Journal articles: 'Multidisciplinary and ecosystems'

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Chai, Xeai Li, H. Rohasliney, and I. S. Kamaruddin. "Evaluating the Tropical Reservoir Health by using the Index of Biotic Integrity as a Management Tool for Resource Conservation Planning." Sains Malaysiana 51, no. 12 (December 31, 2022): 3897–907. http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/jsm-2022-5112-03.

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Biotic Integrity index (IBI) is widely utilized for biomonitoring in aquatic ecosystems, especially in assessing aquatic ecosystem health worldwide. Environmental changes significantly impact the aquatic ecosystem’s health of Subang Reservoir, which consequently affects the aquatic biodiversity. This study was conducted to determine its ecosystem’s health by assessing the IBI of freshwater fish in Subang Reservoir. In this study, thirty-four metrics were firstly selected as candidate metrics, and later, these thirty-four metrics underwent several statistical tests such as range, responsiveness, redundancy, and metrics scoring to screen and select the most appropriate metrics. A final eight metrics were selected after the statistical analysis, and a total score of 24 indicated that the Subang Reservoir’s ecosystem shows some stress due to an imbalanced fish guild. This showed that the ecosystem’s health of Subang Reservoir is in fair condition. This is because of the limitation of fish entering Subang Reservoir. The implementation of biomonitoring can be improved by modifying and selecting the most appropriate techniques, and the usage of biomonitoring can be increased in Malaysia’s freshwater ecosystems. The result reported in this study can be used as a scientific base data for implementing biomonitoring.

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Yang, Chunyu, Na Gong, Huanzhou Hong, and Biying You. "The “Spatial Equilibrium” Evolution of the Tourism Ecosystem and Theoretical Construction from a Multidisciplinary Perspective." Journal of Environmental and Public Health 2022 (August 23, 2022): 1–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2022/9004097.

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The evolution of the tourism ecosystem is characterized by its complexity, imbalance, and spatial heterogeneity. As a result, it has been the focus of academic attention across a wide range of disciplines, including geography, ecology, economics, management, sociology, and philosophy. Firstly, this article explores the connotations and characteristics of the spatial evolution of tourism ecosystems, subsequently proposing that the spatial evolution of tourism ecosystems is essentially different and “mutually inclusive.” To do so, it searches through the relevant research results on “spatial equilibrium” in ecosystems from the perspectives of different disciplines and analyzes their different core concepts, theoretical systems, and research methods. Second, the coupling force acts as a key character and exerts an influence on “spatial equilibrium” in ecosystems as a dynamic mechanism, internal stability mechanism, and dynamic mechanism. Third, nonlinear, dynamic, evolutionary, systematic thinking, and axiomatic theories are combined to construct an internal stable evolution mechanism and abstract tourism ecosystem model to form an explanatory theoretical system. The results of the research show that the construction of the “spatial equilibrium” of the tourism ecosystem model should pertain to the initial state of the comprehensive environmental carrying capacity of the tourism ecosystem as it evolves to form a tourism ecosystem based on the coupling relationship between the internal and external elements of the “spatial equilibrium” state. Finally, the future research approaches in this field are summarized and assessed. The methodology and theoretical exploration discussed in this article will contribute to a better understanding of how to sustainably develop tourism destinations.

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Schindler, D. E. "Fish extinctions and ecosystem functioning in tropical ecosystems." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, no. 14 (March 28, 2007): 5707–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0700426104.

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Nolan, Connor, Jonathan T. Overpeck, Judy R. M. Allen, Patricia M. Anderson, Julio L. Betancourt, Heather A. Binney, Simon Brewer, et al. "Past and future global transformation of terrestrial ecosystems under climate change." Science 361, no. 6405 (August 30, 2018): 920–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aan5360.

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Impacts of global climate change on terrestrial ecosystems are imperfectly constrained by ecosystem models and direct observations. Pervasive ecosystem transformations occurred in response to warming and associated climatic changes during the last glacial-to-interglacial transition, which was comparable in magnitude to warming projected for the next century under high-emission scenarios. We reviewed 594 published paleoecological records to examine compositional and structural changes in terrestrial vegetation since the last glacial period and to project the magnitudes of ecosystem transformations under alternative future emission scenarios. Our results indicate that terrestrial ecosystems are highly sensitive to temperature change and suggest that, without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems worldwide are at risk of major transformation, with accompanying disruption of ecosystem services and impacts on biodiversity.

