Functional traits databases

Fire Ecology & Biodiversity
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I have long framed my thinking about fire ecology and plant species’ response through the lens of species’ traits and plant functional types. Much of the research and documentation has come from Mediterranean ecosystems, thanks to folks like Juli Pausas, who has spent decades on this topic ( w/ a database available for Mediterranean Basin plants [A functional trait database for Mediterranean Basin plants | Scientific Data].

I just came across this paper describing a fire-response traits database developed in Australia (not a pure Mediterranean ecosystem, but not that far away). [Fire ecology database for documenting plant responses to fire events in Australia | Scientific Data]

My question is, where else are there databases of plant species’ response to wildfire, and in which biomes do we most need to start collecting and recording data? And, what is our collective plan of action?

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Does anyone know Wayne Owen from US Forest Service? (It appears he may no longer work there, as he does not appear in the USFS online directory). I came across this report on some work he did a while back on plant species response to fire, and thought he may be a good contributor to this discussion. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/protecting_native_plants/pdfs/Fire_and_Rare_Plants_7-03.pdf

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Thanks for sharing this! I’ve been thinking along similar lines and spoke briefly with Juli about it just last week. My DSE postdoc colleague Lucia @lucialayr and I have started compiling some quantitative fire-related trait data in California to support our work. We’re still in the early stages, but we’ll have student interns joining us in September to help expand the effort, with a final database in mind. We’d be very interested in talking more about priorities and data gaps across biomes!

Also, here’s another recent database focused specifically on flammability traits: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/geb.13799.

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Hi Maya,
Welcome to the discussion forum! Thank you so much for sharing this information and sharing the link to this other global database. So great to have you chime in here, and how exciting that you and your colleague are compiling trait data for California. I wonder if we can work out a way to host these databases on our GWC data platform to make them easily accessible and comparable. Please do keep me posted on your work on this - I’d love to learn more.