In an age of accelerating biodiversity loss, this timely and critical volume summarizes recent advances in biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research and explores the economics of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The book starts by summarizing the development of the basic science and provides a meta-analysis that quantitatively tests several biodiversity and ecosystem functioning hypotheses. It then describes the natural science foundations of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning research including: quantifying functional diversity, the development of the field into a predictive science, the effects of stability and complexity, methods to quantify mechanisms by which diversity affects functioning, the importance of trophic structure, microbial ecology, and spatial dynamics. Finally, the book takes research on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning further than it has ever gone into the human dimension, describing the most pressing environmental challenges that face humanity and the effects of diversity on: climate change mitigation, restoration of degraded habitats, managed ecosystems, pollination, disease, and biological invasions.However, what makes this volume truly unique are the chapters that consider the economic perspective. These include a synthesis of the economics of ecosystem services and biodiversity, and the options open to policy-makers to address the failure of markets to account for the loss of ecosystem services; an examination of the challenges of valuing ecosystem services and, hence, to understanding the human consequences of decisions that neglect these services; and an examination of the ways in which economists are currently incorporating biodiversity and ecosystem functioning research into decision models for the conservation and management of biodiversity. A final section describes new advances in ecoinformatics that will help transform this field into a globally predictive science, and summarizes the advancements and future directions of the field. The ultimate conclusion is that biodiversity is an essential element of any strategy for sustainable development.

Biodiversity, Ecosystem Functioning, and Human Wellbeing: An Ecological and Economic Perspective

We review and present a synthesis of the existing research dealing with changing Arctic tundra ecosystems, in relation to caribou and reindeer winter ranges. Whereas pan-Arctic studies have documented the effects on tundra vegetation from simulated climate change, we draw upon recent long-term regional studies in Alaska that have documented the actual, on-the-ground effects. Our review reveals signs of marked change in Arctic tundra ecosystems. Factors known to be affecting these changes include wildfire, disturbance by caribou and reindeer, differential growth responses of vascular plants and lichens, and associated competition under climate warming scenarios. These factors are interrelated, and, we posit, unidirectional: that is, they are all implicated in the significant reduction of terricolous lichen ground cover and biomass during recent decades. Lichens constitute the primary winter forage for large, migratory caribou and reindeer herds, which in turn are a critical subsistence resource for rural residents in Alaska. Thus, declines in these lichens are a major concern for rural people who harvest caribou and reindeer for subsistence, as well as for sport hunters, reindeer herders, wildlife enthusiasts and land managers. We believe a more widely distributed and better integrated research programme is warranted to quantify the magnitude and extent of the decline in lichen communities across the Arctic.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1751-8369.2009.00113.x

Decrease of lichens in Arctic ecosystems: the role of wildfire, caribou, reindeer, competition and climate in north-western Alaska

Background: Reindeer and caribou (both belonging to the species Rangifer tarandus L.) are among the most important large herbivores in Eurasia’s and North America’s arctic, alpine and boreal zones. In Sweden, the impact of reindeer grazing on arctic and alpine vegetation has recently been re-evaluated. In the 1990s, records of grazing-related vegetation degradation helped to form a widespread perception that some mountain areas were overgrazed. However, later analyses have shown no evidence of large-scale overutilisation of reindeer ranges in the Swedish mountains. The present-day consensus is that overgrazing has been temporary and local, and that it rarely has caused permanent damage, but it is imperative to examine the scientific support for these views. Moreover, the Swedish Parliament has adopted an environmental quality objective according to which it is essential to preserve ‘a mountain landscape characterised by grazing’. No details have been given on how this goal is to be interpreted, which is another reason why the significance of reindeer grazing for arctic/alpine vegetation needs to be assessed. This protocol presents the methodology that will be used in a systematic review of the impact of reindeer herbivory in arctic and alpine ecosystems. The focus will be on Fennoscandia, but data from other parts of the range of R. tarandus will be used when deemed appropriate. Methods: The review will be based on primary field studies that compare vegetation subject to different degrees of reindeer/caribou herbivory (including grazing and browsing as well as trampling). Such comparisons can be either temporal, spatial or both. The review will cover impacts of herbivory in arctic, subarctic, alpine and subalpine areas (including the forest-tundra ecotone) across the range of R. tarandus, but not in boreal forests. Relevant aspects of vegetation include cover (abundance), biomass, diversity (e.g. species richness), structure, composition (including functional groups) and productivity.

/pdf/what-are-the-impacts-of-reindeer-caribou-rangifer-tarandus-l-2s1awik5sj.pdf

What are the impacts of reindeer/caribou (Rangifer tarandus L.) on arctic and alpine vegetation?: A systematic review