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Schramski, John R., Anthony I. Dell, John M. Grady, Richard M. Sibly, and James H. Brown. "Metabolic theory predicts whole-ecosystem properties." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 8 (January 26, 2015): 2617–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1423502112.

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Understanding the effects of individual organisms on material cycles and energy fluxes within ecosystems is central to predicting the impacts of human-caused changes on climate, land use, and biodiversity. Here we present a theory that integrates metabolic (organism-based bottom-up) and systems (ecosystem-based top-down) approaches to characterize how the metabolism of individuals affects the flows and stores of materials and energy in ecosystems. The theory predicts how the average residence time of carbon molecules, total system throughflow (TST), and amount of recycling vary with the body size and temperature of the organisms and with trophic organization. We evaluate the theory by comparing theoretical predictions with outputs of numerical models designed to simulate diverse ecosystem types and with empirical data for real ecosystems. Although residence times within different ecosystems vary by orders of magnitude—from weeks in warm pelagic oceans with minute phytoplankton producers to centuries in cold forests with large tree producers—as predicted, all ecosystems fall along a single line: residence time increases linearly with slope = 1.0 with the ratio of whole-ecosystem biomass to primary productivity (B/P). TST was affected predominantly by primary productivity and recycling by the transfer of energy from microbial decomposers to animal consumers. The theory provides a robust basis for estimating the flux and storage of energy, carbon, and other materials in terrestrial, marine, and freshwater ecosystems and for quantifying the roles of different kinds of organisms and environments at scales from local ecosystems to the biosphere.

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Veldhuis, Michiel P., Mark E. Ritchie, Joseph O. Ogutu, Thomas A. Morrison, Colin M. Beale, Anna B. Estes, William Mwakilema, et al. "Cross-boundary human impacts compromise the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem." Science 363, no. 6434 (March 28, 2019): 1424–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aav0564.

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Protected areas provide major benefits for humans in the form of ecosystem services, but landscape degradation by human activity at their edges may compromise their ecological functioning. Using multiple lines of evidence from 40 years of research in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, we find that such edge degradation has effectively “squeezed” wildlife into the core protected area and has altered the ecosystem’s dynamics even within this 40,000-square-kilometer ecosystem. This spatial cascade reduced resilience in the core and was mediated by the movement of grazers, which reduced grass fuel and fires, weakened the capacity of soils to sequester nutrients and carbon, and decreased the responsiveness of primary production to rainfall. Similar effects in other protected ecosystems worldwide may require rethinking of natural resource management outside protected areas.

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Werner, Christiane, Laura K. Meredith, S. Nemiah Ladd, Johannes Ingrisch, Angelika Kübert, Joost van Haren, Michael Bahn, et al. "Ecosystem fluxes during drought and recovery in an experimental forest." Science 374, no. 6574 (December 17, 2021): 1514–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.abj6789.

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An experimental forest ecosystem drought Drought is affecting many of the world’ s forested ecosystems, but it has proved challenging to develop an ecosystem-level mechanistic understanding of the ways that drought affects carbon and water fluxes through forest ecosystems. Werner et al . used an experimental approach by imposing an artificial drought on an entire enclosed ecosystem: the Biosphere 2 Tropical Rainforest in Arizona (see the Perspective by Eisenhauer and Weigelt). The authors show that ecosystem-scale plant responses to drought depend on distinct plant functional groups, differing in their water-use strategies and their position in the forest canopy. The balance of these plant functional groups drives changes in carbon and water fluxes, as well as the release of volatile organic compounds into the atmosphere. —AMS

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Boulton, Chris A., and Timothy M. Lenton. "Slowing down of North Pacific climate variability and its implications for abrupt ecosystem change." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 37 (August 31, 2015): 11496–501. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1501781112.

