Plant functional types : their relevance to ecosystem properties and global change

Attempts to model the effects of global change are inhibited by a lack of information about how individual plant and animal species will respond. One way of reducing the problem is to develop models treating a smaller number of groups or 'functional types' with similar characteristics. This 1977 book describes approaches and methods for defining these functional types in ways which maximize our potential to predict accurately the responses of real vegetation with real species diversity.