Abstract
Understanding the ecological effects of human activities on an ecosystem is integral to the implementation of conservation management plans. The plasticity of plant functional traits presents an opportunity to examine the capacity for intraspecific functional trait variations to be indicators of anthropogenic landscape modifications. The presence of intraspecific trait variation would indicate that plants of a single species could to be used to evaluate and map functional diversity, a common metric used to measure biodiversity. This study uses leaf spectroscopy, light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and partial least squares regression (PLSR) to examine the intraspecific variation of functional traits in a population of 40 Quercus garryana experiencing varying levels of anthropogenic influence at the site level (<0.3 km2) in Duncan, B.C., Canada. These individuals vary in their spatial relationship to roads, agricultural land use change and an encroaching Coastal Douglas-fir forest. A total of 14 functional traits were estimated using pre-determined PLSR coefficients from a multi-species dataset. LiDAR data for each tree and were organized into functional categories based on their influence of plant lifeform, leaf growth or leaf structure. Principal components analysis was performed on each functional category to determine the relative influence of each trait. Results show that leaf growth and lifeform functional trait categories express significant variation in relation to three anthropogenic landscape modifications, while traits associated to leaf structure only varied between land use types (p = 0.05). Diameter at breast height (DBH), mass-based chlorophyll and leaf mass per area (LMA) showed the strongest variation across treatments. These findings support the hypothesis that trait variation exists in small populations of the same species and illustrate that spectroscopy can be used to indirectly sense land use via the leaf functional traits of a single tree species.
Highlights
The current speed and scale of anthropogenic landscape modification is unprecedented [1,2].With such high capacity for human actions to inflict biotic and abiotic change, it is increasingly necessary to accurately monitor the health of ecosystems in a timely manner [3]
The northern section of the Cowichan Garry Oak Preserve (CGOP) consists of a Coastal Douglas-fir Forest (CDF) that was traditionally managed through fire, mowing and removal (Figure 1) [39]
The results presented in this study support the hypotheses that intraspecific functional trait variation exists within a population experiencing different land uses and in relation to various anthropogenic landscape modifications
Summary
The current speed and scale of anthropogenic landscape modification is unprecedented [1,2]. With such high capacity for human actions to inflict biotic and abiotic change, it is increasingly necessary to accurately monitor the health of ecosystems in a timely manner [3]. The application of remote sensing techniques to evaluate relevant ecosystem characteristics, such as biodiversity and plant health, provide opportunities to achieve these goals [4] and improvements in sensor technology, deployment platforms and computing are enabling new monitoring methodologies at multiple spatial scales [5,6,7]. When evaluated at a site- or landscape-level, plant functional traits can be used to map functional diversity, community assembly and other ecosystem characteristics linked with biodiversity [16]
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