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Marine ecosystems are sensitive to stochastic environmental variability, with higher-amplitude, lower-frequency––i.e., “redder”––variability posing a greater threat of triggering large ecosystem changes. Here we show that fluctuations in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index have slowed down markedly over the observational record (1900–present), as indicated by a robust increase in autocorrelation. This “reddening” of the spectrum of climate variability is also found in regionally averaged North Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and can be at least partly explained by observed deepening of the ocean mixed layer. The progressive reddening of North Pacific climate variability has important implications for marine ecosystems. Ecosystem variables that respond linearly to climate forcing will have become prone to much larger variations over the observational record, whereas ecosystem variables that respond nonlinearly to climate forcing will have become prone to more frequent “regime shifts.” Thus, slowing down of North Pacific climate variability can help explain the large magnitude and potentially the quick succession of well-known abrupt changes in North Pacific ecosystems in 1977 and 1989. When looking ahead, despite model limitations in simulating mixed layer depth (MLD) in the North Pacific, global warming is robustly expected to decrease MLD. This could potentially reverse the observed trend of slowing down of North Pacific climate variability and its effects on marine ecosystems.

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Gaucherel, C., F. Pommereau, and C. Hély. "Understanding Ecosystem Complexity via Application of a Process-Based State Space rather than a Potential Surface." Complexity 2020 (October 5, 2020): 1–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2020/7163920.

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Ecosystems are complex objects, simultaneously combining biotic, abiotic, and human components and processes. Ecologists still struggle to understand ecosystems, and one main method for achieving an understanding consists in computing potential surfaces based on physical dynamical systems. We argue in this conceptual paper that the foundations of this analogy between physical and ecological systems are inappropriate and aim to propose a new method that better reflects the properties of ecosystems, especially complex, historical nonergodic systems, to which physical concepts are not well suited. As an alternative proposition, we have developed rigorous possibilistic, process-based models inspired by the discrete-event systems found in computer science and produced a panel of outputs and tools to analyze the system dynamics under examination. The state space computed by these kinds of discrete ecosystem models provides a relevant concept for a holistic understanding of the dynamics of an ecosystem and its abovementioned properties. Taking as a specific example an ecosystem simplified to its process interaction network, we show here how to proceed and why a state space is more appropriate than a corresponding potential surface.

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Gil, Michael A., Marissa L. Baskett, Stephan B. Munch, and Andrew M. Hein. "Fast behavioral feedbacks make ecosystems sensitive to pace and not just magnitude of anthropogenic environmental change." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 41 (September 28, 2020): 25580–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2003301117.

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Anthropogenic environmental change is altering the behavior of animals in ecosystems around the world. Although behavior typically occurs on much faster timescales than demography, it can nevertheless influence demographic processes. Here, we use detailed data on behavior and empirical estimates of demography from a coral reef ecosystem to develop a coupled behavioral–demographic ecosystem model. Analysis of the model reveals that behavior and demography feed back on one another to determine how the ecosystem responds to anthropogenic forcing. In particular, an empirically observed feedback between the density and foraging behavior of herbivorous fish leads to alternative stable ecosystem states of coral population persistence or collapse (and complete algal dominance). This feedback makes the ecosystem more prone to coral collapse under fishing pressure but also more prone to recovery as fishing is reduced. Moreover, because of the behavioral feedback, the response of the ecosystem to changes in fishing pressure depends not only on the magnitude of changes in fishing but also on the pace at which changes are imposed. For example, quickly increasing fishing to a given level can collapse an ecosystem that would persist under more gradual change. Our results reveal conditions under which the pace and not just the magnitude of external forcing can dictate the response of ecosystems to environmental change. More generally, our multiscale behavioral–demographic framework demonstrates how high-resolution behavioral data can be incorporated into ecological models to better understand how ecosystems will respond to perturbations.

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Lindenmayer, David B., and Chloe Sato. "Hidden collapse is driven by fire and logging in a socioecological forest ecosystem." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 20 (April 30, 2018): 5181–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1721738115.

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Increasing numbers of ecosystems globally are at risk of collapse. However, most descriptions of terrestrial ecosystem collapse are post hoc with few empirically based examples of ecosystems in the process of collapse. This limits learning about collapse and impedes development of effective early-warning indicators. Based on multidecadal and multifaceted monitoring, we present evidence that the Australian mainland Mountain Ash ecosystem is collapsing. Collapse is indicated by marked changes in ecosystem condition, particularly the rapid decline in populations of keystone ecosystem structures. There also has been significant decline in biodiversity strongly associated with these structures and disruptions of key ecosystem processes. In documenting the decline of the Mountain Ash ecosystem, we uncovered evidence of hidden collapse. This is where an ecosystem superficially appears to be relatively intact, but a prolonged period of decline coupled with long lag times for recovery of dominant ecosystem components mean that collapse is almost inevitable. In ecosystems susceptible to hidden collapse, management interventions will be required decades earlier than currently perceived by policy makers. Responding to hidden collapse is further complicated by our finding that different drivers produce different pathways to collapse, but these drivers can interact in ways that exacerbate and perpetuate collapse. Management must focus not only on reducing the number of critical stressors influencing an ecosystem but also on breaking feedbacks between stressors. We demonstrate the importance of multidecadal monitoring programs in measuring state variables that can inform quantitative predictions of collapse as well as help identify management responses that can avert system-wide collapse.

