As we contemplate the trajectory of ecophysiology over the past half-century, it is impressive to note the breadth of ways that physiological perspectives have informed and supported the development of other disciplines. The enabling role of physiological approaches is especially clear in the emergence, over the last several decades, of global ecology. From the era of von Humboldt and even earlier, scholars identified the critical role of habitat in constraining plant distributions, but it wasn’t until the work of Clausen, Keck, and Hiesey that those constraints started to get physiological underpinnings. Through the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, investigations in physiological ecology led by Dwight Billings, Olle Björkman, Hal Mooney, systematically mapped the way that physiological controls on carbon, water, and energy balance determine not only what grows where but also the potential for primary production and evapotranspiration. It is a small step from their pioneering work to start mapping biomes based on photosynthesis and evapotranspiration, or to estimate large-scale primary production from the combination of satellite vegetation indices and light-use efficiencies grounded in ecophysiology.
The early work on ecophysiology clearly opened the era of global change biology. Careful studies of leaf- and plant-level responses to temperature and CO2 concentration made it clear that a changing atmosphere would affect the biosphere. We have spent the last several decades exploring how. Studies ranging from the biochemical to the global scale have explored and refined ideas about what scales and what doesn’t, and how we can use empirical work to understand an uncertain future.
Results/Conclusions
Measured by societal need, from food security to natural climate solutions, we are clearly in the era of global ecology. But the foundations were laid by the pioneers in ecophysiology.