Search

The first Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found widespread, accelerating declines in Earth's biodiversity and associated benefits to people from nature. Addressing these trends will require science-based policy responses to reduce impacts, especially at national to local scales. Effective scaling of science-policy efforts, driven by global and national assessments, is a major challenge for turning assessment into action and will require unprecedented commitment by scientists to engage with communities of policy and practice. Fulfillment of science's social contract with society, and with nature, will require strong institutional support for scientists' participation in activities that transcend conventional research and publication.

Understanding why some species are common and others are rare is a central question in ecology, and is critical for developing conservation strategies under global change. Rare species are typically considered to be more prone to extinction—but the fact they are rare can impede a general understanding of rarity vs. abundance. Here we develop and empirically test a framework to predict species abundances and stability using mechanisms governing population dynamics. Our results demonstrate that coexisting species with similar abundances can be shaped by different mechanisms (specifically, higher growth rates when rare vs. weaker negative density-dependence). Further, these dynamics influence population stability: species with higher intrinsic growth rates but stronger negative density-dependence were more stable and less sensitive to climate variability, regardless of abundance. This suggests that underlying mechanisms governing population dynamics, in addition to population size, may be critical indicators of population stability in an increasingly variable world., Protection of rare species requires advanced understanding of the reasons for their rarity. Here, Hallett et al. show that potential growth rate and density dependence together predict rarity vs. abundance, and that the stability of species of similar sizes depends on the relative strength of these two mechanisms.

Fil: Wanger, Thomas C. Westlake University. School of Engineering. Sustainability, Agriculture and Technology Laboratory; China. Fil: DeClerck, Fabrice. EAT Forum; Noruega. Fil: Garibaldi, Lucas A. Universidad Nacional de Río Negro. Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural; Argentina. Fil: Garibaldi, Lucas A. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural; Argentina. Fil: Ghazoul, Jaboury. ETH Zurich. Department of Environmental Systems Science; Suiza. Fil: Kleijn, David. Wageningen University. Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation Group; Países Bajos. Fil: Klein, Alexandra-Maria. University of Freiburg. Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources; Alemania. Fil: Kremen, Claire. University of British Columbia. Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability; Canada. Fil: Mooney, Harold. Stanford University. Department of Biology; Estados Unidos. Fil: Perfecto, Ivette. University of Michigan. School for Environment and Sustainability; Estados Unidos. Fil: Powell, Luke L. University of Glasgow. Institute for Biodiversity, Animal Health, and Comparative Medicine; Reino Unido. Fil: Settele, Josef. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ. Department of Community Ecology; Alemania. Fil: Solé, Mirco. Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz. Department of Biological Sciences; Brasil. Fil: Tscharntke, Teja. University of Göttingen. Agroecology; Alemania. Fil: Weisser, Wolfgang. Technical University Munich. Department for Ecology and Ecosystem Management; Alemania. To the Editor — The 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting to the Convention on Biological Diversity in China — now to be held in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic — will provide new opportunities for biodiversity conservation (https://go.nature.com/31YAVNF) through the decision on the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). In short, the GBF is a global and solution-oriented framework aiming for transformative action by governments, civil society and businesses, to help biodiversity recover for the benefit of people and planet1. Agriculture is the most extensive form of land use, occupying more than one-third of the global landmass, and imperilling 62% of all threatened species globally2. Habitat conversion and conventional farming practices — including heavy use of agrochemicals — have negative effects on biodiversity3, even spilling into protected areas. However, if designed appropriately, agricultural landscapes can provide habitats for biodiversity, promote connectivity between protected areas, and increase the capacity of species to respond to environmental threats4,5. While halting the loss of protected and intact nature is essential to halt species loss, bending the curve on biodiversity will require sustainable agriculture. We argue that the GBF must include conservation actions in agricultural landscapes based on agroecological principles (sensu High Level Panel of Experts6) in the three ‘2030 Action Targets’ (hereafter ‘Targets’) to reach its goals of biodiversity recovery. Agroecology is widely recognized as a necessary transformation in order to achieve food system sustainability.

Chile is one of five global regions exhibiting a mediterranean-type climate regime characterized by evergreen sclerophyll shrublands. These matorral shrublands which dominate the foothills and slopes of the Coastal Mountains and foothills of the Andes in central Chile have received much less study than evergreen shrublands in other mediterranean-type climate regions of the world. Phenological development, growth, and nutrient dynamics of the four widespread matorral shrub species, Lithrea caustica (Anacardiaceae), Colliguaja odorifera (Euphorbiaceae), Kageneckia oblonga (Rosaceae), and Retanilla trinervia (Rhamnaceae), were monitored in central Chile from 1971 to 1975. The four study species all demonstrated growth dynamics and nutrient relations similar to chaparral shrub species of southern California. The species exhibited a sequential development of phenological stages in leaf components following fall precipitation. Colliguaja with relatively shallow root systems showed a sharp peak of new leaf production at the beginning of summer, dropping quickly as summer drought occurred. Another shallow- rooted species while Retanilla initiated leaf production in the late winter, earlier than the other two species, and presented a growth pattern dependent on soil moisture availability. Lithrea and Kageneckia, a more deep-rooted species, initiated leaf production in late spring and continued through the summer. Overall, Chilean shrubs exhibited higher nutrient contents than those of chaparral shrubs in California, suggesting a difference in soil nutrient availability. Reproductive tissues represent a significant portion of the new biomass and nutrient allocation in all four matorral shrubs. Biomass allocation of new tissues (i.e. new leaves, new stems and reproductive tissues) ranged from 8.2% in Retanilla to 16.7% in Colliguaja. Overall, the phenology and nutrient relations of matorral shrubs were similar to those found in chaparral, shrubs indicating that the similar climate regimes can lead to convergence in leaf traits, phenology, and nutrient relationships.

