Relating Plant Biodiversity in Forests with the Spatial Scale of Ecosystem Processes

es with increasing sample area in order to study saturation behaviour. The more weight is given to rare species the larger is the sample area where saturation is approached. The complexity of the processes that determine saturation increases with increasing weight of rare species. With increasing resource availability the part of the occurring plants that have immediate control on local ecosystem processes like primary production, nutrient cycling, and water balance increases. The presented approach allows an estimation of minimum area required for covering vegetation patterns that are related to these processes.