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Pimm, Stuart L. "Designer ecosystems." Nature 379, no. 6562 (January 1996): 217–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/379217a0.

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Stutz, W. E. "Repairing ecosystems." Science 345, no. 6195 (July 24, 2014): 388. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1256060.

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Zahn, Laura M. "Synthetic ecosystems." Science 357, no. 6356 (September 14, 2017): 1109.7–1110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.357.6356.1109-g.

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Richter;, W. "Restoring Ecosystems." Science 278, no. 5340 (November 7, 1997): 997b—1001. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.278.5340.997b.

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Humphries, C. "Indoor Ecosystems." Science 335, no. 6069 (February 9, 2012): 648–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.335.6069.648.

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Brashares, Justin S., and Kaitlyn M. Gaynor. "Eating ecosystems." Science 356, no. 6334 (April 13, 2017): 136–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aan0499.

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Berg, Jeremy. "Preprint ecosystems." Science 357, no. 6358 (September 28, 2017): 1331. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0167.

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Zelnik, Yuval R., Ehud Meron, and Golan Bel. "Gradual regime shifts in fairy circles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 40 (September 11, 2015): 12327–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1504289112.

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Large responses of ecosystems to small changes in the conditions—regime shifts—are of great interest and importance. In spatially extended ecosystems, these shifts may be local or global. Using empirical data and mathematical modeling, we investigated the dynamics of the Namibian fairy circle ecosystem as a case study of regime shifts in a pattern-forming ecosystem. Our results provide new support, based on the dynamics of the ecosystem, for the view of fairy circles as a self-organization phenomenon driven by water–vegetation interactions. The study further suggests that fairy circle birth and death processes correspond to spatially confined transitions between alternative stable states. Cascades of such transitions, possible in various pattern-forming systems, result in gradual rather than abrupt regime shifts.

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Vahsen, M. L., M. J. Blum, J. P. Megonigal, S. J. Emrich, J. R. Holmquist, B. Stiller, K. E. O. Todd-Brown, and J. S. McLachlan. "Rapid plant trait evolution can alter coastal wetland resilience to sea level rise." Science 379, no. 6630 (January 27, 2023): 393–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.abq0595.

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Rapid evolution remains a largely unrecognized factor in models that forecast the fate of ecosystems under scenarios of global change. In this work, we quantified the roles of heritable variation in plant traits and of trait evolution in explaining variability in forecasts of the state of coastal wetland ecosystems. A common garden study of genotypes of the dominant sedge Schoenoplectus americanus , “resurrected” from time-stratified seed banks, revealed that heritable variation and evolution explained key ecosystem attributes such as the allocation and distribution of belowground biomass. Incorporating heritable trait variation and evolution into an ecosystem model altered predictions of carbon accumulation and soil surface accretion (a determinant of marsh resilience to sea level rise), demonstrating the importance of accounting for evolutionary processes when forecasting ecosystem dynamics.

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Palmer, Margaret, and Albert Ruhi. "Linkages between flow regime, biota, and ecosystem processes: Implications for river restoration." Science 365, no. 6459 (September 19, 2019): eaaw2087. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw2087.

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River ecosystems are highly biodiverse, influence global biogeochemical cycles, and provide valued services. However, humans are increasingly degrading fluvial ecosystems by altering their streamflows. Effective river restoration requires advancing our mechanistic understanding of how flow regimes affect biota and ecosystem processes. Here, we review emerging advances in hydroecology relevant to this goal. Spatiotemporal variation in flow exerts direct and indirect control on the composition, structure, and dynamics of communities at local to regional scales. Streamflows also influence ecosystem processes, such as nutrient uptake and transformation, organic matter processing, and ecosystem metabolism. We are deepening our understanding of how biological processes, not just static patterns, affect and are affected by stream ecosystem processes. However, research on this nexus of flow-biota-ecosystem processes is at an early stage. We illustrate this frontier with evidence from highly altered regulated rivers and urban streams. We also identify research challenges that should be prioritized to advance process-based river restoration.

