Elisa Van Cleemput

Leiden University | LEI · Leiden University College

Plant functional traits are key drivers of ecosystem processes. However, plot-based monitoring of functional composition across both large spatial and temporal extents is a time-consuming and expensive undertaking. Airborne and satellite remote sensing platforms collect data across large spatial expanses, often repeatedly over time, raising the tan...

Quantitative functional traits, as presented in the ecology literature, can add great utility to the restoration toolbox. Yet, we see significant barriers to the realization of this utility in restoration practice. By addressing these barriers through co‐producing research, developing tools, and modifying policy, the field of restoration ecology ca...

Decades of empirical ecological research have focused on understanding ecological dynamics at local scales. Remote sensing products can help to scale-up ecological understanding to support management actions that need to be implemented across large spatial extents. This new avenue for remote sensing applications requires careful consideration of so...

Mitigating impacts of global change on biodiversity is a pressing goal for land managers, but understanding impacts is often limited by the spatial and temporal constraints of traditional in situ data. Advances in remote sensing address this challenge, in part, by enabling standardized mapping of biodiversity at large spatial scales and through tim...

As global climate change impacts ecosystems, establishing conservation priorities is crucial for managing threatened areas with limited resources. Biodiversity hotspots, typically defined by high degrees of endemism, play a key role in conservation. However, traditional hotspots may not capture the full extent of biodiversity, including functional...

Aim The spectral variability hypothesis (SVH) predicts that spectral diversity, defined as the variability of radiation reflected from vegetation, increases with biodiversity. While confirmation of this hypothesis would pave the path for use of remote sensing to monitor biodiversity, support in herbaceous ecosystems is mixed. Methodological aspects...

Restoration ecologists devote considerable time and resources to understanding the role of functional traits in community assembly and ecosystem functioning. However, while functional traits show promise in supporting restoration practice in some circumstances, traits are not often explicitly considered by practitioners. Here we highlight four reas...

Leaf mass per area (LMA), leaf dry matter content (LDMC) and leaf water content/ equivalent water thickness (EWT) are commonly used functional plant traits in ecology. Whereas spectroscopy has recently proven to be a powerful tool to collect such functional trait information across large scales, it remains unclear whether these reflectance-based tr...

Worldwide, invasive alien plant species (IAS) threaten the biodiversity and the functioning of ecosystems. Most invasion research so far has focused on the properties underlying species invasiveness and community invasibility, yet IAS impact and the underlying causal pathways remain largely unknown. Here we dealt with this knowledge gap by extendin...

Our ability to measure plant characteristics across space and time is crucial for understanding and tracking the diversity and functioning of ecosystems. Ecological approaches to synthesize these characteristics have evolved from allocating species to predefined conventional plant functional types (cPFTs) to describing vegetation through delineatin...

Functional traits can help elucidate and predict the impact of invasive plant species on ecosystem functioning. Yet, this approach requires comprehensive and labour‐intensive trait collection campaigns, covering intraspecific trait variation of both the invader and native species in the invaded community. One potential way to overcome these logisti...

Invader success and ecosystem impact are both expected to be largely driven by the functional trait distinctiveness of the resident species relative to the invaded communities. To understand the importance of trait distinctiveness for plant invasions, and the native community's trait response to the invasion, it is key to measure multiple traits si...

Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research sp...

Worldwide, grasslands form important ecosystems, providing essential habitats to a wide variety of species. However, these ecosystems experience various pressures, such as climate change and plant invasion, potentially affecting their functioning and thus jeopardizing the services and benefits they provide to humanity. Grassland conservation and re...

Invasive alien plant effects on ecosystem functions are often difficult to predict due to the context-dependent interactions between the invader and the recipient communities. Adopting a functional trait-based framework could provide more mechanistic predictions for invasive species' impacts. Recent advances in hyperspectral spectroscopy have furth...

Collecting species‐level information on plant functional traits is highly relevant for understanding ecosystem functioning under global change. Measuring optical properties of plant species is a promising approach to retrieve such data, but standardized protocols are essential. Due to fine‐scale heterogeneity of many vegetation types, measuring the...

Hyperspectral remote sensing is increasingly being recognized as a powerful tool to map ecosystem properties and functions through time and space. However, general information on the accuracy of this technology to assess the vegetation's biophysical and-chemical trait composition, and on the variables which are mediating this accuracy, is often lac...

It is acknowledged that trees behave remarkably plastic in response to environmental conditions. Even so, knowledge of how tree architecture in pure and mixed stands compare is largely underexplored. Such information is relevant from a fundamental ecological and an applied silvicultural perspective, given the increased attention for mixed species s...