Global patterns and climatic controls of forest structural complexity
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Nature communications
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.
Description
Keywords
Global patterns, Climatic controls, Forest structural complexity
Citation
Ehbrecht, M., Seidel, D., Annighöfer, P., Kreft, H., Köhler, M., Zemp, D. C., ... & Ammer, C. (2021). Global patterns and climatic controls of forest structural complexity. Nature communications, 12(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20767-z