“…Moreover, the PFTs used in LSMs have historically been developed to represent global patterns of vegetation and their associated traits (Bonan et al, 2002;Box, 1996;Melton et al, 2020;Wullschleger et al, 2014). Region-specific PFTs can enhance model realism, more accurately represent the diversity of vegetation on the landscape, and include more informed parameterizations that act to reduce regional biases (Curasi et al, 2022;Epstein et al, 2001;Mekonnen et al, 2021;Meyer et al, 2021;Peng et al, 2014;Rezende et al, 2016;Rogers, 2014). For these region-specific PFTs to improve model performance and robustness they require sufficient data or expert knowledge to inform their parameterization and specify their distribution.…”