| 1. |
- Kattge, Jens, et al.
(författare)
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TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access
- 2020
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 26:1, s. 119-188
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives.
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| 2. |
- Díaz, S, et al.
(författare)
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Assessing nature's contributions to people
- 2018
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 359:6373, s. 270-272
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A major challenge today and into the future is to maintain or enhance beneficial contributions of nature to a good quality of life for all people. This is among the key motivations of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a joint global effort by governments, academia, and civil society to assess and promote knowledge of Earth's biodiversity and ecosystems and their contribution to human societies in order to inform policy formulation. One of the more recent key elements of the IPBES conceptual framework is the notion of nature's contributions to people (NCP), which builds on the ecosystem service concept popularized by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. But as we detail below, NCP as defined and put into practice in IPBES differs from earlier work in several important ways. First, the NCP approach recognizes the central and pervasive role that culture plays in defining all links between people and nature. Second, use of NCP elevates, emphasizes, and operationalizes the role of indigenous and local knowledge in understanding nature's contribution to people. The broad remit of IPBES requires it to engage a wide range of stakeholders, spanning from natural, social, humanistic, and engineering sciences to indigenous peoples and local communities in whose territories lie much of the world's biodiversity. Being an intergovernmental body, such inclusiveness is essential not only for advancing knowledge but also for the political legitimacy of assessment findings.
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| 3. |
- Schroter, D, et al.
(författare)
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Ecosystem service supply and vulnerability to global change in Europe
- 2005
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 1095-9203 .- 0036-8075. ; 310:5752, s. 1333-1337
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Global change will alter the supply of ecosystem services that are vital for human well-being. To investigate ecosystem service supply during the 21st century, we used a range of ecosystem models and scenarios of climate and land-use change to conduct a Europe-wide assessment. Large changes in climate and land use typically resulted in large changes in ecosystem service supply. Some of these trends may be positive (for example, increases in forest area and productivity) or offer opportunities (for example, "surplus land" for agricultural extensification and bioenergy production). However, many changes increase vulnerability as a result of a decreasing supply of ecosystem services (for example, declining soil fertility, declining water availability, increasing risk of forest fires), especially in the Mediterranean and mountain regions.
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| 4. |
- Managi, S, et al.
(författare)
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Valuation of nature and nature’s contributions to people
- 2022
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Ingår i: Sustainability Science. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1862-4065 .- 1862-4057. ; 17:3, s. 701-705
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recognizing and integrating the multiple values of nature and nature's contributions to people into all forms of decision-making is critical for reversing the dangerous decline of nature. This is an editorial of a special issue that presents global efforts that evaluate nature and nature's contributions to people to support decision-makers across various sectors in the development of policies and strategies for the effective management of coupled social-ecological systems. The special issus also demonstrates that the valuation of nature's contributions to people requires recognizing a broad range of worldviews and incorporating values into its valuation process, which often requires local-level or site-specific analyses.
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| 5. |
- Van der Putten, W H, et al.
(författare)
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Plant species diversity as a driver of early succession in abandoned fields: a multi-site approach
- 2000
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Ingår i: Oecologia. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1432-1939 .- 0029-8549. ; 124:1, s. 91-99
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Succession is one of the most studied processes in ecology and succession theory provides strong predictability. However, few attempts have been made to influence the course of succession thereby testing the hypothesis that passing through one stage is essential before entering the next one. At each stage of succession ecosystem processes may be affected by the diversity of species present, but there is little empirical evidence showing that plant species diversity may affect succession. On ex-arable land, a major constraint of vegetation succession is the dominance of perennial early-successional (arable weed) species. Our aim was to change the initial vegetation succession by the direct sowing of later-successional plant species. The hypothesis was tested that a diverse plant species mixture would be more successful in weed suppression than species-poor mixtures. In order to provide a robust test including a wide range of environmental conditions and plant species, experiments were carried out at five sites across Europe. At each site, an identical experiment was set up, albeit that the plant species composition of the sown mixtures differed from site to site. Results of the 2-year study showed that diverse plant species mixtures were more effective at reducing the number of natural colonisers (mainly weeds from the seed bank) than the average low-diversity treatment. However, the effect of the low-diversity treatment depended on the composition of the species mixture. Thus, the effect of enhanced species diversity strongly depended on the species composition of the low-diversity treatments used for comparison. The effects of high-diversity plant species mixtures on weed suppression differed between sites. Low-productivity sites gave the weakest response to the diversity treatments. These differences among sites did not change the general pattern. The present results have implications for understanding biological invasions. It has been hypothesised that alien species are more likely to invade species-poor communities than communities with high diversity. However, our results show that the identity of the local species matters. This may explain, at least partly, controversial results of studies on the relation between local diversity and the probability of being invaded by aliens.