The original paper was published without unique DOIs for GBIF occurrence downloads. These have now been inserted as references 70-76, and the error has been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the article.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It was carried out as a pilot of an assessment mechanism designed to meet decision makers’ needs for information on how human actions were changing biodiversity and ecosystems, how those changes were affecting ecosystem services and human well-being, and what actions could be taken to enhance environmental conservation and human well-being. Despite the considerable research that was available in 2000 on biodiversity and ecosystems and on various aspects of human well-being, it was surprisingly difficult to find research at the interface of natural and social sciences and economics. Yet the key questions being posed by decision-makers (e.g., ‘what will be the impact of biodiversity changes on local or national economies and human health’) required that interdisciplinary research. We encountered other key research gaps, including the need for better understanding of the cross-scale impacts of both environmental changes and policy interventions and the challenges of addressing questions of human well-being across different cultures and different understandings of science and epistemology. This paper identifies some of the most challenging elements of the assessment and the steps that were taken to address them. In addition to the knowledge assessed by the MA, one of the important outcomes was to stimulate greater interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research to address these issues that were not only fundamentally scientifically interesting, but also critically important for decision makers.

The call for integrated social-environmental science, complete with outreach to applications and solutions, is escalating worldwide. Drawing on several decades of experience, researchers engaged in such science, completed an assessment of the design and management attributes and impact pathways that lead to successful projects and programs and to understand key impediments to success. These characteristics are delineated and discussed using examples from individual projects and programs. From this, three principal lessons leading to successful efforts emerge that address co-design, adaptive or flexible management, and diversity of knowledge. In addition, five challenges for this science are identified: accounting for change, addressing sponsorship and timelines, appreciating different knowledge systems, adaptively communicating, and improving linkages to policy. Fil: Turner, B.L.. University of Arizona; Estados Unidos Fil: Esler, Karen J.. University of Arizona; Estados Unidos Fil: Bridgewater, Peter. The Australian National University. Centre for Museums and Heritage; Australia Fil: Tewksbury, Joshua. University of Colorado; Estados Unidos Fil: Sitas, J. Nadia. Stellenbosch University. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology; Sudáfrica Fil: Abrahams, Brent. Stellenbosch University. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology; Sudáfrica Fil: Chapin, F. Stuart. University Of Alaska; Estados Unidos Fil: Chowdhury, Rinku Roy. Clark University. Graduate School of Geography; Estados Unidos Fil: Christie, Patrick. University of Washington. School of Marine and Environmental Affairs; Estados Unidos Fil: Díaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina Fil: Firth, Penny. National Science Foundtion; Estados Unidos Fil: Knapp, Corrine N.. Western State Colorado University. Environment and Sustainability; Estados Unidos Fil: Kramer, Jonathan. National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center; Estados Unidos Fil: Leemans, Rik. Wageningen University. Environmental Systems Analysis Group; Alemania. National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center; Estados Unidos Fil: Palmer, Margaret. National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center; Estados Unidos Fil: Pietri, Diana. Blue Earth Consultants; Estados Unidos Fil: Pittman, Jeremy. University of Waterloo. School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability; Canadá Fil: Sarukhán, José. Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad; México Fil: Shackleton, Ross. Stellenbosch University. Department of Botany; Sudáfrica Fil: Seidler, Reinmar. University of Massachusetts Boston. Department of Biology; Estados Unidos Fil: van Wilgen, Brian. Stellenbosch University. Department of Botany; Sudáfrica Fil: Mooney, Harold. Stellenbosch University. Department of Botany; Sudáfrica

A foundational paradigm in biological and Earth sciences is that our planet is divided into distinct ecoregions and biomes demarking unique assemblages of species. This notion has profoundly influenced scientific research and environmental policy. Given recent advances in technology and data availability, however, we are now poised to ask whether ecoregions meaningfully delimit biological communities. Using over 200 million observations of plants, animals and fungi we show compelling evidence that ecoregions delineate terrestrial biodiversity patterns. We achieve this by testing two competing hypotheses: the sharp-transition hypothesis, positing that ecoregion borders divide differentiated biotic communities; and the gradual-transition hypothesis, proposing instead that species turnover is continuous and largely independent of ecoregion borders. We find strong support for the sharp-transition hypothesis across all taxa, although adherence to ecoregion boundaries varies across taxa. Although plant and vertebrate species are tightly linked to sharp ecoregion boundaries, arthropods and fungi show weaker affiliations to this set of ecoregion borders. Our results highlight the essential value of ecological data for setting conservation priorities and reinforce the importance of protecting habitats across as many ecoregions as possible. Specifically, we conclude that ecoregion-based conservation planning can guide investments that simultaneously protect species-, community- and ecosystem-level biodiversity, key for securing Earth’s life support systems into the future.

