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To assess the effects of ocean heat waves, researchers led by ecologist Daniel Smale of Great Britain's Marine Biological Association turned to 116 previously published academic studies. Combined, National Geographic's Sarah Gibbens notes, the papers yielded data from more than 1,000 ecological records.

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Combined, the papers in this special issue illustrate the breadth of biomechanics research which ranges from the growth mechanism governing leaf development to the wind resistance of tree architectures.

Hello, Sorry for the long quotation.

I'm curious about the meaning of the "Combined" at the beginning of the sentence and also how it can be used as above.

From what I know, combine can be used as a noun or a verb. However, from the examples above, it looks like combined is used as an adverb.

At first, I thought it is used as a participle phrase. But I wasn't able to figure out how the participle phrase can be formed in that context.

I tried to think of it as an adjective, but that is not a position for the adjective.

I'm guessing it means something like "With all things combined," but I'm not sure and I can't explain how and why it can be shortend for just "Combined".

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  • It's an adjective. Same as the combined papers yielded data..., where the adjectival past participle modifies the noun papers.
    – FumbleFingers
    Nov 23, 2019 at 13:10

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It means "together", or "considered as a whole".

It means that the papers are all contributing to the yielding of data, or the illustration of the breadth of biomechanics research, for example.

It is the past tense form of the verb "combine", projecting an idea that the papers have been combined, and we are now considering them in that "combined" state.

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