Plant Functional Biodiversity

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We have entered the "Anthropocene": a period characterized by the Earth's sixth major species extinction, driven by human activities. However, we are ill-equipped to predict changes in biodiversity and the consequences of those changes for ecosystem functioning. Furthermore, these changes greatly outpace our ability to monitor them, which makes it difficult to prioritize our conservation actions.As Canada Research Chair in Plant Functional Biodiversity, Etienne Laliberté and his research team are tackling these two key challenges. They are trying to better understand and predict changes in plant biodiversity and the corresponding consequences at the ecosystem level by studying the morphological and physiological adaptations of plants - called "functional traits" - in changing environments.To achieve this, Laliberté and is team develop an emerging, paradigm-shifting approach: "airborne eco-phenomics", using unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs). This approach not only has the potential to transform plant functional ecology and biodiversity monitoring by allowing the study of plant phenotypes and their consequences for fitness over entire landscapes, but is also a promising way to scale organism-level processes to global scale biosphere functioning. It also allows us to understand how plant species are adapting, via changing leaf phenology, to a warming climate.By unravelling the links between plant functional traits, phenology, environmental conditions and their consequences for plant fitness, this research will this research will improve plant species distribution models. The resaerch will help us design better nature-based solutions to climate change that have co-benefits for biodiversity. It will also pave the way for the creation of a global plant biodiversity observatory based on remote sensing of plant functional traits.