University of Virginia Charlottesvle, Virginia, United States
The seasonality of plant functional traits is a dominant driver of plant photosynthesis. Functional traits such as leaf chlorophyll content, nitrogen content, and leaf water content are dynamic throughout a growing season, reflecting plants' strategies to cope with environmental changes and competition. However, measuring the seasonal dynamics of leaf traits is rare, which directly results in a lack of variation in leaf traits in land surface models. The SBG mission provides unprecedented measurements at high temporal resolution, which allow the community to finally capture the seasonality of canopy functional traits, opening up applications to ecophysiology, community ecology, and ecosystem ecology.
