Landscape diversity promotes landscape functioning in North America
Abstract Biodiversity–ecosystem functioning experiments have established generally positive species richness-productivity relationships in plots of single ecosystem types, typically grassland or forest. However, it remains unclear whether these findings apply in real-world landscapes that resemble a...
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Nature Portfolio
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Communications Earth & Environment |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02000-1 |
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| Summary: | Abstract Biodiversity–ecosystem functioning experiments have established generally positive species richness-productivity relationships in plots of single ecosystem types, typically grassland or forest. However, it remains unclear whether these findings apply in real-world landscapes that resemble a heterogeneous mosaic of different ecosystem and plant types that interact through biotic and abiotic processes. Here, we show that landscape-level diversity, measured as number of land-cover types (different ecosystems) per 250×250 m, is positively related to landscape-wide remotely-sensed primary production across all of North America, covering 16 of 18 ecoregions of Earth. At higher landscape diversity, productivity was temporally more stable, and 20-year greening trends were accelerated. These effects occurred independent of local species diversity, suggesting emergent mechanisms at hitherto neglected levels of biological organization. Specifically, mechanisms related to interactions among land-cover types unfold at the scale of entire landscapes, similar to, but not necessarily resulting from, interactions between species within single ecosystems. |
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| ISSN: | 2662-4435 |