TRY has released more than a billion trait records

March 09, 2020

On February 29, the number of 1 billion trait records delivered by iDiv’s research platform TRY, was cracked. Founded in 2007 this open-access database has become the primary resource of plant traits used by the research community worldwide.

A recent publication in Global Change Biology with more than 700 authors summarizes the main achievements of the 13 years of operation and the contribution to research. As of today, TRY comprises 657 datasets from 991 data contributors. The database contributed to 290 publications in 83 scientific journals. The most frequent keywords in these publications are biodiversity, climate change, plant traits and functional diversity. Besides advancing basic science, the research relying on TRY data is instrumental in devising strategies to combat the biodiversity crisis and to develop strategies for a sustainable use of our planet’s biodiversity (e.g. Newbold et al. 2015, Nature), thus supporting the work of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). TRY is a network of vegetation scientists headed by Future Earth and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI-BGC).

The TRY database is coordinated by Jens Kattge, Gerhard Boenisch and Christian Wirth at MPI-BGC.

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