Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 348, Issue 6232, Pages 336-340Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa1788
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Funding
- European Union Seventh Framework Programme [298935]
- U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program at Cedar Creek [DEB-8811884, DEB-9411972, DEB-0080382, DEB-0620652, DEB-1234162]
- Biocomplexity Coupled Biogeochemical Cycles [DEB-0322057]
- Long-Term Research in Environmental Biology [DEB-0716587, DEB-1242531]
- Ecosystem Sciences [NSF DEB-1120064]
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Program for Ecosystem Research [DE-FG02-96ER62291]
- U.S. DOE National Institute for Climatic Change Research [DE-FC02-06ER64158]
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [1120064] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [1242531, 1234162] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Human-driven environmental changes may simultaneously affect the biodiversity, productivity, and stability of Earth's ecosystems, but there is no consensus on the causal relationships linking these variables. Data from 12 multiyear experiments that manipulate important anthropogenic drivers, including plant diversity, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, fire, herbivory, and water, show that each driver influences ecosystem productivity. However, the stability of ecosystem productivity is only changed by those drivers that alter biodiversity, with a given decrease in plant species numbers leading to a quantitatively similar decrease in ecosystem stability regardless of which driver caused the biodiversity loss. These results suggest that changes in biodiversity caused by drivers of environmental change may be a major factor determining how global environmental changes affect ecosystem stability.
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