Results/Conclusions The data to date suggest that intra-specific genetic factors can explain significant variation in ecosystem processes. Plant genetic factors can vary in their magnitude of effect on ecosystem processes, but in Populus can explain up to 45% of net primary productivity, 65% of the variation in nitrogen cycling and 60% of total belowground carbon storage. These data suggest that links between plant genetics and ecosystem processes occur across systems and that evolutionary processes that act on functional plant traits (or a combination of traits) may allow these extended phenotypes to change in response. While the specific plant trait(s) associated with the ecosystem processes vary across these studies, these data support previous research demonstrating the importance of both plant population genetic variation and genotypic variation for ecosystem processes, which has both applied and evolutionary implications.