Une base de données pour les traits fonctionnels des plantes: application à la compréhension des effets fonctionnels des changements de pratiques sur les prairies

[Departement_IRSTEA]Territoires [TR1_IRSTEA]SEDYVINInternational audiencePlant functional traits are powerful tools to identify generic responses of biodiversity and ecosystem function to environmental change and to understand their underlying mechanisms. A collaborative initiative was launched to collect under a single data base information for vegetation composition, environmental variables, and plant traits of alpine ecosystems. This data base makes it possible to gather under a flexible structure data collected by naturalists, conservation managers and scientists, and to use this data to address both fundamental research and management questions. As a first test for the applicability of this data base we asked the following questions:(1) Knowing that plants show phenotypic variation for traits known as variable (e.g. height, leaf structural and chemical traits), to what extent are trait data collected under specific conditions in a given massif applicable to other alpine areas? This question is addressed by comparing trait values for a few common grassland species along a climatic gradient and across grassland management states.(2) Are there generic functional responses that can be detected using traits? This question is addressed by comparing responses of community-level traits to grassland management gradients within three different massifs.(3) Can traits be used to quantify the effects of environmental change on ecosystem services that are relevant to local stakeholders? This question is addressed by linking functional diversity to ecosystem functions associated with services identified by local stakeholders

Set ambitious goals for biodiversity and sustainability

Global biodiversity policy is at a crossroads. Recent global assessments of living nature and climate show worsening trends and a rapidly narrowing window for action. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has recently announced that none of the 20 Aichi targets for biodiversity it set in 2010 has been reached and only six have been partially achieved. Against this backdrop, nations are now negotiating the next generation of the CBD's global goals [see supplementary materials (SM)], due for adoption in 2021, which will frame actions of governments and other actors for decades to come. In response to the goals proposed in the draft post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) made public by the CBD (5), we urge negotiators to consider three points that are critical if the agreed goals are to stabilize or reverse nature's decline. First, multiple goals are required because of nature's complexity, with different facets—genes, populations, species, deep evolutionary history, ecosystems, and their contributions to people—having markedly different geographic distributions and responses to human drivers. Second, interlinkages among these facets mean that goals must be defined and developed holistically rather than in isolation, with potential to advance multiple goals simultaneously and minimize trade-offs between them. Third, only the highest level of ambition in setting each goal, and implementing all goals in an integrated manner, will give a realistic chance of stopping—and beginning to reverse—biodiversity loss by 2050