material for a wide range of research from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology to biogeography. Here we present the global database initiative named TRY, which has united a wide range of the plant trait research community worldwide and gained an unprecedented buy-in of trait data: so far 93 trait databases have been contributed. The data repository currently contains almost three million trait entries for 69 000 out of the world's 300 000 plant species, with a focus on 52 groups of traits characterizing the vegetative and regeneration stages of the plant life cycle, including growth, dispersal, establishment and persistence. A first data analysis shows that most plant traits are approximately log-normally distributed, with widely differing ranges of variation across traits. Most trait variation is between species (interspecific), but significant intraspecific variation is also documented, up to 40% of the overall variation. Plant functional types (PFTs), as commonly used in vegetation models, capture a substantial fraction of the observed variation – but for several traits most variation occurs within PFTs, up to 75% of the overall variation. In the context of vegetation models these traits would better be represented by state variables rather than fixed parameter values. The improved availability of plant trait data in the unified global database is expected to support a paradigm shift from species to trait-based ecology, offer new opportunities for synthetic plant trait research and enable a more realistic and empirically grounded representation of terrestrial vegetation in Earth system models.

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Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects.We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives. Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) and DIVERSITAS, the TRY database (TRY-not an acronym, rather a statement of sentiment; https ://www.try-db.org; Kattge et al., 2011) was proposed with the explicit assignment to improve the availability and accessibility of plant trait data for ecology and earth system sciences. The Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI-BGC) offered to host the database and the different groups joined forces for this community-driven program. Two factors were key to the success of TRY: the support and trust of leaders in the field of functional plant ecology submitting large databases and the long-term funding by the Max Planck Society, the MPI-BGC and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, which has enabled the continuous development of the TRY database.

27B razil has been unique worldwide in terms of land use. Although vast areas of forests and savannahs have been converted into farmland (Fig. 1) -placing the country as a leading global producer of agricultural commodities -it still safeguards the largest tracts of native tropical vegetation on Earth, with extremely high levels of biodiversity. Patterns of land use change, which until recently exhibited the highest worldwide absolute rates of tropical deforestation, largely resulted in low-productivity cattle pastures 2 . Moreover, climate change issues in Brazil are inextricably related to land use and land-use change (LUC) as approximately 80% of the country's total CO 2 -equivalent (CO 2 e) emissions in 2005 were sourced from agriculture and LUC 3 .Demand for farmland is the key immediate driver of LUC in Brazil, and there is little evidence that agricultural expansion is grinding to a halt 4-7 . In fact, Brazil holds the greatest potential for further agricultural expansion in the twenty-first century 8 . Understanding recent LUC patterns (Box 1) and visualizing a sustainable land-use pathway in Brazil have become highly strategic -not only for Brazilians, given that regional and global climate change, food and energy provision, and biodiversity conservation are all at stake. This Review presents an integrated analysis and provides new insights on recent trends in the Brazilian land-use system. In the first two sections we show how Brazil's agriculture is becoming both gradually decoupled from deforestation processes and increasingly intensified and oriented to large-scale farming of trade commodities throughout the country. Next we explain the economic and political factors driving those changes. The fourth section reveals the drawbacks of those changes in aggravating the long history of inequality in land ownership. We then explore repercussions for climate change, namely Agriculture, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and local/regional climate change have been closely intertwined in Brazil. Recent studies show that this relationship has been changing since the mid 2000s, with the burgeoning intensification and commoditization of Brazilian agriculture. On one hand, this accrues considerable environmental dividends including a pronounced reduction in deforestation (which is becoming decoupled from agricultural production), resulting in a decrease of ~40% in nationwide greenhouse gas emissions since 2005, and a potential cooling of the climate at the local scale. On the other hand, these changes in the land-use system further reinforce the long-established inequality in land ownership, contributing to rural-urban migration that ultimately fuels haphazard expansion of urban areas. We argue that strong enforcement of sector-oriented policies and solving long-standing land tenure problems, rather than simply waiting for market self-regulation, are key steps to buffer the detrimental effects of agricultural intensification at the forefront of a sustainable pathway for land use in Brazil.for the country's g...

