Defining functional biomes and monitoring their change globally

Biomes are important constructs for organizing understanding of how the worlds’ major terrestrial ecosystems differ from one another and for monitoring change in these ecosystems. Yet existing biome schemes have been criticized for being overly subjective and for explicitly or implicitly invoking climate. We propose a new biome map and classification scheme that uses information on (i) an index of vegetation productivity, (ii) whether the minimum of vegetation activity is in the driest or coldest part of the year, and (iii) vegetation height. Although biomes produced on the basis of this classification show a strong spatial coherence, they show little congruence with existing biome classification schemes. Our biome map provides an alternative classification scheme for synthesizing data of the biogeochemical rates of terrestrial ecosystems. We use this new biome classification scheme to analyse the patterns of biome change observed over recent decades. Overall, 13 - 14% of analysed pixel...