Published in

American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science, 6309(354), 2016

DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf8957

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Positive biodiversity-productivity relationship predominant in global forests

Journal article published in 2016 by Nicolas Picard, Sergio de Miguel, Susan Wiser, Mo Zhou, Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Thomas W. Crowther, A. David McGuire, Jingjing J. Liang ORCID, Hans Pretzsch, Giorgio Alberti, Sergio de-Miguel, Alain Paquette, Fabio Bozzato, Michael Scherer-Lorenzen ORCID, Sebastian (R17431) Pfautsch and other authors.
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Upload
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Upload
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Policy details
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

The biodiversity-productivity relationship (BPR) is foundational to our understanding of the global extinction crisis and its impacts on ecosystem functioning. Understanding BPR is critical for the accurate valuation and effective conservation of biodiversity. Using ground-sourced data from 777,126 permanent plots, spanning 44 countries and most terrestrial biomes, we reveal a globally consistent positive concave-down BPR, showing that continued biodiversity loss would result in an accelerating decline in forest productivity worldwide. The value of biodiversity in maintaining commercial forest productivity alone—US$166 billion to 490 billion per year according to our estimation—is more than twice what it would cost to implement effective global conservation. This highlights the need for a worldwide reassessment of biodiversity values, forest management strategies, and conservation priorities. (Résumé d'auteur)