The Anthropocene is recognized (though not yet formally defined) as the time when human impacts are widespread on Earth. While some of the impacts are essential to supporting large human populations and can be sustainable in the long run, others can irretrievably damage the life support systems upon which the global society has come to depend, or spark rapid changes to which societies cannot adapt fast enough. Among these dangerous trends are increasing climate disruption, extinctions, loss of non-human-dominated ecosystems, pollution, and population overgrowth. Interactions between these five trends exacerbate their potential to trigger harmful global change. Reducing the resultant risks requires effective cooperation between scientists and policy makers to develop strategies that guide for environmental health over the next few decades. To that end, the Scientific Consensus on Maintaining Humanity’s Life Support Systems in the 21st Century was written to make accessible to policy makers and others the basic scientific underpinnings and widespread agreement about both the dangers of and the solutions to climate disruption, extinctions, ecosystem loss, pollution and population overgrowth. When it was released in May 2013, the document included endorsements by 522 global change scientists, including dozens of members of various nations’ most highly recognized scientific bodies, from 41 countries around the world. Since then, endorsements have grown to more than 1300 scientists plus more than 1700 others – business people, NGO representatives, students, and the general public – spanning more than 60 countries. Now also available in Spanish and Chinese, the document has proven useful in helping to stimulate national and international agreements. Further information about the genesis, uses, the signatories, and how to endorse it can be found at http://consensusforaction.stanford.edu/ . Such communication between scientists, policy makers, and the public at large will be essential for effective guidance to address global change as the Anthropocene progresses.

Efforts to develop a global understanding of the functioning of the Earth as a system began in the mid-1980s. This effort necessitated linking knowledge from both the physical and biological realms. A motivation for this development was the growing impact of humans on the Earth system and need to provide solutions, but the study of the social drivers and their consequences for the changes that were occurring was not incorporated into the Earth System Science movement, despite early attempts to do so. The impediments to integration were many, but they are gradually being overcome, which can be seen in many trends for assessments, such as the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as well as both basic and applied science programs. In this development, particular people and events have shaped the trajectories that have occurred. The lessons learned should be considered in such emerging research programs as Future Earth , the new global program for sustainability research. The transitioning process to this new program will take time as scientists adjust to new colleagues with different ideologies, methods, and tools and a new way of doing science.

Natural and managed ecosystems provide food, water, and other valuable services to human societies. Unnoticed by many in the scientific community, the values associated with ecosystem services have been integrated into U.S. government policy. A recent administration memo ([ 1 ][1]) put U.S. federal

Recently, some members of the conservation community have used ecosystem services as a strategy to conserve biodiversity. Others in the community have criticized this strategy as a distraction from the mission of biodiversity conservation. The debate continues, and it remains unclear whether the concerns expressed are significant enough to merit the opposition. Through an exploration of the science of biodiversity and ecosystem services, we find that narrow interpretations of metrics, values, and management drive much of the tension and make the common ground appear small. The size of this common ground depends on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services and how they respond to management interventions. We demonstrate how understanding this response can be used to delimit common ground but highlight the importance of differentiating between objectives and approaches to meeting those objectives in conservation projects.

International audience; Earth's life-support systems are in rapid decline, yet we have few metrics or indicators with which to track these changes. The world's governments are calling for biodiversity and ecosystem-service monitoring to guide and evaluate international conservation policy as well as to incorporate natural capital into their national accounts. The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) has been tasked with setting up this monitoring system. Here we explore the immediate feasibility of creating a global ecosystem-service monitoring platform under the GEO BON framework through combining data from national statistics, global vegetation models, and production function models. We found that nine ecosystem services could be annually reported at a national scale in the short term: carbon sequestration, water supply for hydropower, and non-fisheries marine products, crop, livestock, game meat, fisheries, mariculture, and timber production. Reported changes in service delivery over time reflected ecological shocks (e.g., droughts and disease outbreaks), highlighting the immediate utility of this monitoring system. Our work also identified three opportunities for creating a more comprehensive monitoring system. First, investing in input data for ecological process models (e.g., global land-use maps) would allow many more regulating services to be monitored. Currently, only 1 of 9 services that can be reported is a regulating service. Second, household surveys and censuses could help evaluate how nature affects people and provides non-monetary benefits. Finally, to forecast the sustainability of service delivery, research efforts could focus on calculating the total remaining biophysical stocks of provisioning services. Regardless, we demonstrated that a preliminary ecosystem-service monitoring platform is immediately feasible. With sufficient international investment, the platform could evolve further into a much-needed system to track changes in our planet's life-support systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

© 2017 Shenzhen Declaration Drafting Committee. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The file attached is the Published/publisher’s pdf version of the article.

After the collective failure to achieve the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD's) 2010 target to substantially reduce biodiversity losses, the CBD adopted a plan composed of five strategic goals and 20 “SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic, and Time-bound) targets, to be achieved by 2020. Here, an interdisciplinary group of scientists from DIVERSITAS – an international program that focuses on biodiversity science – evaluates these targets and considers the implications of an ecosystem-services-based approach for their implementation. We describe the functional differences between the targets corresponding to distinct strategic goals and identify the interdependency between targets. We then discuss the implications for supporting research and target indicators, and make several specific suggestions for target implementation.

Rapid, extensive, and ongoing environmental change increasingly demands that humans intervene in ecosystems to maintain or restore ecosystem services and biodiversity. At the same time, the basic principles and tenets of restoration ecology and conservation biology are being debated and reshaped. Escalating global change is resulting in widespread no-analogue environments and novel ecosystems that render traditional goals unachievable. Policymakers and the general public, however, have embraced restoration without an understanding of its limitations, which has led to perverse policy outcomes. Therefore, a new ecology, free of pre- and misconceptions and directed toward meaningful interventions, is needed. Interventions include altering the biotic and abiotic structures and processes within ecosystems and changing social and policy settings. Interventions can be aimed at leverage points, both within ecosystems and in the broader social system—particularly, feedback loops that either maintain a particular s...

