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      Global patterns and climatic controls of forest structural complexity

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          Abstract

          The complexity of forest structures plays a crucial role in regulating forest ecosystem functions and strongly influences biodiversity. Yet, knowledge of the global patterns and determinants of forest structural complexity remains scarce. Using a stand structural complexity index based on terrestrial laser scanning, we quantify the structural complexity of boreal, temperate, subtropical and tropical primary forests. We find that the global variation of forest structural complexity is largely explained by annual precipitation and precipitation seasonality (R² = 0.89). Using the structural complexity of primary forests as benchmark, we model the potential structural complexity across biomes and present a global map of the potential structural complexity of the earth´s forest ecoregions. Our analyses reveal distinct latitudinal patterns of forest structure and show that hotspots of high structural complexity coincide with hotspots of plant diversity. Considering the mechanistic underpinnings of forest structural complexity, our results suggest spatially contrasting changes of forest structure with climate change within and across biomes.

          Abstract

          Forest structure depends both on extrinsic factors such as climate and on intrinsic properties such as community composition and diversity. Here, the authors use a dataset of stand structural complexity based on LiDAR measurements to build a global map of structural complexity for primary forests, and find that precipitation variables best explain global patterns of forest structural complexity.

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          WorldClim 2: new 1-km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas

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            Collinearity: a review of methods to deal with it and a simulation study evaluating their performance

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              Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                martin.ehbrecht@forst.uni-goettingen.de
                Journal
                Nat Commun
                Nat Commun
                Nature Communications
                Nature Publishing Group UK (London )
                2041-1723
                22 January 2021
                22 January 2021
                2021
                : 12
                : 519
                Affiliations
                [1 ]GRID grid.7450.6, ISNI 0000 0001 2364 4210, Silviculture and Forest Ecology of the Temperate Zones, , University of Göttingen, ; Büsgenweg 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
                [2 ]GRID grid.6936.a, ISNI 0000000123222966, Forest and Agroforest Systems, , Technical University of Munich (TUM), ; Hans-Carl-von-Carlowitz-Platz 2, 85354 Freising, Germany
                [3 ]GRID grid.7450.6, ISNI 0000 0001 2364 4210, Biodiversity, Macroecology and Biogeography, , University of Göttingen, ; Büsgenweg 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
                [4 ]GRID grid.7450.6, ISNI 0000 0001 2364 4210, Centre of Biodiversity and Sustainable Land Use (CBL), , University of Göttingen, ; Büsgenweg 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
                [5 ]GRID grid.425750.1, Northwest German Forest Research Institute, ; Grätzelstr. 2, 37079 Göttingen, Germany
                [6 ]GRID grid.4391.f, ISNI 0000 0001 2112 1969, Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, , Oregon State University, ; Corvallis, OR 97331 USA
                [7 ]GRID grid.452475.5, Forest Research Centre, Sabah Forestry Department, ; P.O. Box 1407, 90715 Sandakan, Malaysia
                [8 ]Budongo Conservation Field Station, P.O. Box 362, Masindi, Uganda
                [9 ]GRID grid.11194.3c, ISNI 0000 0004 0620 0548, Department of Forestry, Biodiversity and Tourism, , Makerere University, ; P.O. Box, 7062 Kampala, Uganda
                [10 ]GRID grid.501187.a, ISNI 0000000463647645, Departmento de Recursos Naurales y Tecnología, , Universidad de Aysén, ; Obispo Vielmo 62, Coyhaique, Chile
                [11 ]GRID grid.33998.38, ISNI 0000 0001 2171 4027, School of Geography, Earth Science, and Environment, , University of the South Pacific, ; Laucala Bay, Suva, Fiji
                [12 ]GRID grid.9613.d, ISNI 0000 0001 1939 2794, Institute of Geography, , University of Jena, ; Löbdergraben 32, 07743 Jena, Germany
                [13 ]GRID grid.487746.e, Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park, ; P.O. Box 277, Winter Harbor, ME 04693 USA
                [14 ]GRID grid.168010.e, ISNI 0000000419368956, Earth Systems Program, , Stanford University, ; 473 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
                [15 ]GRID grid.422375.5, ISNI 0000 0004 0591 6771, The Nature Conservancy, ; 67-1197 Mamalahoa Hwy., P.O. Box 1056, Kamuela, HI 96743 USA
                [16 ]GRID grid.70738.3b, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 981X, Department of Natural Resources and Environment, and Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension, , University of Alaska Fairbanks, ; P.O. Box 7566180, Fairbanks, AK 99775 USA
                [17 ]GRID grid.47840.3f, ISNI 0000 0001 2181 7878, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, , University of California, ; 130 Mulford Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4131-9424
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8126-5307
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0129-3381
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9176-4836
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5126-5568
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4235-0135
                Article
                20767
                10.1038/s41467-020-20767-z
                7822964
                33483481
                a86758ab-53e7-4296-b119-82d116757733
                © The Author(s) 2021

                Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 21 May 2020
                : 11 December 2020
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef https://doi.org/10.13039/501100003385, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (University of Göttingen);
                Categories
                Article
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2021

                Uncategorized
                biogeography,climate-change ecology,ecosystem ecology,forestry
                Uncategorized
                biogeography, climate-change ecology, ecosystem ecology, forestry

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