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Contents 459I.459II.460III.462IV.464V.466VI.467VII.469469References469 Summary The Brazilian Atlantic Forest hosts one of the world's most diverse and threatened tropical forest biota. In many ways, its history of degradation describes the fate experienced by tropical forests around the world. After five centuries of human expansion, most Atlantic Forest landscapes are archipelagos of small forest fragments surrounded by open‐habitat matrices. This ‘natural laboratory’ has contributed to a better understanding of the evolutionary history and ecology of tropical forests and to determining the extent to which this irreplaceable biota is susceptible to major human disturbances. We share some of the major findings with respect to the responses of tropical forests to human disturbances across multiple biological levels and spatial scales and discuss some of the conservation initiatives adopted in the past decade. First, we provide a short description of the Atlantic Forest biota and its historical degradation. Secondly, we offer conceptual models describing major shifts experienced by tree assemblages at local scales and discuss landscape ecological processes that can help to maintain this biota at larger scales. We also examine potential plant responses to climate change. Finally, we propose a research agenda to improve the conservation value of human‐modified landscapes and safeguard the biological heritage of tropical forests.

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After 500 years of exploitation and destruction, the Brazilian Atlantic Forest has been reduced to less the 8% of its original cover, and climate change may pose a new threat to the remnants of this biodiversity hotspot. In this study we used modelling techniques to determine present and future geographical distribution of 38 species of trees that are typical of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica), considering two global warming scenarios. The optimistic scenario, based in a 0.5% increase in the concentration of CO 2 in the atmosphere, predicts an increase of up to 2 °C in the Earth's average temperature; in the pessimistic scenario, based on a 1% increase in the concentration of CO 2 in the atmosphere, temperature increase may reach 4 °C. Using these parameters, the occurrence points of the studied species registered in literature, the Genetic Algorithm for Rule-set Predictions/GARP and Maximum entropy modeling of species geographic distributions/MaxEnt we developed models of present and future possible occurrence of each species, considering Earth's mean temperature by 2050 with the optimistic and the pessimistic scenarios of CO 2 emission. The results obtained show an alarming reduction in the area of possible occurrence of the species studied, as well as a shift towards southern areas of Brazil. Using GARP, on average, in the optimistic scenario this reduction is of 25% while in the pessimistic scenario it reaches 50%, and the species that will suffer the worst reduction in their possible area of occurrence are: Euterpe edulis, Mollinedia schottiana, Virola bicuhyba, Inga sessilis and Vochysia magnifica. Using MaxEnt, on average, in the optimistic scenario the reduction will be of 20% while in the pessimistic scenario it reaches 30%, and the species that will suffer the worst reduction are: Hyeronima alchorneoides, Schefflera angustissima, Andira fraxinifolia and the species of Myrtaceae studied.Keywords: Brazilian Atlantic Forest trees, climate change, species niche modeling, GARP, MaxEnt. Mata Atlântica lato sensu: a mais antiga das florestas brasileiras, e um hotspot de biodiversidade, está altamente ameaçada pelas mudanças climáticas ResumoNos últimos 500 anos de ocupação da costa brasileira, de um total de 1.300.000 km 2 , apenas cerca de 8% da cobertura original da Mata Atlântica foi preservada. Os poucos fragmentos restantes dessa devastação apresentam diversos tamanhos, formas, estádios de sucessão e situação de conservação. Cerca de metade dos remanescentes florestais de grande extensão estão protegidos na forma de Unidades de Conservação. A maioria desses fragmentos se encontra hoje nas regiões serranas, principalmente a fachada da Serra do Mar, por serem impróprias para práticas agrícolas. Neste estudo, usamos técnicas de modelagem para determinar a distribuição geográfica presente e futura de 38 espécies arbóreas típicas da Mata Atlântica lato sensu, considerando dois cenários de aquecimento global. O cenário otimista prevê uma taxa anual de 0,5% de aumento na concentração de C...