The massive investment of resources devoted to monitoring and assessment of economic and societal indicators in the United States is neither matched by nor linked to efforts to monitor and assess the ecosystem services and biodiversity that support economic and social well-being. Although national-scale assessments of biodiversity ( 1 ) and ecosystem indicators ( 2 ) have been undertaken, nearly a decade has elapsed since the last systematic assessment ( 2 ). A 2011 White House report called for a national biodiversity and ecosystem services assessment ( 3 ), but the initiative has stalled. Our aim here is to stimulate the process and outline a credible framework and pathway for an ongoing assessment of ecosystem functioning (see the photo). A national assessment should engage diverse stakeholders from multiple sectors of society and should focus on metrics and analyses of direct relevance to policy decisions, from local to national levels. Although many technical or science-focused components are in place, they need to be articulated, distilled, and organized to address policy issues.

Efforts to establish an ‘IPCC-like mechanism for biodiversity’, or an IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), may culminate soon — as governments, the scientific community and other stakeholders are getting ready for a third round of negotiations on IPBES. This paper provides firstly, a brief history and broader context for the IPBES process; secondly, a description of the niche that IPBES would occupy in the science-policy landscape for biodiversity and ecosystem services; and thirdly, concludes with some views on the role of scientists in IPBES, and on the need to have strong and proper scientific structures to coordinate scientific efforts internationally, in order to produce the science needed for IPBES.

In this paper, we consider the factors behind the growth of invasive species as a global problem, and the scope for international cooperation and coordination in addressing that problem. This is limited by the terms of the various international agreements governing trade, health, and biodiversity. The default strategy in most cases has two parts: border protection and the control of or adaptation to introduced species that have escaped detection at the border. Most invasive species policy involves unilateral national defensive action as opposed to coordinated international action. We argue that an important part of the solution to the problem lies in global coordination and cooperation in the management of both pathways and sanitary and phytosanitary risks at all scales. More particularly, because invasive species are an externality of trade, transport, and travel that involve public goods, they require collective regulation of international markets that goes beyond that admitted under the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. We argue that it is important to bring that agreement into conformity with the International Health Regulations (IHR), and to develop an international mechanism to generate and disseminate information on invasive species risks and their impacts.

The losses that are being incurred of the Earth's biological diversity, at all levels, are now staggering. The trend lines for future loss are steeply upward as new adverse drivers of change come into play. The political processes for matching this crisis are now inadequate and the science needs to address this issue are huge and slow to fulfil, even though strong advances have been made. A more integrated approach to evaluating biodiversity in terms that are meaningful to the larger community is needed that can provide understandable metrics of the consequences to society of the losses that are occurring. Greater attention is also needed in forecasting likely diversity-loss scenarios in the near term and strategies for alleviating detrimental consequences. At the international level, the Convention on Biological Diversity must be revisited to make it more powerful to meet the needs that originally motivated its creation. Similarly, at local and regional levels, an ecosystem-service approach to conservation can bring new understanding to the value, and hence the need for protection, of the existing natural capital.

The Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) was established in 2001 by four global environmental change (GEC) research programmes: DIVERSITAS, IGBP, IHDP and WCRP. ESSP facilitates the study of the Earth's environment as an integrated system in order to understand how and why it is changing, and to explore the implications of these changes for global and regional sustainability. Joint research projects on carbon dynamics, food, water and health have been established. As a result of an independent review, the ESSP developed a new strategy that will provide an internationally coordinated and holistic approach to Earth system science. The approach integrates natural and social sciences from regional to the global scale. The mainstay of the ESSP is to identify and define Earth system science challenges, enable integrative research to address these challenges, and build scientific capacity. The GEC research community also faces an increasing challenge to present research results in more accessible and informative ways to stakeholders, especially to policy-makers. In response, the ESSP is developing new services that include knowledge products, Earth system science fora, a synthesis journal and interdisciplinary collaborative research. Coping with GEC is an enormous challenge and one the world must respond to successfully. Our common goal is, therefore, to develop the essential knowledge base needed to respond effectively and quickly to the great challenge of GEC.

The capacity of ecosystems to deliver essential services to society is already under stress. The additional stresses imposed by climate change in the coming years will require extraordinary adaptation. We need to track the changing status of ecosystems, deepen our understanding of the biological underpinnings for ecosystem service delivery and develop new tools and techniques for maintaining and restoring resilient biological and social systems. We will be building on an ecosystem foundation that has been radically compromised during the past half century. Most rivers have been totally restructured, oceans have been severely altered and depleted, coral reefs are near the tipping point of disappearing as functional ecosystems, over half of the land surface is devoted to livestock and crop agriculture, with little consideration for the ecosystem services that are being lost as a consequence, some irrevocably so. We have already seen many regime shifts, or tipping points, due to human activity, even before the onset of measurable climate change impacts on ecosystems. Climate change, caused mainly by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, will disrupt our ecosystem base in new ways. Already we are seeing widespread signs of change. Species behaviors are altering and disrupting mutualisms of long standing. We are seeing extinctions within vulnerable habitats and conditions where migrations are necessary for survival but where often there are no pathways available for successful movement in the fragmented world of today. These challenges represent an extraordinary threat to society and a call for urgent attention by the scientific community.