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Zhang, Yunlu, Tingting Su, Yue Ma, Yanyinuo Wang, Weiqi Wang, Niyi Zha, and Ming Shao. "Forest ecosystem service functions and their associations with landscape patterns in Renqiu City." PLOS ONE 17, no. 4 (April 6, 2022): e0265015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265015.

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Forest ecosystems are crucial to the survival and development of human societies. Urbanization is expected to impact forest landscape patterns and consequently the supply of forest ecosystem services. However, the specific ways by which such impacts manifest are unclear. Therefore, to discuss the relationship between them is of great significance for realizing regional sustainable development. Here, we quantitatively assess the intensity of forest ecosystem service functions and forest landscape patterns in Renqiu City of China’s Hebei Province in 2019 using ArcGIS and FRAGSTATS. We characterize the relationships between forest ecosystem service capacity and landscape patterns, and identify strategies for the spatial optimization of forests. We find that the ecosystem service intensity of forests are significantly correlated with their spatial distribution, forest area ratio, and landscape patterns. Specifically, the percentage of landscape (PLAND) index, landscape shape index (LSI), and contagion (CONTAG) index indices display second-order polynomial relationships with various forest ecosystem service functions, with critical values of 80, 5, and 70, respectively. We propose that forest ecosystem functions can be optimized by optimizing forest landscape patterns. Specifically, to maximize the function of forest ecosystem services, managers should consider the integrity of forest ecosystems, optimize their ability to self-succession, repair service functions of key nodes within forests, enhance forests’ structural stability, optimize forest quality and community structure, and strengthen the efficiency of functional transformation per unit area. Finally, we propose a strategy for the spatial optimization of forests in Renqiu to optimize their associated ecosystem services. This involves protecting important areas for forest ecosystems, rationally organizing different ecological patches such as forests and water bodies to maximize their functions, strengthening the connectivity of scattered forests, and supplementing woodland areas.

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Zariņš, Mārcis, Andra Blumberga, Māris Klaviņš, and Viesturs Melecis. "Dynamic Modeling for Environmental Processes: A Case Study of Lake Engure." Proceedings of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. Section B. Natural, Exact, and Applied Sciences. 68, no. 1-2 (April 1, 2014): 20–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/prolas-2014-0002.

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Abstract This focus of the study was on system dynamic models that could be useful for modelling environmental processes in Lake Engure. The paper considers the system dynamic model development principles, the most important elements and structure. The aim of the study was to describe possible methods of ecosystem process modelling that allow to represent the actual state of ecosystems and provide opportunities to predict further processes. The methods of ecosystem modelling considered in the paper reveal interactive factors of anthropogenic and environmental processes that influence changes in ecosystems. System dynamic models indicate not only interactions between various factors in the environment but also the most important driving forces. These models are based on flowchart and algorithm systems, which represent changes using mathematical functions in a graphic or tabular form. In the case study of Lake Engure, connections between factors that influence ecosystems in the study area were identified. Specialised software, PowerSim Studio Academic 9.0, was used for modelling. The model consists of qualitative and multifactor data of Lake Engure ecosystems, such as water chemical, physical and hydrological parameters, biological, ornithological and other data collected in the study area. Development of this modelling method will make it possible to evaluate the impact of various processes on biological diversity changes in the study area and to identify the most important problems. Furthermore, this method could improve environmental management practice in the surrounding municipalities, and it will also be possible to make similar models of ecosystem quality in other regions.

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Bastiaansen, Robbin, Olfa Jaïbi, Vincent Deblauwe, Maarten B. Eppinga, Koen Siteur, Eric Siero, Stéphane Mermoz, Alexandre Bouvet, Arjen Doelman, and Max Rietkerk. "Multistability of model and real dryland ecosystems through spatial self-organization." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 44 (October 15, 2018): 11256–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1804771115.

