ALBERT

Description: This study considers how large-scale application of solar panels will affect climate. Electricity generation leads to regional cooling but this is countered by the power’s use, affecting global circulation patterns with changes in regional rainfall. Nature Climate Change 6 290 doi: 10.1038/nclimate2843

Description: The decomposition of dead organic matter is a major determinant of carbon and nutrient cycling in ecosystems, and of carbon fluxes between the biosphere and the atmosphere. Decomposition is driven by a vast diversity of organisms that are structured in complex food webs. Identifying the mechanisms underlying the effects of biodiversity on decomposition is critical given the rapid loss of species worldwide and the effects of this loss on human well-being. Yet despite comprehensive syntheses of studies on how biodiversity affects litter decomposition, key questions remain, including when, where and how biodiversity has a role and whether general patterns and mechanisms occur across ecosystems and different functional types of organism. Here, in field experiments across five terrestrial and aquatic locations, ranging from the subarctic to the tropics, we show that reducing the functional diversity of decomposer organisms and plant litter types slowed the cycling of litter carbon and nitrogen. Moreover, we found evidence of nitrogen transfer from the litter of nitrogen-fixing plants to that of rapidly decomposing plants, but not between other plant functional types, highlighting that specific interactions in litter mixtures control carbon and nitrogen cycling during decomposition. The emergence of this general mechanism and the coherence of patterns across contrasting terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems suggest that biodiversity loss has consistent consequences for litter decomposition and the cycling of major elements on broad spatial scales.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Handa, I Tanya -- Aerts, Rien -- Berendse, Frank -- Berg, Matty P -- Bruder, Andreas -- Butenschoen, Olaf -- Chauvet, Eric -- Gessner, Mark O -- Jabiol, Jeremy -- Makkonen, Marika -- McKie, Brendan G -- Malmqvist, Bjorn -- Peeters, Edwin T H M -- Scheu, Stefan -- Schmid, Bernhard -- van Ruijven, Jasper -- Vos, Veronique C A -- Hattenschwiler, Stephan -- England -- Nature. 2014 May 8;509(7499):218-21. doi: 10.1038/nature13247.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉1] Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive (CEFE), CNRS, 1919 Route de Mende, 34293 Montpellier, France [2] Departement des Sciences Biologiques, Universite du Quebec a Montreal, C.P. 8888, succursale Centre-ville, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3P8, Canada. ; Department of Ecological Science, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1085, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. ; Nature Conservation and Plant Ecology Group, Wageningen University, Droevendaalsesteeg 3a, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands. ; 1] Department of Aquatic Ecology, Eawag: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Uberlandstrasse 133, 8600 Dubendorf, Switzerland [2] Institute of Integrative Biology (IBZ), ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland. ; Georg August University Gottingen, J.F. Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, Berliner Strasse 28, 37073 Gottingen, Germany. ; 1] Universite de Toulouse, INP, UPS, EcoLab (Laboratoire Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Environnement), 118 Route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse Cedex, France [2] CNRS, EcoLab, 118 Route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse Cedex, France. ; 1] Department of Aquatic Ecology, Eawag: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Uberlandstrasse 133, 8600 Dubendorf, Switzerland [2] Institute of Integrative Biology (IBZ), ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland [3] Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Alte Fischerhutte 2, 16775 Stechlin, Germany [4] Department of Ecology, Berlin Institute of Technology (TU Berlin), Ernst-Reuter-Platz 1, 10587 Berlin, Germany. ; 1] Department of Ecological Science, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1085, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands [2] Climate Change Programme, Finnish Environment Institute, PO Box 140, 00251 Helsinki, Finland. ; 1] Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umea University, 90187 Umea, Sweden [2] Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, PO Box 7050, 75007 Uppsala, Sweden. ; Deceased. ; Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands. ; Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies & Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland. ; Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive (CEFE), CNRS, 1919 Route de Mende, 34293 Montpellier, France.