Over the past decade, efforts to value and protect ecosystem services have been promoted by many as the last, best hope for making conservation mainstream – attractive and commonplace worldwide. In theory, if we can help individuals and institutions to recognize the value of nature, then this should greatly increase investments in conservation, while at the same time fostering human well-being. In practice, however, we have not yet developed the scientific basis, nor the policy and finance mechanisms, for incorporating natural capital into resource- and land-use decisions on a large scale. Here, we propose a conceptual framework and sketch out a strategic plan for delivering on the promise of ecosystem services, drawing on emerging examples from Hawai‘i. We describe key advances in the science and practice of accounting for natural capital in the decisions of individuals, communities, corporations, and governments.

Current discussions of biodiversity frequently center on the question of species extinction, and much of conservation biology focuses on this topic. We argue that species extinction often represents the end- point of a process of population extinctions, and that the deletion of populations over much of a species' range is likely to be of as much or more concern than the final extinction of that species. Population extinc- tions often result from habitat destruction and modification, which can be widespread. The result is that spe- cies can be deleted from most of their former range but continue to persist in small refuge areas. Moreover, species additions in the form of invasive species are frequently more numerous than extinctions in any given area. Such invasions often result in dramatic changes in ecosystem structure or function and can be instru- mental in hastening the extinction of native populations. We examine these premises using two examples from California and Western Australia. These two contrasting areas show broadly similar trends in species extinctions, range contractions, and invasions, and they illustrate the fact that, by concentrating on species extinctions, many of the important human effects on biodiversity can be overlooked.

We conducted a long-term experiment in grassland with the aim of elucidating grassland dynamics in relation to variations in rainfall amount and spatial and temporal variation in disturbance. In particular we aimed to increase our understanding of ecosystem dynamics and function, species redundancy, invasion biology, and other related topics. We studied the dynamics of serpentine annual grassland in northern California over the period 1983-2002 in a replicated series of experimental plots comprising controls, gopher exclosures, and aboveground herbivore exclosures. Annual rainfall amount varied greatly during the study period, which included two major El Nino events and a period of prolonged below-average rainfall. Gopher disturbance was highly variable both spatially and temporally but was positively correlated with soil depth. Disturbance was reduced but not eliminated from the gopher exclosures and was significantly increased in the aboveground herbivore exclosures. Grassland dynamics were driven by rainfall amounts and distributions that had the most pronounced effects on the dominant plant species, while gopher disturbance had additional effects on the rarer species. Effects of excluding aboveground herbivores were swamped by a large increase in gopher disturbance within aboveground exclosures. Overall species numbers were reduced during a period of below-average rainfall but recovered in subsequent years. There was a large array of different responses of individual plant species to both rainfall and disturbance. Our results provide support for the "insurance" hypothesis, which suggests that biodiversity buffers ecosystem processes against environmental changes because different species (or phenotypes) respond differently to these changes, leading to functional compensations among species. Here, a species that was at very low abundance levels at the start of the study (Microseris douglasii) temporarily increased in abundance to become one of the dominant species in the grassland following a period of prolonged below-average rainfall. We also observed the repeated invasion of the serpentine grassland by the nonnative grass Bromus hordeaceus, which increased greatly in abundance following both of the major El Nino events. The results emphasize the importance of long-term observations in providing a context for shorter-term studies and allowing analysis of plant community responses to climate variation and disturbance, particularly in the face of ongoing global change.

Ecosystem services, the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems, are a powerful lens through which to understand human relationships with the environment and to design environmental policy. The explicit inclusion of beneficiaries makes values intrinsic to ecosystem services; whether or not those values are monetized, the ecosystem services framework provides a way to assess trade-offs among alternative scenarios of resource use and land- and seascape change. We provide an overview of the ecosystem functions responsible for producing terrestrial hydrologic services and use this context to lay out a blueprint for a more general ecosystem service assessment. Other ecosystem services are addressed in our discussion of scale and trade-offs. We review valuation and policy tools useful for ecosystem service protection and provide several examples of land management using these tools. Throughout, we highlight avenues for research to advance the ecosystem services framework as an operational basis for policy decisions.

Terrestrial gastropods have been shown to exert major impacts on the plant structure and species composition of temperate grasslands and other terrestrial plant communities. In order to develop predictions of plant community responses to changing environments, it is critical to understand how factors structuring plant communities will be influenced by global changes. Nevertheless, little is known about the potential for the size and abundance of gastropods to be altered by the individual and combined effects of elevated atmospheric CO 2 and increased deposition of N. Previous work suggests that responses of herbivore abundance to these global changes seem likely to depend, in part, upon the changes in the quantity of plant biomass available for consumption, and changes in the nutritional quality of this plant material for gastropod survival, development, and reproduction. Therefore, in this study we investigated the effect of elevated CO 2 and increased N deposition on gastropod size and abundance, as well as the effects on plant community production and N status. Elevated CO 2 depressed the size of gastropods early in the growing season by 29% to 42%, increased mid-season gastropod abundance by 38% to 43%, and depressed abundance late in the growing season by 21% to 29%. These changes in gastropod size and abundance were due largely to the modification of plant tissue quality and quantity. Increased N deposition, in contrast, influenced neither gastropod abundance nor per capita biomass during any part of the growing season. Neither elevated CO 2 nor increased N deposition disrupted the temporal synchrony between plant production and slug abundance.

