Thomas Vanneste

Ghent University | UGhent · Department of Environment

Alpine ecosystems harbor remarkably diverse and distinct plant communities that are characteristically limited to harsh, and cold climatic conditions. As a result of thermal limitation to species occurrence, mountainous ecosystems are considered to be particularly sensitive to climate change. Our understanding of the impact of climate change is mai...

This chapter focuses on historical microclimates and how they can help us to predict the future. It summarizes the drivers and effects of past, present and future climate, land‐use and forest management on temporal dynamics in understory microclimate, and methods to infer historical microclimates. The chapter outlines the implications for forest bi...

Aim: The amount of forest edges is increasing globally due to forest fragmentation and land-use changes. However, edge effects on the soil seed bank of temperate forests are still poorly understood. Here, we assessed edge effects at contrasting spatial scales across Europe and quantified the extent to which edges can preserve the seeds of forest s...

Context Plant populations in agricultural landscapes are mostly fragmented and their functional connectivity often depends on seed and pollen dispersal by animals. However, little is known about how the interactions of seed and pollen dispersers with the agricultural matrix translate into gene flow among plant populations. Objectives We aimed to i...

The effectiveness of hedgerows as functional corridors in the face of climate warming has been little researched. Here we investigated the effects of warming temperatures on plant performance and population growth of Geum urbanum in forests versus hedgerows in two European temperate regions. Adult individuals were transplanted in three forest–hedge...

Global change is causing ecosystems to change at unprecedented rates and the urgency to quantify ecological change is high. We therefore need all possible sources of ecological data to address key knowledge gaps. Ground‐based photos are a form of remote sensing and an unconventional data source with a high potential to improve our understanding of...

The climate is changing rapidly, with potentially strong effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, compared to the macroclimate, the microclimate in forests is very different, with less fluctuations and mainly lower maximum temperatures. This microclimate buffering is variable through space and time and largely depends on forest stru...

Species turnover is ubiquitous. However, it remains unknown whether certain types of species are consistently gained or lost across different habitats. Here, we analysed the trajectories of 1827 plant species over time intervals of up to 78years at 141sites across mountain summits, forests, and lowland grasslands in Europe. We found, albeit with...

Hedgerows are semi-natural wooded habitats and an important element in agricultural landscapes across Western and North Western Europe. They reduce erosion, function as carbon sinks and thus provide essential ecosystem services. Moreover, they form a structurally diverse ecosystem for numerous taxa and connect otherwise fragmented forest habitats....

Global forest cover is heavily fragmented. Due to high edge-to-surface ratios in small forest patches, a large proportion of forests is affected by edge influences involving steep microclimatic gradients. Although forest edges are important ecotones and account for 20% of the global forested area, it remains unclear how biotic and abiotic drivers a...

Forest canopies buffer macroclimatic temperature fluctuations. However, we do not know if and how the capacity of canopies to buffer understorey temperature will change with accelerating climate change. Here we map the difference (offset) between temperatures inside and outside forests in the recent past and project these into the future in boreal,...

Context Evidence for effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on the viability of temperate forest herb populations in agricultural landscapes is so far based on population genetic studies of single species in single landscapes. However, forest herbs differ in their life histories, and landscapes have different environments, structures and histori...

The global role of tree-based climate change mitigation is widely recognized; trees sequester large amounts of atmospheric carbon, and woody biomass has an important role in the future biobased economy. In national carbon and biomass budgets, trees growing in hedgerows and tree rows are often allocated the same biomass increment data as forest-grow...

Forests harbour large spatiotemporal heterogeneity in canopy structure. This variation drives the microclimate and light availability at the forest floor. So far, we do not know how light availability and sub‐canopy temperature interactively mediate the impact of macroclimate warming on understorey communities. We therefore assessed the functional...

Aims Understanding fine-grain diversity patterns across large spatial extents is fundamental for macroecological research and biodiversity conservation. Using the GrassPlot database, we provide benchmarks of fine-grain richness values of Palaearctic open habitats for vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and complete vegetation (i.e., the sum of the...

Agroforestry can contribute significantly to carbon sequestration in agricultural lands, as carbon accumulates both in tree biomass and the soil. One of the oldest, yet declining, forms of agroforestry in Europe are hedgerow-bordered fields. An analysis of historical maps of our study area in Belgium shows that 70% of the hedgerow network was clear...

Despite the crucial role of the seed bank in forest conservation and dynamics, the effects of forest edge microclimate and climate warming on germination responses from the forest seed bank are still almost unknown. Here, we investigated edge effects on the realised seed bank and seedling community in two types of European temperate deciduous fores...

Background and aims Hedgerows have been shown to improve forest connectivity, leading to an increased probability of species to track the shifting bioclimatic envelopes. However, it is still unknown how species in hedgerows respond to temperature changes, and whether effects differ compared to those in nearby forests. We aimed to elucidate how ongo...

Many organisms live in environments in which temperatures differ substantially from those measured by standard weather stations. The last decade has witnessed a paradigm shift in efforts to quantify these differences and to understand their ecological, functional and evolutionary implications. This renewed interest in microclimate ecology has been...

