Environmental and genetic influences on growth in Eucalyptus plantations: the TECHS special issue

Abstract

This special issue focuses on a Type III approach, the TECHS Project. This large, ambitious project set out to examine factors that determine growth in one of the world’s most productive types of ecosystems, intensively managed Eucalyptus plantations. TECHS used dozens of locations across a 3500-km gradient, with multiple genotypes, rainfall reductions, and gradients in planting spacing. Growth was followed through a full rotation (7 years), with a production ecology approach (Binkley et al., 2004) to quantify the processes driving the observed patterns.