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Journal ArticleDOI

Climate change and the provision of biodiversity in public temperate forests - A mechanism design approach for the implementation of biodiversity conservation policies.

TL;DR: The results show that climate change has important implications to the opportunity cost of biodiversity and the provision levels and it is concluded that mechanism design may provide key information for planning conservation policies and identify conditions for a successful implementation of biodiversity-oriented forest management.
About: This article is published in Journal of Environmental Management.The article was published on 2019-09-15. It has received 4 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Forest management & Forest dynamics.
Citations
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10 Aug 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used data from 46 experiments that manipulated grassland plant diversity to test whether biodiversity provides resistance during and resilience after climate events, and found that biodiversity increased ecosystem resilience for a broad range of climate events.
Abstract: It remains unclear whether biodiversity buffers ecosystems against climate extremes, which are becoming increasingly frequent worldwide. Early results suggested that the ecosystem productivity of diverse grassland plant communities was more resistant, changing less during drought, and more resilient, recovering more quickly after drought, than that of depauperate communities. However, subsequent experimental tests produced mixed results. Here we use data from 46 experiments that manipulated grassland plant diversity to test whether biodiversity provides resistance during and resilience after climate events. We show that biodiversity increased ecosystem resistance for a broad range of climate events, including wet or dry, moderate or extreme, and brief or prolonged events. Across all studies and climate events, the productivity of low-diversity communities with one or two species changed by approximately 50% during climate events, whereas that of high-diversity communities with 16–32 species was more resistant, changing by only approximately 25%. By a year after each climate event, ecosystem productivity had often fully recovered, or overshot, normal levels of productivity in both high- and low-diversity communities, leading to no detectable dependence of ecosystem resilience on biodiversity. Our results suggest that biodiversity mainly stabilizes ecosystem productivity, and productivity-dependent ecosystem services, by increasing resistance to climate events. Anthropogenic environmental changes that drive biodiversity loss thus seem likely to decrease ecosystem stability, and restoration of biodiversity to increase it, mainly by changing the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate events.

574 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors quantitatively evaluate and map the combined impacts of those multiple drivers on biodiversity in the Republic of Korea (ROK) by employing generalized dissimilarity modeling with estimates of habitat conditions.

14 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Diversity loss has an effect as great as, or greater than, the effects of herbivory, fire, drought, nitrogen addition, elevated CO2, and other drivers of environm...
Abstract: Species diversity is a major determinant of ecosystem productivity, stability, invasibility, and nutrient dynamics. Hundreds of studies spanning terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems show that high-diversity mixtures are approximately twice as productive as monocultures of the same species and that this difference increases through time. These impacts of higher diversity have multiple causes, including interspecific complementarity, greater use of limiting resources, decreased herbivory and disease, and nutrient-cycling feedbacks that increase nutrient stores and supply rates over the long term. These experimentally observed effects of diversity are consistent with predictions based on a variety of theories that share a common feature: All have trade-off-based mechanisms that allow long-term coexistence of many different competing species. Diversity loss has an effect as great as, or greater than, the effects of herbivory, fire, drought, nitrogen addition, elevated CO2, and other drivers of environm...

1,631 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is concluded that both ecosystems and society should be prepared for an increasingly disturbed future of forests, as warmer and drier conditions particularly facilitate fire, drought and insect disturbances, while warmer and wetter conditions increase disturbances from wind and pathogens.
Abstract: Forest disturbances are sensitive to climate. However, our understanding of disturbance dynamics in response to climatic changes remains incomplete, particularly regarding large-scale patterns, interaction effects and dampening feedbacks. Here we provide a global synthesis of climate change effects on important abiotic (fire, drought, wind, snow and ice) and biotic (insects and pathogens) disturbance agents. Warmer and drier conditions particularly facilitate fire, drought and insect disturbances, while warmer and wetter conditions increase disturbances from wind and pathogens. Widespread interactions between agents are likely to amplify disturbances, while indirect climate effects such as vegetation changes can dampen long-term disturbance sensitivities to climate. Future changes in disturbance are likely to be most pronounced in coniferous forests and the boreal biome. We conclude that both ecosystems and society should be prepared for an increasingly disturbed future of forests.

1,388 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This work considers algorithmic problems in a distributed setting where the participants cannot be assumed to follow the algorithm but rather their own self-interest, and suggests a framework for studying such algorithms.

1,301 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Biodiversity lies at the core of ecosystem processes fueling the authors' planet's vital life-support systems; its degradation--by us--is threatening their own well-being and will disproportionately impact the poor.
Abstract: The diversity of life on Earth is dramatically affected by human alterations of ecosystems [ 1]. Compelling evidence now shows that the reverse is also true: biodiversity in the broad sense affects the properties of ecosystems and, therefore, the benefits that humans obtain from them. In this article, we provide a synthesis of the most crucial messages emerging from the latest scientific literature and international assessments of the role of biodiversity in ecosystem services and human well-being. Human societies have been built on biodiversity. Many activities indispensable for human subsistence lead to biodiversity loss, and this trend is likely to continue in the future. We clearly benefit from the diversity of organisms that we have learned to use for medicines, food, fibers, and other renewable resources. In addition, biodiversity has always been an integral part of the human experience, and there are many moral reasons to preserve it for its own sake. What has been less recognized is that biodiversity also influences human well-being, including the access to water and basic materials for a satisfactory life, and security in the face of environmental change, through its effects on the ecosystem processes that lie at the core of the Earth's most vital life support systems ( Figure 1). Figure 1 Biodiversity Is Both a Response Variable Affected by Global Change Drivers and a Factor That Affects Human Well-Being Three recent publications from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [ 2–4], an initiative involving more than 1,500 scientists from all over the world [ 5], provide an updated picture of the fundamental messages and key challenges regarding biodiversity at the global scale. Chief among them are: (a) human-induced changes in land cover at the global scale lead to clear losers and winners among species in biotic communities; (b) these changes have large impacts on ecosystem processes and, thus, human well-being; and (c) such consequences will be felt disproportionately by the poor, who are most vulnerable to the loss of ecosystem services.

1,225 citations