Globalization facilitates the spread of invasive alien species (IAS) as international commerce develops new trade routes, markets, and products. New technologies increase the pace at which humans and commodities can move around the world. Recent research on IAS at the global scale has examined commerce and travel in order to inform predictions, risk analyses, and policy. Due to limited data, regional-scale studies have primarily focused on invasion patterns rather than impacts. Local-scale experimental research can identify mechanisms and impacts of biological invasions, but the results may not be applicable at larger spatial scales. However, the number of information networks devoted to IAS is increasing globally and may help integrate IAS research at all scales, particularly if data sharing and compatibility can be improved. Integrating ecological and economic factors with trade analysis to explore the effectiveness of different approaches for preventing invasions is a promising approach at the global s...

Ecosystem services have become a mainstream concept for the expression of values assigned by people to various functions of ecosystems. Even though the introduction of the concept has initiated a vast amount of research, progress in using this knowledge for sustainable resource use remains insufficient. We see a need to broaden the scope of research to answer three key questions that we believe will improve incorporation of ecosystem service research into decision-making for the sustainable use of natural resources to improve human well-being: (i) how are ecosystem services co-produced by social–ecological systems, (ii) who benefits from the provision of ecosystem services, and (iii) what are the best practices for the governance of ecosystem services? Here, we present these key questions, the rationale behind them, and their related scientific challenges in a globally coordinated research programme aimed towards improving sustainable ecosystem management. These questions will frame the activities of ecoSERVICES, formerly a DIVERSITAS project and now a project of Future Earth, in its role as a platform to foster global coordination of multidisciplinary sustainability science through the lens of ecosystem services. Fil: Bennett, E. M.. McGill University; Canadá Fil: Cramer, Wolfgang. Aix Marseille Université; Francia. Avignon Université; Francia Fil: Begossi, Alpina. Universidade Estadual de Campinas; Brasil. Universidade Santa Cecília; Brasil Fil: Cundill, Georgina. Rhodes University; Sudáfrica Fil: Díaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina Fil: Egoh, Benis N.. University of KwaZulu-Natal; Sudáfrica Fil: Geijzendorffer, Ilse R.. Aix Marseille Université; Francia. Avignon Université; Francia Fil: Krug, Cornelia B.. Université de Paris XI; Francia Fil: Lavorel, Sandra. Université Grenoble Alpes; Francia. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Francia Fil: Lazos, Elena. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Lebel, Louis. Chiang Mai University; Tailandia Fil: Martín López, Berta. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; España. Universidad de Copenhagen; Dinamarca Fil: Meyfroidt, Patrick. Université Catholique de Louvain; Bélgica Fil: Mooney, Harold A.. University of Stanford; Estados Unidos Fil: Nel, Jeanne L.. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research; Sudáfrica Fil: Pascual, Unai. Basque Centre for Climate Change; España. University of Cambridge; Reino Unido Fil: Payet, Karine. Aix Marseille Université; Francia. Avignon Université; Francia Fil: Pérez Harguindeguy, Natalia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina Fil: Peterson, Garry D.. Stockholms Universitet; Suecia Fil: Prieur Richard, Anne Hélène. Museum National D; Francia Fil: Reyers, Belinda. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research; Sudáfrica Fil: Roebeling, Peter. University of Aveiro; Portugal Fil: Seppelt, Ralf. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research; Alemania. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research; Alemania Fil: Solan, Martin. University of Southampton; Reino Unido Fil: Tschakert, Petra. State University of Pennsylvania; Estados Unidos Fil: Tscharntke, Teja. Georg August University; Alemania Fil: Turner II, B. L.. Arizona State University; Estados Unidos Fil: Verburg, Peter H.. University of Amsterdam; Países Bajos Fil: Viglizzo, Ernesto Francisco. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro Regional La Pampa-San Luis; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina Fil: White, Piran C. L.. University of York; Reino Unido Fil: Woodward, Guy. Imperial College London; Reino Unido

Seeking systems-based solutions Without sustainable solutions, the world's most pressing environmental concerns will continue to persist or worsen. Achieving the goal of sustainability involves so many factors—from economics to ecology—that investigating one or even a handful of variables at a time often overlooks major parts of the problem. Liu et al. review systems-based approaches that are beginning to provide tenable ways to assess sustainability. Further integrating coupled human and natural components of a problem across multiple dimensions, including how one solution can create unintended consequences elsewhere, is essential for developing effective policies that seek global sustainability. Science , this issue 10.1126/science.1258832

Final Report for Threshold responses to interacting global changes in a California grassland ecosystem

Recent projections of climatic change have focused a great deal of scientific and public attention on patterns of carbon (C) cycling as well as its controls, particularly the factors that determine whether an ecosystem is a net source or sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). Net ecosystem production (NEP), a central concept in C-cycling research, has been used by scientists to represent two different concepts. We propose that NEP be restricted to just one of its two original definitions-the imbalance between gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER). We further propose that a new term-net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB)-be applied to the net rate of C accumulation in (or loss from [negative sign]) ecosystems. Net ecosystem carbon balance differs from NEP when C fluxes other than C fixation and respiration occur, or when inorganic C enters or leaves in dissolved form. These fluxes include the leaching loss or lateral transfer of C from the ecosystem; the emission of volatile organic C, methane, and carbon monoxide; and the release of soot and CO2 from fire. Carbon fluxes in addition to NEP are particularly important determinants of NECB over long time scales. However, even over short time scales, they are important in ecosystems such as streams, estuaries, wetlands, and cities. Recent technological advances have led to a diversity of approaches to the measurement of C fluxes at different temporal and spatial scales. These approaches frequently capture different components of NEP or NECB and can therefore be compared across scales only by carefully specifying the fluxes included in the measurements. By explicitly identifying the fluxes that comprise NECB and other components of the C cycle, such as net ecosystem exchange (NEE) and net biome production (NBP), we can provide a less ambiguous framework for understanding and communicating recent changes in the global C cycle.