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Spatial self-organization of dryland vegetation constitutes one of the most promising indicators for an ecosystem’s proximity to desertification. This insight is based on studies of reaction–diffusion models that reproduce visual characteristics of vegetation patterns observed on aerial photographs. However, until now, the development of reliable early warning systems has been hampered by the lack of more in-depth comparisons between model predictions and real ecosystem patterns. In this paper, we combined topographical data, (remotely sensed) optical data, and in situ biomass measurements from two sites in Somalia to generate a multilevel description of dryland vegetation patterns. We performed an in-depth comparison between these observed vegetation pattern characteristics and predictions made by the extended-Klausmeier model for dryland vegetation patterning. Consistent with model predictions, we found that for a given topography, there is multistability of ecosystem states with different pattern wavenumbers. Furthermore, observations corroborated model predictions regarding the relationships between pattern wavenumber, total biomass, and maximum biomass. In contrast, model predictions regarding the role of slope angles were not corroborated by the empirical data, suggesting that inclusion of small-scale topographical heterogeneity is a promising avenue for future model development. Our findings suggest that patterned dryland ecosystems may be more resilient to environmental change than previously anticipated, but this enhanced resilience crucially depends on the adaptive capacity of vegetation patterns.

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Delgado-Baquerizo, Manuel, Richard D. Bardgett, Peter M. Vitousek, Fernando T. Maestre, Mark A. Williams, David J. Eldridge, Hans Lambers, et al. "Changes in belowground biodiversity during ecosystem development." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 14 (March 15, 2019): 6891–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1818400116.

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Belowground organisms play critical roles in maintaining multiple ecosystem processes, including plant productivity, decomposition, and nutrient cycling. Despite their importance, however, we have a limited understanding of how and why belowground biodiversity (bacteria, fungi, protists, and invertebrates) may change as soils develop over centuries to millennia (pedogenesis). Moreover, it is unclear whether belowground biodiversity changes during pedogenesis are similar to the patterns observed for aboveground plant diversity. Here we evaluated the roles of resource availability, nutrient stoichiometry, and soil abiotic factors in driving belowground biodiversity across 16 soil chronosequences (from centuries to millennia) spanning a wide range of globally distributed ecosystem types. Changes in belowground biodiversity during pedogenesis followed two main patterns. In lower-productivity ecosystems (i.e., drier and colder), increases in belowground biodiversity tracked increases in plant cover. In more productive ecosystems (i.e., wetter and warmer), increased acidification during pedogenesis was associated with declines in belowground biodiversity. Changes in the diversity of bacteria, fungi, protists, and invertebrates with pedogenesis were strongly and positively correlated worldwide, highlighting that belowground biodiversity shares similar ecological drivers as soils and ecosystems develop. In general, temporal changes in aboveground plant diversity and belowground biodiversity were not correlated, challenging the common perception that belowground biodiversity should follow similar patterns to those of plant diversity during ecosystem development. Taken together, our findings provide evidence that ecological patterns in belowground biodiversity are predictable across major globally distributed ecosystem types and suggest that shifts in plant cover and soil acidification during ecosystem development are associated with changes in belowground biodiversity over centuries to millennia.

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Nidzieko, Nicholas J. "Allometric scaling of estuarine ecosystem metabolism." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 26 (June 11, 2018): 6733–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1719963115.

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There are still significant uncertainties in the magnitude and direction of carbon fluxes through coastal ecosystems. An important component of these biogeochemical budgets is ecosystem metabolism, the net result of organismal metabolic processes within an ecosystem. In this paper, I present a synthesis of published ecosystem metabolism studies from coastal ecosystems and describe an empirical observation that size-dependent patterns in aquatic gross primary production and community respiration exist across a wide range of coastal geomorphologies. Ecosystem metabolism scales to the 3/4 power with volume in deeper estuaries dominated by pelagic primary production and nearly linearly with area in shallow estuaries dominated by benthic primary production. These results can be explained by applying scaling arguments for efficient, directed transport networks developed to explain similar size-dependent patterns in organismal metabolism. The main conclusion from this synthesis is that the residence time of new, nutrient-rich water is a fundamental organizing principle for the observed patterns. Residence time changes allometrically with size in pelagic ecosystems because velocities change by only an order of magnitude across systems that span more than ten orders of magnitude in size. This nonisometric change in velocity with size requires lower specific metabolic rates at larger ecosystem sizes. This change in transport may also explain a shift from predominantly net heterotrophy to net autotrophy with increasing size. The scaling results are applied to the total estuarine area in the continental United States to estimate the contribution of estuarine systems to the overall coastal budget of organic carbon.