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24805346" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Biodiversity is rapidly declining worldwide, and there is consensus that this can decrease ecosystem functioning and services. It remains unclear, though, whether few or many of the species in an ecosystem are needed to sustain the provisioning of ecosystem services. It has been hypothesized that most species would promote ecosystem services if many times, places, functions and environmental changes were considered; however, no previous study has considered all of these factors together. Here we show that 84% of the 147 grassland plant species studied in 17 biodiversity experiments promoted ecosystem functioning at least once. Different species promoted ecosystem functioning during different years, at different places, for different functions and under different environmental change scenarios. Furthermore, the species needed to provide one function during multiple years were not the same as those needed to provide multiple functions within one year. Our results indicate that even more species will be needed to maintain ecosystem functioning and services than previously suggested by studies that have either (1) considered only the number of species needed to promote one function under one set of environmental conditions, or (2) separately considered the importance of biodiversity for providing ecosystem functioning across multiple years, places, functions or environmental change scenarios. Therefore, although species may appear functionally redundant when one function is considered under one set of environmental conditions, many species are needed to maintain multiple functions at multiple times and places in a changing world.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Isbell, Forest -- Calcagno, Vincent -- Hector, Andy -- Connolly, John -- Harpole, W Stanley -- Reich, Peter B -- Scherer-Lorenzen, Michael -- Schmid, Bernhard -- Tilman, David -- van Ruijven, Jasper -- Weigelt, Alexandra -- Wilsey, Brian J -- Zavaleta, Erika S -- Loreau, Michel -- England -- Nature. 2011 Aug 10;477(7363):199-202. doi: 10.1038/nature10282.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1B1, Canada. forest.isbell@gmail.com〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21832994" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: It remains unclear whether biodiversity buffers ecosystems against climate extremes, which are becoming increasingly frequent worldwide. Early results suggested that the ecosystem productivity of diverse grassland plant communities was more resistant, changing less during drought, and more resilient, recovering more quickly after drought, than that of depauperate communities. However, subsequent experimental tests produced mixed results. Here we use data from 46 experiments that manipulated grassland plant diversity to test whether biodiversity provides resistance during and resilience after climate events. We show that biodiversity increased ecosystem resistance for a broad range of climate events, including wet or dry, moderate or extreme, and brief or prolonged events. Across all studies and climate events, the productivity of low-diversity communities with one or two species changed by approximately 50% during climate events, whereas that of high-diversity communities with 16-32 species was more resistant, changing by only approximately 25%. By a year after each climate event, ecosystem productivity had often fully recovered, or overshot, normal levels of productivity in both high- and low-diversity communities, leading to no detectable dependence of ecosystem resilience on biodiversity. Our results suggest that biodiversity mainly stabilizes ecosystem productivity, and productivity-dependent ecosystem services, by increasing resistance to climate events. Anthropogenic environmental changes that drive biodiversity loss thus seem likely to decrease ecosystem stability, and restoration of biodiversity to increase it, mainly by changing the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate events.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Isbell, Forest -- Craven, Dylan -- Connolly, John -- Loreau, Michel -- Schmid, Bernhard -- Beierkuhnlein, Carl -- Bezemer, T Martijn -- Bonin, Catherine -- Bruelheide, Helge -- de Luca, Enrica -- Ebeling, Anne -- Griffin, John N -- Guo, Qinfeng -- Hautier, Yann -- Hector, Andy -- Jentsch, Anke -- Kreyling, Jurgen -- Lanta, Vojtech -- Manning, Pete -- Meyer, Sebastian T -- Mori, Akira S -- Naeem, Shahid -- Niklaus, Pascal A -- Polley, H Wayne -- Reich, Peter B -- Roscher, Christiane -- Seabloom, Eric W -- Smith, Melinda D -- Thakur, Madhav P -- Tilman, David -- Tracy, Benjamin F -- van der Putten, Wim H -- van Ruijven, Jasper -- Weigelt, Alexandra -- Weisser, Wolfgang W -- Wilsey, Brian -- Eisenhauer, Nico -- England -- Nature. 2015 Oct 22;526(7574):574-7. doi: 10.1038/nature15374. Epub 2015 Oct 14.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA. ; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Deutscher Platz 5e, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. ; Institute of Biology, Leipzig University, Johannisallee 21, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. ; Ecological and Environmental Modelling Group, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland. ; Centre for Biodiversity Theory and Modelling, Experimental Ecology Station, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Moulis 09200, France. ; Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland. ; Department of Biogeography, BayCEER, University of Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany. ; Department of Terrestrial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), PO Box 