Global ecosystem typology

Alternative site for the Global ecosystem typology with additional information for ecosystem profiles and indicative maps.

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T7.3 Plantations

Biome: T7. Intensive land-use biome

Contributors:
(texts)

Plantations are generally long-rotation perennial woody crops established and maintained for a variety of food and materials. The harvested products include wood, various fruits, tea, coffee, palm oil and other food additives, materials such as rubber, ornamental materials (cut flowers), etc. The vegetation of most plantations comprises at least two vertical strata (the managed woody species and a ruderal ground layer), although mixed plantings may be more complex and host a relatively diverse flora and fauna if managed to promote habitat features. Fertilisers and water subsidies are applied, and harvesting occurs at intervals depending on the crop.

Key Features

Structurally simple, low-diversity forests of one (rarely, a few) planted tree species of mostly same age, lack of structural elements of old-growth forests such as deadwood or cavities.

Overview of distribution

Abundant in humid or sub-humid, boreal to tropical climates worldwide.

Profile versions

Main references

Selected references for this functional group:

  • Kanninen M (2010) Plantation forests: global perspectives Ecosystem goods and services from plantation forests (Eds. J Bauhus, PJ van der Meer, M Kanninen), pp1-15. Earthscan, London

  • Monfreda CN, Ramankutty N, Foley JA (2008) Farming the planet: 2. Geographic distribution of crop areas, yields, physiological types, and net primary production in the year 2000 Global Biogeochemical Cycles 22: GB1022

Diagrammatic assembly model

Diagrammatic assembly model of T7.3 Plantations. See general notes on diagrams. Open image full size.

Maps

Maps are indicative of global distribution patterns are not intended to represent fine-scale patterns. The maps show areas of the world containing major (coloured red) or minor occurrences (coloured yellow) of each ecosystem functional group. See general notes on maps.

There are 2 alternative versions of the indicative map for this functional group, please compare description and sources below.

T7.3.IM.alt_v2.0

Datasets

  • Nature-Map-2020

Map references

  • Martin Jung, Prabhat Raj Dahal, Stuart H. M. Butchart, Paul F. Donald, Xavier De Lamo, Myroslava Lesiv, … Piero Visconti. (2020). A global map of terrestrial habitat types [Data set]. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3673586

T7.3.web.alt_v2.0

Major occurrences of plantations were taken from the map of Habitat type 14.3 by Jung et al. (2020) based on the IUCN Habitats Classification Scheme v3.1 (IUCN 2012). We compared this to cropping areas in consensus land-cover maps (Tuanmu et al., 2014) and found that maps of Jung et al. (2020) more closely matched the concept of T7.3. Open image full size.

Datasets

  • Nature-Map-2020
  • EarthEnv-LandCover-v1.0

Map references

  • Martin Jung, Prabhat Raj Dahal, Stuart H. M. Butchart, Paul F. Donald, Xavier De Lamo, Myroslava Lesiv, … Piero Visconti. (2020). A global map of terrestrial habitat types [Data set]. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3673586

  • Tuanmu, M.-N. and W. Jetz (2014) A global 1-km consensus land-cover product for biodiversity and ecosystem modeling Global Ecology and Biogeography 23(9):1031–1045 DOI:10.1111/geb.12182

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