Although it is widely accepted that elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N) deposition, and climate change will alter ecosystem productivity and function in the coming decades, the combined effects of these environmental changes may be nonadditive, and their interactions may be altered by disturbances, such as fire. We examined the influence of a summer wildfire on the interactive effects of elevated CO2, N deposition, and increased precipitation in a full-factorial experiment conducted in a California annual grassland. In unburned plots, primary production was suppressed under elevated CO2. Burning alone did not significantly affect production, but it increased total production in combination with nitrate additions and removed the suppressive effect of elevated CO2. Increased production in response to nitrate in burned plots occurred as a result of the enhanced aboveground production of annual grasses and forbs, whereas the removal of the suppressive effect of elevated CO2 occurred as a result of increased aboveground forb production in burned, CO2-treated plots and decreased root production in burned plots under ambient CO2.The tissue nitrogen–phosphorus ratio, which was assessed for annual grass shoots, decreased with burning and increased with nitrate addition. Burning removed surface litter from plots, resulting in an increase in maximum daily soil temperatures and a decrease in soil moisture both early and late in the growing season. Measures of vegetation greenness, based on canopy spectral reflectance, showed that plants in burned plots grew rapidly early in the season but senesced early. Overall, these results indicate that fire can alter the effects of elevated CO2 and N addition on productivity in the short term, possibly by promoting increased phosphorus availability.

The exploding increase in trade between the United States and China, which share comparable ecosystem types, will result in unwanted establishment of alien invasive species that will inflict considerable ecological and economic damage. This undesirable result can be avoided by marshaling management tools and policy instruments that are readily available. High-level policy action is necessary to put the proper and available safeguards in place, and quickly.

Experiments were conducted to determine what impact ozone (03) and/or soil moisture deficit had on the growth and development of radish plants. Plants of Raphanus sativus L. Cherry Belle and Raphanus sativus x raphanistrum (wild type) grown in modified open-top chambers, were treated with 03 and/or subjected to reduced soil moisture throughout growth and development. Experiments were performed in the spring and autumn of 1989. Plants of both genotypes exhibited a more adverse response to soil moisture deficit in the spring experiment and to 03 in the autumn experiment. The higher light intensity and temperature prevailing in the spring, in contrast to those during the autumn, were thought to favour a negative impact of reduced soil moisture. The spring conditions fostered high relative growth rate and more rapid water loss by the shoot on both a relative and absolute basis. These same conditions may have placed the plants in a physiological state which minimized toxicity by 03. Carbon partitioning in the spring favoured reproduction while the autumn carbon was preferentially partitioned to the hypocotyl and foliage for Cherry Belle and Wild Type, respectively. The importance of these partitioning differences between genotypes was explored as it related to injurious and compensatory responses to the two stresses. Since the plants were not equally sensitive to reduced soil moisture and 03, in the same experiments, interactions were frequently absent. When interactions occurred, 03 injury was reduced in plants also grown in soil with reduced moisture content.

Some of the materials which are commonly used in equipment for carbon dioxide and water exchange analysis can adsorb substantial amounts of carbon dioxide and water and, thus, may cause large experimental errors. Also presented are procedures for determining the influence of light intensity, carbon dioxide concentration, and temperature upon photosynthesis and transpiration.

Conventional agriculture has improved in crop yield but at large costs to the environment, particularly off-site pollution from mineral N fertilizers. In response to environmental concerns, organic agriculture has become an increasingly popular option. One component of organic agriculture that remains in question is whether it can reduce agricultural N losses to groundwater and the atmosphere relative to conventional agriculture. Here we report reduced N pollution from organic and integrated farming systems compared with a conventional farming system. We evaluated differences in denitrification potential and a suite of other soil biological and chemical properties in soil samples taken from organic, integrated, and conventional treatments in an experimental apple orchard. Organically farmed soils exhibited higher potential denitrification rates, greater denitrification efficiency, higher organic matter, and greater microbial activity than conventionally farmed soils. The observed differences in denitrifier function were then assessed under field conditions after fertilization. N 2 O emissions were not significantly different among treatments; however, N 2 emissions were highest in organic plots. Annual nitrate leaching was 4.4–5.6 times higher in conventional plots than in organic plots, with the integrated plots in between. This study demonstrates that organic and integrated fertilization practices support more active and efficient denitrifier communities, shift the balance of N 2 emissions and nitrate losses, and reduce environmentally damaging nitrate losses. Although this study specifically examines a perennial orchard system, the ecological and biogeochemical processes we evaluated are present in all agroecosystems, and the reductions in nitrate loss in this study could also be achievable in other cropping systems.

In this study, the influence of elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen (N) deposition on gastropod herbivory was investigated for six annual species in a California annual grassland community. These experimentally simulated global changes increased availability of important resources for plant growth, leading to the hypothesis that species with the most positive growth and foliar nutrient responses would experience the greatest increase in herbivory. Counter to the expectations, shifts in tissue N and growth rates caused by N deposition did not predict shifts in herbivore consumption rates. N deposition increased seedling N concentrations and growth rates but did not increase herbivore consumption overall, or for any individual species. Elevated CO2 did not influence growth rates nor have a statistically significant influence on seedling N concentrations. Elevated CO2 at ambient N levels caused a decline in the number of seedlings consumed, but the interaction between CO2 and N addition differed among species. The results of this study indicate that shifting patterns of herbivory will likely influence species composition as environmental conditions change in the future; however, a simple trade-off between shifting growth rates and palatability is not evident.

