The innovations of survey approaches have propelled advancements in ecology, while the means of fine and full mapping of plant organs, such as stems and leaves, have lagged behind. Recently, light detection and ranging (LiDAR), a state-of-the-art remote sensing technology, has stimulated three-dimensional (3D) revolutions in ecologically looking at plant organisms, communities, and ecosystems. However, its potential for ecologically observing plant organs has received less attention. To fill this gap in the core yet lagging subfield of plant ecology, we propose a framework of flexible-regime LiDAR coordination to facilitate 3D ecologically gazing at aboveground plant organs. This scheme of fine and fully mapping the aboveground organs of plants can surpass the limited collections of functional traits that are common in traditional plant ecology, as demonstrated by our case studies that revealed novel plant organ ecological rules. This fundamental technological innovation has implications for advancing the discipline of ecology, from 3D-rebooting plant organ ecology, bridging the traditional gap between plant organismal and molecular ecology, no longer mainly relying on collection of functional traits, to reconstructing the foundation of the same serial higher-scale revolutions – 3D plant organismal ecology, 3D plant community ecology, and 3D ecosystem ecology.
Lin et al. (Sun,) studied this question.