Disaggregating the evidence linking biodiversity and ecosystem services

Ricketts, Taylor H.; Watson, Keri B.; Koh, Insu; Ellis, Alicia M.; Nicholson, Charlie C.; Posner, Stephen; Richardson, Leif L.; Sonter, Laura J.

doi:10.1038/ncomms13106

Cited by 118 publications

(105 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Interestingly, the greater ES diversity we have detected downstream hints that hotspots of biodiversity and ES diversity may occupy similar positions in floodplain landscapes adding to growing evidence that associations between ES and biodiversity are more nuanced than previously thought (Ricketts et al 2016). New hypotheses on ES and biodiversity relationships may be needed, incorporating landscape position, especially within river-floodplains.…”

Section: Understanding Concordance Among Es and River-floodplain Biodmentioning

confidence: 67%

The spatial organization of ecosystem services in river‐floodplains

2017

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Citation: Tomscha, S. A., S. E. Gergel, and M. J. Tomlinson. 2017. The spatial organization of ecosystem services in riverfloodplains. Ecosphere 8(3):Abstract. River-floodplains are hotspots for many ecosystem services (ES), and thus, understanding how these services are spatially organized along river systems is essential. General principles from riverfloodplain ecology may provide guidance for understanding these spatial patterns, yet such concepts have rarely been incorporated into spatial assessments of ES. Using a lens of riverine concepts, we contrasted how floodplain ES capacity and diversity (orchard production, forage production, carbon storage, paddle route quality, fish capacity) vary with longitudinal river-floodplain position. High spatial resolution aerial photography (2006) facilitated detection of floodplain features contributing to the production of ES. We also determined how river reach types are linked to production of ES. We found that ES capacity varied considerably with longitudinal position and reach type. Agricultural capacity was concentrated in lower reaches, high-quality paddle routes in middle-lower reaches, and fish capacity and carbon storage in upper reaches. Furthermore, the highest diversity of ES was concentrated in the lowland floodplain reaches. Our results suggest river-floodplain concepts can improve spatial assessments of ES, increase our understanding of the relationships among biological features and ES, and thus help us better manage some of the key ES trade-offs.

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Section: Understanding Concordance Among Es and River-floodplain Biodmentioning

confidence: 67%

The spatial organization of ecosystem services in river‐floodplains

2017

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“…; Ricketts et al . ). This logic suggests that protecting some biodiversity is crucial to maintaining ecosystem services, and biodiversity's benefits extend beyond its existence value (Daily & Ellison ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

To what extent can ecosystem services motivate protecting biodiversity?

et al. 2017

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Society increasingly focuses on managing nature for the services it provides people rather than for the existence of particular species. How much biodiversity protection would result from this modified focus? Although biodiversity contributes to ecosystem services, the details of which species are critical, and whether they will go functionally extinct in the future, are fraught with uncertainty. Explicitly considering this uncertainty, we develop an analytical framework to determine how much biodiversity protection would arise solely from optimising net value from an ecosystem service. Using stochastic dynamic programming, we find that protecting a threshold number of species is optimal, and uncertainty surrounding how biodiversity produces services makes it optimal to protect more species than are presumed critical. We define conditions under which the economically optimal protection strategy is to protect all species, no species, and cases in between. We show how the optimal number of species to protect depends upon different relationships between species and services, including considering multiple services. Our analysis provides simple criteria to evaluate when managing for particular ecosystem services could warrant protecting all species, given uncertainty. Evaluating this criterion with empirical estimates from different ecosystems suggests that optimising some services will be more likely to protect most species than others.

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“…Ricketts et al (2016) review 81 studies for four ecosystem services (carbon storage, pest control, pollination and water purification) and find that the strength of biodiversity-ES relationships varied depending on whether the studies focused on spatial correlations between biodiversity and ES, the impact of management interventions, or the functional mechanisms by which biodiversity affects ES. It would be useful to investigate these issues in further work.…”

Section: Compatibility Of the Ecosystem Services Approach With Consermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similar reviews have made useful advances but they often focus mainly on the natural capital attributes that are related to biological diversity, such as species richness or functional diversity, neglecting other attributes such as species abundance or habitat area (e.g. Balvanera et al, 2014;Cardinale et al, 2012;Cimon-Morin et al, 2013;Lefcheck et al, 2015); or cover a smaller range of ecosystem services (Balvanera et al, 2014;Ricketts et al, 2016); or focus on a particular case study context (Bastian, 2013) or ecosystem type (Isbell et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%