NGEE Arctic Phase 4 Plant Functional Type Framework for Pan-Arctic Vegetation

Abstract

The NGEE-Arctic research team identified a common set of hierarchical plant functional types (PFTs) for pan-arctic vegetation that we will use across our research activities. Interdisciplinary work within a large team requires agreement regarding levels of functional organization so that knowledge, data, and technologies can be shared and combined effectively. The team has identified plant functional types as a crucial area where such interoperability is needed. PFTs are used to represent plant pools and fluxes within models, summarize observational data, and map vegetation across the landscape. Within each of these applications, varying levels of PFT specificity are needed according to the specific scientific research goal, computational limitations, and data availability. By agreeing on a specific hierarchical framework for grouping variables in our vegetation data, we ensure the resulting research products will be robust, flexible, and scalable. In this document, we lay out the agreed upon PFT framework with definitions and references to existing literature. Table 1 included in the "NGA700_Phase4PFTFramework_about*" file outlines the relationship between NGEE-Arctic Phase 4, Tier 1 PFTs and the PFTs used within prominent arctic literature as well as publications by the NGEE-Arctic team during phases 1-3.This dataset consists of a table detailing a hierarchical PFT framework that spans 4 tiers with the most granular PFTs listed in tier 1 and the most general PFTs in tier 4. The PFTs within each tier has a single column in the dataset where the PFTs are named and a separate column where the characteristics used to define that PFT are listed. Grey fill of the cells is used to indicate where a given PFT starts to “lose” tier 1 details as you look from left to right. Note the excel file has merged cells to indicate grouping of PFTs across the Tiers- it will not translate into a delimited filetype (.csv, .txt, etc) without modification thus the hierarchical PFT framework table is available in three different file formats: 1) NGA700_Phase4PTS.xlsx – maintains the merged cells and grey fill; 2) NGA700_Phase4PTS.csv – merged cells are split, and grey fill is removed; 3) NGA700_Phase4PTS.pdf – image of the table with merged cells and grey fill. Metadata document included as a *.pdf and file-level metadata and data dictionary as *.csv files.