Higher levels of multiple ecosystem services are found in forests with more tree species

By Lars Gamfeldt, Tord Snäll, Robert Bagchi, Micael Jonsson, Lena Gustafsson, P. Kjellander, Maria C Ruiz-Jaen, M. Fröberg, Johan Stendahl, C. Philipson and 7 more. Nature Communications, 2013

864 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Forests are of major importance to human society, contributing several crucial ecosystem services. Biodiversity is suggested to positively influence multiple services but evidence from natural systems at scales relevant to management is scarce. Here, across a scale of 400,000 km2, we report that tree species richness in production forests shows positive to positively hump-shaped relationships with multiple ecosystem services. These include production of tree biomass, soil carbon storage, berry production and game production potential. For example, biomass production was approximately 50% greater with five than with one tree species. In addition, we show positive relationships between tree species richness and proxies for other biodiversity components. Importantly, no single tree species was able to promote all services, and some services were negatively correlated to each other. Management of production forests will therefore benefit from considering multiple tree species to sustain the full range of benefits that the society obtains from forests. Tree diversity is thought to benefit forest ecosystems, but evidence from large-scale studies is scarce. This study of a 400,000 km2forest area shows that higher tree species richness supports higher levels of multiple ecosystem services, and therefore also a more sustainable management of production forests.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a26c930d9019c55f1a5fe5a94b434d72384d2a71

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Global and Planetary Change

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

Structural diversity as a predictor of ecosystem function (2019, neutral): “Indeed, plant species richness and phylogenetic diversity have been linked to ecosystem functions of productivity (Tillman et al 1997, Grace et al 2016), resistance to invasion (Iannone et al 2016), and nutrient cycling (Gamfeldt et al 2013, Ratcliffe et al 2017).”
Tree diversity is key for promoting the diversity and abundance of forest‐associated taxa in Europe (2020, positive): “For example, previous research indicated that increasing tree diversity increases tree productivity (Paquette and Messier 2011), soil carbon storage (Ruiz-Benito et al. 2014), berry and game production (e.g. Gamfeldt et al. 2013).”
Positive species diversity and above‐ground biomass relationships are ubiquitous across forest strata despite interference from overstorey trees (2017, neutral): “tion (e.g. Vil a et al. 2007, 2013; Gamfeldt et al. 2013; Hulvey et al. 2013), for such reasons as economic consid-”
Above‐ and below‐ground biodiversity jointly regulate temperate forest multifunctionality along a local‐scale environmental gradient (2020, positive): “Phylogenetic diversity, which was strongly correlated with species richness (r = 0.84), is an effective biotic attribute of plant diversity for predicting averaged FM, which confirmed the conclusion that plant diversity could increase FM (Felipe-Lucia et al., 2018; Gamfeldt et al., 2013).”
Land use intensification alters ecosystem multifunctionality via loss of biodiversity and changes to functional composition (2015, neutral): “Observational studies have found weakly positive (Maestre et al. 2012; Gamfeldt et al. 2013), neutral (Grace et al.”
Species interactions increase the temporal stability of community productivity in Pinus sylvestris–Fagus sylvatica mixtures across Europe (2017, positive): “Mixed-species stands are widely thought to provide many forest functions and services more effectively than monocultures (Hector & Baghi 2007; Gamfeldt et al. 2013; van der Plas et al. 2016).”
Characterization of the structure, dynamics, and productivity of mixed-species stands: review and perspectives (2015, neutral): “…tree species richness/diversity and productivity in Eur J Forest Res (2016) 135:23–49 29 forests using data from regional forest inventories (e.g. Caspersen and Pacala 2001; Vilà et al. 2007; Belote et al. 2011; Paquette and Messier 2011; Gamfeldt et al. 2013; Seidel et al. 2013; Vilà et al. 2013).”
The relationship between tree species richness, canopy space exploration and productivity in a temperate broad-leaf mixed forest (2013, positive): “Boreal, temperate, and tropical forests have displayed positive species richness – productivity relationships (e.g. Vilà et al., 2007, 2013; Paquette and Messier, 2011; Gamfeldt et al., 2013), no dependence or even negative relationships (Jacob et al.”
Effect of species proportion definition on the evaluation of growth in pure vs. mixed stands. (2014, neutral): “Mixed forests might deal better than mono-specif ic forests with multifunctionality (Gamfeldt et al., 2013), while providing a higher resilience against biotic and abiotic damages (Griess and Knoke, 2011; Pretzsch et al., 2013).”