DOI: 10.5061/dryad.9cnp5hqrg
title: Functional traits and size interact to influence growth and carbon sequestration among trees in urban greenspaces

description: There is persistent uncertainty about how integrated plant functions, like
 growth, are mechanistically constrained and practically predicted by
 functional traits. For trees, these knowledge gaps persist for two
 reasons: first, studies of ‘natural’ forests are observational, with
 highly variable and confounding resource limitation and competition;
 second, most studies investigate only a few popular traits and ignore
 context-dependencies in trait-effects on growth (e.g., trait-environment
 or trait-ontogeny interactions). We assessed 17 traits as predictors of
 radial growth and aboveground carbon sequestration for 182 trees,
 including individuals of 42 species common to temperate cities. By
 focusing exclusively on planted trees growing in isolation, our unique
 study is a pseudo-experiment that spans a large range of taxonomic and
 trait variability and minimizes confounding effects of environmental
 heterogeneity (e.g., shifts in light availability with tree size). Focal
 traits included not only commonly measured traits related to leaf
 economics and plant size, but also wood traits and whole-plant phenology.
 Models with indices of tree ontogeny (size) and traits explained 80% and
 72% of variability in relative growth and carbon sequestration,
 respectively, and traits accounted for ~20% of the variation. Traits
 related to said tree functions included leaf dry matter content (LDMC),
 leaf N content, mature height, wood anatomy, and phenology. LDMC was
 positively correlated with wood growth and C sequestration across all size
 classes, while the positive effects of leaf N, mature height, and wood
 density were only apparent for smaller trees. Ring-porous species had
 higher rates of growth and C sequestration than diffuse-porous species.
 Consistent with recent theory, growth rates of isolated, urban trees vary
 as a function of simple and interactive effects of traits and size. Our
 findings are useful for optimizing reforestation efforts in temperate
 cities, where planners and land managers can select species for rapid
 growth and C sequestration using freely available data for the
 'effect' traits we identified, including wood anatomy and
 density, leaf N, and LDMC. Lastly, the trait-growth relationships we
 describe here may reflect those of ‘naturally’ isolated trees growing in
 savannas and/or woodlands and provide an insightful frame of reference for
 trees in closed-canopy forests.
description: # Functional traits and size interact to influence growth and carbon
 sequestration among trees in urban greenspaces
 This dataset contains
 size, growth, and trait data for 182 trees belonging to 42 different
 deciduous broadleaf trees growing in two different urban greenspaces (Lake
 View Cemetery and Secrest Arboretum) in Northeastern Ohio, USA. ##
 Description of the data and file structure There are two datafiles of
 interest: a .csv file (urban_tree_ms_data) which contains size, growth,
 and trait data for all individual trees, as well as other metrics of
 potential interest (e.g., tree health information, coordinates of each
 tree, soil texture and pH, topography, etc.) and a .xlsx file
 (urban_tree_ms_metadata) which contains info on the manuscript (title,
 abstract, authors, etc.) as well as information on the columns contained
 in the data file.