Terrestrial land-cover type richness is positively linked to landscape-level functioning.
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Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31919390.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-14002-7 and PMC identifier 6952349.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) experiments have shown that local species richness promotes ecosystem functioning and stability. Whether this also applies under real-world conditions is still debated. Here, we focus on larger scales of space, time and ecological organization. We develop a quasi-experimental design in which we relate land-cover type richness as measure of landscape richness to 17-year time series of satellite-sensed functioning in 4974 landscape plots 6.25 or 25 ha in size. We choose plots so that landscape richness is orthogonal to land cover-type composition and environmental conditions across climatic gradients. Landscape-scale productivity and temporal stability increase with landscape richness, irrespective of landscape plot size. Peak season near-infrared surface albedo, which is relevant for surface energy budgets, is higher in mixed than in single land-cover type landscapes. Effect sizes are as large as those reported from BEF-experiments, suggesting that landscape richness promotes landscape functioning at spatial scales relevant for management.