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| 6. |
- Mastrángelo, Matías E., et al.
(författare)
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Key knowledge gaps to achieve global sustainability goals
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature Sustainability. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2398-9629. ; 2:12, s. 1115-1121
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Regional and global assessments periodically update what we know, and highlight what remains to be known, about the linkages between people and nature that both define and depend upon the state of the environment. To guide research that better informs policy and practice, we systematically synthesize knowledge gaps from recent assessments of four regions of the globe and three key themes by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. We assess their relevance to global sustainability goals and trace their evolution relative to those identified in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. We found that global sustainability goals cannot be achieved without improved knowledge on feedbacks between social and ecological systems, effectiveness of governance systems and the influence of institutions on the social distribution of ecosystem services. These top research priorities have persisted for the 14 years since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Our analysis also reveals limited understanding of the role of indigenous and local knowledge in sustaining nature’s benefits to people. Our findings contribute to a policy-relevant and solution-oriented agenda for global, long-term social-ecological research.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Hedlund, Katarina, et al.
(författare)
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Plant species diversity, plant biomass and responses of the soil community on abandoned land across Europe: idiosyncracy or above-belowground time lags
- 2003
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Ingår i: Oikos. - : Wiley. - 1600-0706 .- 0030-1299. ; 103:1, s. 45-58
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We examined the relationship between plant species diversity, productivity and the development of the soil community during early secondary succession on former arable land across Europe. We tested the hypothesis that increasing the initial plant species diversity enhances the biomass production and consequently stimulates soil microbial biomass and abundance of soil invertebrates. We performed five identical field experiments on abandoned arable land in five European countries (CZ, NL, SE, SP and UK) which allowed us to test our hypothesis in a range of climate, soil and other environmental factors that varied between the experimental sites. The initial plant diversity was altered by sowing seed mixtures of mid-successional grassland species with two or five grass species, one or five legumes and one or five forbs. The results of low and high sown diversity treatments were compared with plots that were naturally colonized by species present in the seed bank. In three out of the five field sites, there was no correlation between plant species number and plant biomass production, one site had a positive and the other a negative relation. Treatments with a high diversity seed mixture had a higher biomass than the naturally colonized plots. However, there was no significant difference between high and low sown diversity plots at four out of five sites. The three-year study did not give any evidence of a general bottom-up effect from increased plant biomass on biomass of bacteria, saprophytic fungi or abundance of microarthropods. The biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal was negatively related to plant biomass. The abundance of nematodes increased after abandonment and was related to plant biomass at four sites. Our results support the hypothesis that plant species diversity may have idiosyncratic effects on soil communities, even though studies on a longer term could reveal time lags in the response to changes in composition and biomass production of plant communities.
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| 9. |
- Kehoe, Laura, et al.
(författare)
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Make EU trade with Brazil sustainable
- 2019
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 364:6438, s. 341-
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 10. |
- Prager, C. M., et al.
(författare)
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Climate and multiple dimensions of plant diversity regulate ecosystem carbon exchange along an elevational gradient
- 2021
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Ingår i: Ecosphere. - : Wiley. - 2150-8925. ; 12:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The impacts of warming on communities and ecosystems are predicted to be significant in mountain ecosystems because physiological processes, including rates of carbon (C) cycling, are often more temperature-sensitive in colder environments. Plant biodiversity can also influence C exchange, yet few studies integrate how biotic and abiotic factors may directly or interactively impact ecosystem C flux. Here, we examine the link between simultaneous changes in multiple dimensions of plant diversity and peak growing season ecosystem C uptake across a climatic gradient in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, USA. We found that taxonomic diversity (species richness), functional diversity (functional evenness), and phylogenetic diversity (mean pairwise distance) were significantly and positively related to peak growing season ecosystem C uptake (i.e., net ecosystem exchange) when considered independently. However, when abiotic and biotic factors were integrated in a structural equation model, only plant phylogenetic diversity was significantly related to C uptake. In addition, we found that actual evapotranspiration (AET-a measure that integrates precipitation and temperature) affected ecosystem C exchange indirectly via its impact on the three dimensions of plant diversity that we examined. These findings highlight complex relationships among key measures of biodiversity and ecosystem C uptake in a rapidly warming ecosystem, and the possible mechanisms that underlie relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. They also point to the need for integrating multiple dimensions of biodiversity into studies of community and ecosystem ecology.
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