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Nagelkerken, Ivan, Silvan U. Goldenberg, Camilo M. Ferreira, Hadayet Ullah, and Sean D. Connell. "Trophic pyramids reorganize when food web architecture fails to adjust to ocean change." Science 369, no. 6505 (August 13, 2020): 829–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aax0621.

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As human activities intensify, the structures of ecosystems and their food webs often reorganize. Through the study of mesocosms harboring a diverse benthic coastal community, we reveal that food web architecture can be inflexible under ocean warming and acidification and unable to compensate for the decline or proliferation of taxa. Key stabilizing processes, including functional redundancy, trophic compensation, and species substitution, were largely absent under future climate conditions. A trophic pyramid emerged in which biomass expanded at the base and top but contracted in the center. This structure may characterize a transitionary state before collapse into shortened, bottom-heavy food webs that characterize ecosystems subject to persistent abiotic stress. We show that where food web architecture lacks adjustability, the adaptive capacity of ecosystems to global change is weak and ecosystem degradation likely.

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Agol, Dorice, Hannah Reid, Florence Crick, and Hausner Wendo. "Ecosystem-based adaptation in Lake Victoria Basin; synergies and trade-offs." Royal Society Open Science 8, no. 6 (June 2021): 201847. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.201847.

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Healthy ecosystems such as forests and wetlands have a great potential to support adaptation to climate change and are the foundation of sustainable livelihoods. Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) can help to protect and maintain healthy ecosystems providing resilience against the impacts of climate change. This paper explores the role of EbA in reconciling socio-economic development with the conservation and restoration of nature in Lake Victoria Basin, Kenya, East Africa. Using selected ecosystems in the Lake region, the paper identifies key EbA approaches and explores trade-offs and synergies at spatial and temporal scales and between different stakeholders. The research methods used for this study include site visits, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, participatory workshops and literature reviews. An analytical framework is applied to advance the understanding of EbA approaches and how they lead to synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem services provision at spatial and temporal scales and multiple stakeholders. Our results show that EbA approaches such as ecosystem restoration have the potential to generate multiple adaptation benefits as well as synergies and trade-offs occurring at different temporal and spatial scales and affecting various stakeholder groups. Our paper underscores the need to identify EbA trade-offs and synergies and to explore the ways in which they are distributed in space and time and between different stakeholders to design better environmental and development programmes.

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Perino, Andrea, Henrique M. Pereira, Laetitia M. Navarro, Néstor Fernández, James M. Bullock, Silvia Ceaușu, Ainara Cortés-Avizanda, et al. "Rewilding complex ecosystems." Science 364, no. 6438 (April 25, 2019): eaav5570. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aav5570.

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The practice of rewilding has been both promoted and criticized in recent years. Benefits include flexibility to react to environmental change and the promotion of opportunities for society to reconnect with nature. Criticisms include the lack of a clear conceptualization of rewilding, insufficient knowledge about possible outcomes, and the perception that rewilding excludes people from landscapes. Here, we present a framework for rewilding that addresses these concerns. We suggest that rewilding efforts should target trophic complexity, natural disturbances, and dispersal as interacting processes that can improve ecosystem resilience and maintain biodiversity. We propose a structured approach to rewilding projects that includes assessment of the contributions of nature to people and the social-ecological constraints on restoration.

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Smith, S. L. "OCEANOGRAPHY:Organizing Pelagic Ecosystems." Science 283, no. 5399 (January 8, 1999): 180–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.283.5399.180.

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Seehausen, Ole. "Speciation affects ecosystems." Nature 458, no. 7242 (April 2009): 1122–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/4581122a.

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Gallagher, R. "Human-Dominated Ecosystems." Science 277, no. 5325 (July 25, 1997): 485. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.277.5325.485.

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Servick, K. "Eavesdropping on Ecosystems." Science 343, no. 6173 (February 20, 2014): 834–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.343.6173.834.

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Hochberg, Y. V., and D. C. Fehder. "Accelerators and ecosystems." Science 348, no. 6240 (June 11, 2015): 1202–3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aab3351.

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Magurran, A. E. "How ecosystems change." Science 351, no. 6272 (January 28, 2016): 448–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aad6758.

