Journal
ECOLOGY
Volume 94, Issue 10, Pages 2275-2287Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1890/12-1716.1
Keywords
field study; habitat heterogeneity; hypoxia; multiple ecosystem functions; recurring disturbances; resilience; resistance
Categories
Funding
- BONUS+ project HYPER
- Walter and Andree de Nottbeck Foundation
- Onni Talaan Saatio
- Academy of Finland [114076, 110999]
- Academy of Finland (AKA) [114076, 110999, 110999, 114076] Funding Source: Academy of Finland (AKA)
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Ecosystem functioning is threatened by an increasing number of anthropogenic stressors, creating a legacy of disturbance that undermines ecosystem resilience. However, few empirical studies have assessed to what extent an ecosystem can tolerate repeated disturbances and sustain its multiple functions. By inducing increasingly recurring hypoxic disturbances to a sedimentary ecosystem, we show that the majority of individual ecosystem functions experience gradual degradation patterns in response to repetitive pulse disturbances. The degradation in overall ecosystem functioning was, however, evident at an earlier stage than for single ecosystem functions and was induced after a short pulse of hypoxia (i.e., three days), which likely reduced ecosystem resistance to further hypoxic perturbations. The increasing number of repeated pulse disturbances gradually moved the system closer to a press response. In addition to the disturbance regime, the changes in benthic trait composition as well as habitat heterogeneity were important for explaining the variability in overall ecosystem functioning. Our results suggest that disturbance-induced responses across multiple ecosystem functions can serve as a warning signal for losses of the adaptive capacity of an ecosystem, and might at an early stage provide information to managers and policy makers when remediation efforts should be initiated.
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