Tropical Root Trait Initiative
Mobilizing and integrating tropical root traits
This initiative arose from a need for tropical root ecologists to assess the rapidly growing body of root trait data for tropical ecosystems. We are compiling data from across tropical root studies to assess how tropical root traits vary over time, space, and in response to global change. These data will be used to assess a broad set of hypotheses related to root functional ecology (in the tropics and globally). Our main activities are to 1) build a database of tropical root trait data from papers and unpublished data set in collaboration with FRED at Oak Ridge National Lab, and 2) write review and concept papers about tropical root traits across natural gradients, in response to global change, and linking field data to ecosystem models of root activity for tropical forests.
