Writing in Nature Communications ecologists from TU Dresden in cooperation with the Leuphana University Lüneburg, the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, the Beijing Forestry University and the German Centre for integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv, Leipzig) now report that this view is generally not wrong, but our understanding of how trees interact is still limited.
For a decade, researchers explore how tree species diversity affects the coexistence of trees and their growth performance in the largest biodiversity experiment with trees worldwide, the so-called 'BEF-China' experiment. One of the main interests of the BEF-China team is to explore the relationship between tree diversity and multiple ecosystem functions, specifically those benefitting society, such as wood production or the mitigation of soil erosion.
