How might different plant populations within a community compete for access to abiotic factors?

Plants may compete with other organisms like phytoplankton for sunlight, their source of light energy for photosynthetic reactions.

Explanation:

Abiotic factors or non-living factors in terrestrial ecosystems include temperature, rainfail,  and light; in other aquatic ecosystems, they also include salinity, and water currents.

Plant populations belong to the biotic factors within an environment, and often complete with other organisms such as fungi, animals and bacteria.

For instance, plants share their photosynthetic ability with some bacteria. In aquatic biomes,  both phytoplankton, and aquatic plants compete for available sunlight  underwater in order to make energy via photosynthesis.