Remote sensing has transformed the monitoring of life on Earth by revealing spatial and
temporal dimensions of biological diversity through structural, compositional and functional …

BACKGROUND Soil is the largest repository of organic matter on land, storing~ 1500 Gt
carbon, which is at least as much as the vegetation (~ 560 Gt) and atmosphere (~ 750 Gt) …

Plant traits determine how individual plants cope with heterogeneous environments. Despite
large variability in individual traits, trait coordination and trade-offs, result in some trait …

Plant functional traits can predict community assembly and ecosystem functioning and are
thus widely used in global models of vegetation dynamics and land–climate feedbacks. Still …

Approximately 25 years ago, ecologists became increasingly interested in the question of
whether ongoing biodiversity loss matters for the functioning of ecosystems. As such, a new …

With approximately 60 Pg of carbon (C) released as CO2 annually, the decomposition of
dead organic matter feeds the major terrestrial global CO2 flux to the atmosphere …

Background Microbial-driven decomposition of plant residues is integral to carbon
sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems. Actinobacteria, one of the most widely distributed …

Studies of the decomposition, transformation and stabilization of soil organic matter (SOM)
have dramatically increased in recent years owing to growing interest in studying the global …

Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological
characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect …

The tundra is warming more rapidly than any other biome on Earth, and the potential
ramifications are far-reaching because of global feedback effects between vegetation and …