Plant functional type

Plant functional types (PFTs) is a system used by climatologists to classify plants according to their physical, phylogenetic and phenological characteristics as part of an overall effort to develop a vegetation model for use in land use studies and climate models. PFTs provide a finer level of modeling than biomes, which represent gross areas such as desert, savannah, deciduous forest. In creating a PFT model, areas as small as 1 km are modeled by defining the predominant plant type for that area, interpreted from satellite data or other means. For each plant functional type, a number of key parameters are defined, such as fecundity, competitiveness, resorption (rate at which plant decays and returns nutrients to the soil after death), etc., are defined for each PFT; the value of each parameter is determined or inferred from observable characteristics such as plant height, leaf area, etc.