1. Forest biodiversity worldwide is affected by climate change, habitat loss and fragmentation, and today 20 % of the forest area is located within 100 m of a forest edge. Still, forest edges harbour a substantial amount of terrestrial biodiversity, especially in the understorey. The functional and phylogenetic diversity of forest edges have never...

Converting data from national forest inventories to carbon stocks for greenhouse gas reporting generally relies on biomass expansion factors (BEFs) that expand stem volumes to whole tree volumes. However, BEFs for trees outside forests like trees in hedgerows are not yet included in the IPCC reports. These are expected to be different from forest t...

Terrestrial laser scans were acquired for 69 trees (Quercus robur: 39 trees; Alnus glutinosa: 19 trees; Betula pendula: 11 trees) in hedgerows and tree rows in agricultural lands in Flanders, Belgium. We used a RIEGL VZ-1000 terrestrial laser scanner (RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems GmbH, Austria) with a beam divergence of 0.35 mrad operating in th...

The direction and magnitude of long-term changes in local plant species richness are highly variable among studies, while species turnover is ubiquitous. However, it is unknown whether the nature of species turnover is idiosyncratic or whether certain types of species are consistently gained or lost across different habitats. To address this questi...

Aim Variation in plant defence traits has been frequently assessed along large‐scale macroclimatic clines. In contrast, local‐scale changes in the environment have recently been proposed to also modulate plant defence traits. Yet, the relative importance of drivers at both scales has never been tested. We aimed to quantify the relative importance o...

Linear landscape elements such as hedgerows and road verges can connect isolated fragments of natural and semi-natural habitats, thereby facilitating the movements of species across fragmented landscapes. This could be particularly important as the need for species to move is predicted to increase substantially with climate change. However, so far,...

Forests play a key role in global carbon cycling and sequestration. However, the potential for carbon drawdown is affected by forest fragmentation and resulting changes in microclimate, nutrient inputs, disturbance and productivity near edges. Up to 20% of the global forested area lies within 100 m of an edge and, even in temperate forests, knowled...

1. This account presents information on all aspects of the biology of Poa nemoralis L. (Wood Meadow-grass) that are relevant to understanding its ecological characteristics and behaviour. The main topics are presented within the standard framework of the Biological Flora of the British Isles: distribution, habitat, communities, responses to biotic...

Questions How do contrasting environmental conditions among forests and hedgerows affect the vegetative and reproductive performance of understorey forest herbs in both habitats? Can hedgerows support reproductive source populations of forest herbs, thus potentially allowing progressive dispersal of successive generations along the linear habitats?...

Forest edges are interfaces between forest interiors and adjacent land cover types. They are important elements in the landscape with almost 20% of the global forest area located within 100 m of the edge. Edges are structurally different from forest interiors, which results in unique edge influences on microclimate, functioning and biodiversity. Th...

Linear landscape elements such as hedgerows and road verges have the potential to mitigate the adverse effects of habitat fragmentation and climate change on species, for instance, by serving as a refuge habitat or by improving functional connectivity across the landscape. However, so far this hypothesis has not been evaluated at large spatial scal...

Hedgerows have the potential to facilitate the persistence and migration of species across landscapes, mostly due to benign microclimatic conditions. This thermal buffering function may become even more important in the future for species migration under climate change. Unfortunately, there is a lack of empirical studies quantifying the microclimat...

Questions Does the influence of forest edges on plant species richness and composition depend on forest management? Do forest specialists and generalists show contrasting patterns? Location Mesic, deciduous forests across Europe. Methods Vegetation surveys were performed in forests with three management types (unthinned, thinned 5‐10 years ago an...

• Functional traits respond to environmental drivers, hence evaluating trait‐environment relationships across spatial environmental gradients can help to understand how multiple drivers influence plant communities. Global‐change drivers such as changes in atmospheric nitrogen deposition occur worldwide, but affect community trait distributions at t...

Hedgerows constitute an additional non-forest woody biomass and carbon sink in the countryside. However, estimations of biomass potentials on regional and national scale often lack contributions from hedgerows, or these are inferred from 'forest data'. To maximize the role of the biosphere in mitigation, we must focus on and start with measurably r...

Global environmental changes are expected to alter the functional characteristics of understorey herb-layer communities, potentially affecting forest ecosystem functioning. However, little is known about what drives the variability of functional traits in forest understories. Here, we assessed the role of different environmental drivers in shaping...

GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). GrassPlot collects plot records (relevés) from grasslands and other open habitats of the Palaearctic biogeographic realm. It focuses on precisely delimited plots...

The article, Impact of climate change on alpine vegetation of mountain summits in Norway.

Elevated atmospheric input of nitrogen (N) is currently affecting plant biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. The growth and survival of numerous plant species is known to respond strongly to N fertilization. Yet, few studies have assessed the effects of N deposition on seed quality and reproductive performance, which is an important life-history...

Climate change is affecting the composition and functioning of ecosystems across the globe. Mountain ecosystems are particularly sensitive to climate warming since their biota is generally limited by low temperatures. Cryptogams such as lichens and bryophytes are important for the biodiversity and functioning of these ecosystems, but have not often...