50, 6700 AB Wageningen, The Netherlands. ; Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA. ; Institute of Biology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, 06108 Halle, Germany. ; Institute of Ecology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Dornburger Strasse 159, 07743 Jena, Germany. ; Department of Biosciences, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA28PP, UK. ; USDA FS, Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center, RTP, North Carolina 27709, USA. ; Ecology and Biodiversity Group, Department of Biology, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands. ; Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RB, UK. ; Disturbance Ecology, BayCEER, University of Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany. ; Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University Greifswald, D-17487 Greifswald, Germany. ; Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, Branisovska 31, 37005 Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic. ; Institute for Plant Sciences, University of Bern, CH-3013 Bern, Switzerland. ; Department of Ecology and Ecosystem Management, School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technische Universitat Munchen, 85354 Freising, Germany. ; Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University, 79-7 Tokiwadai, Hodogaya, Yokohama, Kanagawa, 240-8501, Japan. ; Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA. ; US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, Grassland, Soil and Water Research Laboratory, Temple, Texas 76502, USA. ; Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55108 USA. ; Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, New South Wales 2753, Australia. ; UFZ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Community Ecology, 06120 Halle, Germany. ; Graduate Degree Program in Ecology and Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA. ; Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106 USA. ; Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences, Smyth Hall 0404, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA. ; Laboratory of Nematology, Wageningen University and Research Centre, PO Box 8123, 6700 ES Wageningen, The Netherlands. ; Nature Conservation and Plant Ecology Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands. ; Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26466564" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Improving poverty and inequality modelling in climate research Improving poverty and inequality modelling in climate research, Published online: 30 November 2017; doi:10.1038/s41558-017-0004-x Climate impact models have a limited ability to represent risks to the poor and vulnerable. Wider adoption of best practices and new model features that incorporate social heterogeneity and different policy mechanisms are needed to address this shortcoming.

Description: Aims The positive relationship between plant biodiversity and community productivity is well established. However, our knowledge about the mechanisms underlying these positive biodiversity effects is still limited. One of the main hypotheses is that complementarity in resource uptake is responsible for the positive biodiversity effects: plant species differ in resource uptake strategy, which results in a more complete exploitation of the available resources in space and time when plant species are growing together. Recent studies suggest that functional diversity of the community, i.e. the diversity in functional characteristics (‘traits’) among species, rather than species richness per se , is important for positive biodiversity effects. However, experimental evidence for specific trait combinations underlying resource complementarity is scarce. As the root system is responsible for the uptake of nutrients and water, we hypothesize that diversity in root traits may underlie complementary resource use and contribute to the biodiversity effects. Methods In a common garden experiment, 16 grassland species were grown in monoculture, 4-species mixtures differing in root trait diversity and 16-species mixtures. The 4-species mixtures were designed to cover a gradient in average rooting depth. Above-ground biomass was cut after one growing season and used as a proxy for plant productivity to calculate biodiversity effects. Important Findings Overall, plant mixtures showed a significant increase in biomass and complementarity effects, but this varied greatly between communities. However, diversity in root traits (measured in a separate greenhouse experiment and based on literature) could not explain this variation in complementarity effects. Instead, complementarity effects were strongly affected by the presence and competitive interactions of two particular species. The large variation in complementarity effects and significant effect of two species emphasizes the importance of community composition for positive biodiversity effects. Future research should focus on identifying the traits associated with the key role of particular species for complementarity effects. This may increase our understanding of the links between functional trait composition and biodiversity effects as well as the relative importance of resource complementarity and other underlying mechanisms for the positive biodiversity effects.