Functional diversity is a component of biodiversity that concerns what organisms do, rather than, for example, their taxonomic identity (Tilman 2001, Naeem and Wright 2003, Hooper et al. 2005, Petchey and Gaston 2006). What kinds of resources do organisms exploit, where do they exploit them, and when do they exploit them? Each of these characteristics, and many others, can be a component of functional diversity. Since ecosystem processes ultimately result from the actions of organisms, knowing about these actions and summarizing them in a measure of diversity should inform about ecosystem processes (Tilman 2001, Hooper et al. 2005). Therefore, functional diversity has the potential to link morphological, physiological, and phenological variation at the individual level to ecosystem processes and patterns. One critical reason that functional diversity might link organisms and ecosystems is that it implicitly contains information about how species will compensate for the loss of another. For illustration, consider some species that are functionally rather similar, and some that are rather dissimilar. The similar species each access the same pool of resources. If one of these species is lost, no reduction in the use of that resource pool results, as the other species are present and will accordingly simply increase their use of that same resource. There will also be only a small loss of functional diversity, since the lost species was not very unique in its functional characteristics. If, however, the lost species was quite dissimilar to others in its functional traits, both functional diversity and use of the resource pool will decline in concert. Other changes associated with loss of access to that resource pool might include a reduction in ecosystem processes, such as net primary production. Another illustration of the interactions that are implicitly represented in measures of functional diversity is that the effect on functional diversity of losing a particular species (or adding a particular species) is context-dependent. The context here is the other species present in the community. In one context, loss of a particular species can have little effect on functional diversity. This would be if the community contains, and continues to contain, functionally similar species to the lost species. If there are no similar species, however, the loss of the same species could have a large effect. Thus functional diversity is a measure of diversity that implicitly incorporates some mechanisms of ecological interactions between species. In doing so, it provides a general (and yes, assumptionladen) approach for scaling from characteristics of individuals to properties of communities and ecosystems. This makes functional diversity a potentially powerful concept in ecology. At present, much attention is focused on how to measure it, and that is the broad subject of this chapter.

A functional guide to functional diversity measures

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005b) has fundamentally changed the way in which scientists are thinking about the value of ecosystems. By harnessing recent results on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning to an assessment of the valued services that people obtain from the natural environment, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment has brought the analysis of ecosystems into the domain of economics. Ecosystem services are defined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment as the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. Since the value of any asset is simply the discounted stream of benefits that are obtained from that asset, the benefit streams associated with ecosystem services may be used to estimate the value of the underlying ecological assets. Those assets are not the traditional stocks of resource economics – minerals, water, timber, and so on – but the systems that yield flows of such things. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005b) distinguishes four broad benefit streams: provisioning services, cultural services, supporting services, and regulating services. The first of these is the most familiar. Provisioning services cover the renewable resources that have been the focus of much work in environmental and resource economics, including foods, fibres, fuels, water, biochemicals, medicines, pharmaceuticals, and genetic material. Many of these products are directly consumed, and are subject to reasonably well-defined property rights. They are priced in the market, and even though there may be important externalities in their production or consumption, those prices bear some relation to the scarcity of resources. The second category, cultural services, is similarly quite familiar. These services include a range of largely non-consumptive uses of the environment, and reflect the fact that the diversity of ecosystems is mirrored in the diversity of human cultures. Cultural services include the spiritual, religious, aesthetic, and inspirational wellbeing that people derive from the ‘natural’ world around them. They include the sense of place that people have, as well as the totemic importance of particular landscapes and species. More importantly, they include (traditional and scientific) information, awareness, and understanding of ecosystems and their individual components offered by functioning ecosystems. Some cultural services, such as ecotourism, are offered through well-developed markets. Others are not. Many cultural services are still regulated by custom and usage, or by traditional taboos, rights, and obligations. Nevertheless, they are directly used by people, and so are amenable to valuation by methods designed to reveal people’s preferences. The category of support services captures the main ecosystem processes that underpin all other services. Examples offered by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment include soil formation, photosynthesis, primary production, and nutrient, carbon, and water cycling. These services play out at quite different spatial and temporal scales. For example, nutrient cycling involves the maintenance of the roughly twenty nutrients essential for life, in different concentrations in different parts of the system. It is often localized, and is therefore at least

The valuation of ecosystem services

Mammalian herbivores in arctic tundra often alter plant species composition and lichen abundance, with effects dependent on grazing season and herbivore preference. We investigated how long-term mammal exclosures designed to exclude large mammals (caribou) alone, large and medium-sized mammals (e.g., ground squirrels), or all mammals (including voles and lemmings) affected lichen abundance and species composition as well as the vascular plant community. The exclosures were partly established in combination with long-term soil nutrient additions to investigate the interaction between mammal activity and nutrient availability. Our study was conducted in dry heath tundra in northern Alaska, dominated by dwarf evergreen shrubs and lichens. Excluding mammals for 17 years allowed the lichen community to increase in biomass, particularly within the genus Cladonia, which also had more intrageneric diversity in the exclosures; after 10 years, results were subtler. Fertilization, however, almost eliminated the lichens, regardless of herbivore treatment. This coincided with a dramatic shift in vascular vegetation toward a more palatable grass-dominated community, similar to studies of other arctic heaths. Our results suggest that with greater soil nutrient availability that occurs with climate warming, lichens will decrease in abundance, and this effect may be exacerbated by increased mammalian herbivory.

https://bioone.org/journals/Arctic-Antarctic-and-Alpine-Research/volume-40/issue-1/1523-0430(06-087)[GOUGH]2.0.CO;2/Long-Term-Mammalian-Herbivory-and-Nutrient-Addition-Alter-Lichen-Community/10.1657/1523-0430(06-087)[GOUGH]2.0.CO;2.pdf

Long-Term Mammalian Herbivory and Nutrient Addition Alter Lichen Community Structure in Alaskan Dry Heath Tundra

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Brian Moon

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Long-Term Mammalian Herbivory and Nutrient Addition Alter Lichen Community Structure in Alaskan Dry Heath Tundra