Seed-harvesting ants can influence the abundance and distribution of plant species through both the selective harvesting of seeds and the construction of nutrient-rich nest mounds, but the relative contributions of these two mechanisms have not been addressed by previous studies. Furthermore, the impact of ant seed harvesting in California serpentine grasslands remains unresolved because of divergent results from several previous experiments. This study investigates the influence of harvester ants on serpentine grassland plant species composition by examining two potential signatures of seed harvesting ants on plant community composition: species composition on versus off ant nest mounds, and species abundance as a function of distance from nest mounds. Of the 28 plant species identified in this study, 22 exhibited spatial patterns consistent with effects of seed harvesting, nest construction, or both. Although most species showed significant gradients in abundance with distance from a nest, there were no clear relationships between plant species distributions and previously reported harvester ant seed foraging patterns. Harvester ant nest mounds supported plant communities that were distinct from the surrounding serpentine grassland, with notably higher densities of legumes and invasive annual grasses. Comparison of our results with those of previous studies indicates that the patterns we observed are generally consistent over time, but affect more species and a larger fraction of the grassland than previously reported. Unaffected areas of the grassland seem likely to serve as important refuges for some plant species.

Hundreds of scientists from over 70 nations are now engaged in an intensive effort to assess what we know about the status of the world's ecosystems. Here, we describe the fundamental nature of this assessment, what it hopes to accomplish and how it will go about its work. The results of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment will serve as a baseline for future assessments, as well as a blueprint for action for sustaining the ecosystem services upon which we all depend for our well being.

Global climate and atmospheric changes may interact in their effects on the diversity and composition of natural communities. We followed responses of an annual grassland to three years of all possible combinations of experimentally elevated CO 2 (1300 mL/L), warming (180 W/m 2 , 1;18C), nitrogen deposition (17 g N·m 22 ·yr 21 ), and precip- itation (150%). Responses of the 10 most common plant species to global changes and to interannual variability were weak but sufficiently consistent within functional groups to drive clearer responses at the functional group level. The dominant functional groups (annual grasses and forbs) showed distinct production and abundance responses to individual global changes. After three years, N deposition suppressed plant diversity, forb production, and forb abundance in association with enhanced grass production. Elevated precipitation en- hanced plant diversity, forb production, and forb abundance but affected grasses little. Warming increased forb production and abundance but did not strongly affect diversity or grass response. Elevated CO2 reduced diversity with little effect on relative abundance or production of forbs and grasses. Realistic combinations of global changes had small di- versity effects but more marked effects on the relative dominance of forbs and grasses. The largest change in relative functional group abundance (150% forbs) occurred under the combination of elevated CO2 1 warming 1 precipitation, which will likely affect much of California in the future. Strong interannual variability in diversity, individual species abundances, and functional group abundances indicated that in our system, (1) responses after three years were not constrained by lags in community response, (2) individual species were more sensitive to interannual variability and extremes than to mean changes in en- vironmental and resource conditions, and (3) simulated global changes interacted with interannual variability to produce responses of varying magnitude and even direction among years. Relative abundance of forbs, the most speciose group in the community, ranged after three years from .30% under elevated CO2 1 warming 1 precipitation to ,12% under N deposition. While opposing production responses at the ecosystem level by different func- tional groups may buffer responses such as net primary production (NPP) change, these shifts in relative dominance could influence ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling and NPP via differences between grasses and forbs in tissue chemistry, allocation, phe- nology, and productivity.

Biodiversity responses to ongoing climate and atmospheric changes will affect both ecosystem processes and the delivery of ecosystem goods and services. Combined effects of co-occurring global changes on diversity, however, are poorly understood. We examined plant diversity responses in a California annual grassland to manipulations of four global environmental changes, singly and in combination: elevated CO 2 , warming, precipitation, and nitrogen deposition. After 3 years, elevated CO 2 and nitrogen deposition each reduced plant diversity, whereas elevated precipitation increased it and warming had no significant effect. Diversity responses to both single and combined global change treatments were driven overwhelmingly by gains and losses of forb species, which make up most of the native plant diversity in California grasslands. Diversity responses across treatments also showed no consistent relationship to net primary production responses, illustrating that the diversity effects of these environmental changes could not be explained simply by changes in productivity. In two- to four-way combinations, simulated global changes did not interact in any of their effects on diversity. Our results show that climate and atmospheric changes can rapidly alter biological diversity, with combined effects that, at least in some settings, are simple, additive combinations of single-factor effects.

Simulated global changes, including warming, increased precipitation, and nitrogen deposition, alone and in concert, increased net primary production (NPP) in the third year of ecosystem-scale manipulations in a California annual grassland. Elevated carbon dioxide also increased NPP, but only as a single-factor treatment. Across all multifactor manipulations, elevated carbon dioxide suppressed root allocation, decreasing the positive effects of increased temperature, precipitation, and nitrogen deposition on NPP. The NPP responses to interacting global changes differed greatly from simple combinations of single-factor responses. These findings indicate the importance of a multifactor experimental approach to understanding ecosystem responses to global change.