A generic plant functional attribute set and grammar for vegetation description and analysis
Gillison A.N., G. Carpenter · Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) eBooks · 1995
Conventional descriptive methods rarely convey the behavioural information needed to conserve and manage the world's vegetation. Such information may be derived from a generic set of plant functional attributes (PFAs). A grammar provides a syntactic rule base for generating and comparing coherent models of individual plant behaviour based on PFA combinations rather than discrete attributes. The method facilitates rapid and uniform assessment of plant response to environmental change at varying spatial scales regardless of species.