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Godfree, Robert C., Nunzio Knerr, Denise Godfree, John Busby, Bruce Robertson, and Francisco Encinas-Viso. "Historical reconstruction unveils the risk of mass mortality and ecosystem collapse during pancontinental megadrought." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 31 (July 15, 2019): 15580–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1902046116.

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An important new hypothesis in landscape ecology is that extreme, decade-scale megadroughts can be potent drivers of rapid, macroscale ecosystem degradation and collapse. If true, an increase in such events under climate change could have devastating consequences for global biodiversity. However, because few megadroughts have occurred in the modern ecological era, the taxonomic breadth, trophic depth, and geographic pattern of these impacts remain unknown. Here we use ecohistorical techniques to quantify the impact of a record, pancontinental megadrought period (1891 to 1903 CE) on the Australian biota. We show that during this event mortality and severe stress was recorded in >45 bird, mammal, fish, reptile, and plant families in arid, semiarid, dry temperate, and Mediterranean ecosystems over at least 2.8 million km2 (36%) of the Australian continent. Trophic analysis reveals a bottom-up pattern of mortality concentrated in primary producer, herbivore, and omnivore guilds. Spatial and temporal reconstruction of premortality rainfall shows that mass mortality and synchronous ecosystem-wide collapse emerged in multiple geographic hotspots after 2 to 4 y of severe (>40%) and intensifying rainfall deficits. However, the presence of hyperabundant herbivores significantly increased the sensitivity of ecosystems to overgrazing-induced meltdown and permanent ecosystem change. The unprecedented taxonomic breadth and spatial scale of these impacts demonstrate that continental-scale megadroughts pose a major future threat to global biodiversity, especially in ecosystems affected by intensive agricultural use, trophic simplification, and invasive species.

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Nyumba, Tobias Ochieng, Catherine Chebet Sang, Daniel Ochieng Olago, Robert Marchant, Lucy Waruingi, Yvonne Githiora, Francis Kago, et al. "Assessing the ecological impacts of transportation infrastructure development: A reconnaissance study of the Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya." PLOS ONE 16, no. 1 (January 29, 2021): e0246248. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246248.

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Transportation infrastructure, such as railways, roads and power lines, contribute to national and regional economic, social and cultural growth and integration. Kenya, with support from the Chinese government, is currently constructing a standard gauge railway (SGR) to support the country’s Vision 2030 development agenda. Although the actual land area affected by the SGR covers only a small proportion along the SGR corridor, a significant proportion of the area supports a wide range of ecologically fragile and important ecosystems in the country, with potential wider impacts. This study used a qualitative content analysis approach to gain an understanding and perceptions of stakeholders on the potential ecological impacts of the interactions between the SGR and the traversed ecological systems in Kenya. Three dominant themes emerged: 1) ecosystem degradation; 2) ecosystem fragmentation; and 3) ecosystem destruction. Ecosystem degradation was the most commonly cited impact at while ecosystem destruction was of the least concern and largely restricted to the physical SGR construction whereas the degradation and fragmentation have a much wider footprint. The construction and operation of the SGR degraded, fragmented and destroyed key ecosystems in the country including water towers, protected areas, community conservancies and wildlife dispersal areas. Therefore, we recommend that project proponents develop sustainable and ecologically sensitive measures to mitigate the key ecosystem impacts.

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Ashton, L. A., H. M. Griffiths, C. L. Parr, T. A. Evans, R. K. Didham, F. Hasan, Y. A. Teh, H. S. Tin, C. S. Vairappan, and P. Eggleton. "Termites mitigate the effects of drought in tropical rainforest." Science 363, no. 6423 (January 10, 2019): 174–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aau9565.

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Termites perform key ecological functions in tropical ecosystems, are strongly affected by variation in rainfall, and respond negatively to habitat disturbance. However, it is not known how the projected increase in frequency and severity of droughts in tropical rainforests will alter termite communities and the maintenance of ecosystem processes. Using a large-scale termite suppression experiment, we found that termite activity and abundance increased during drought in a Bornean forest. This increase resulted in accelerated litter decomposition, elevated soil moisture, greater soil nutrient heterogeneity, and higher seedling survival rates during the extreme El Niño drought of 2015–2016. Our work shows how an invertebrate group enhances ecosystem resistance to drought, providing evidence that the dual stressors of climate change and anthropogenic shifts in biotic communities will have various negative consequences for the maintenance of rainforest ecosystems.

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Li, Jie, and Matteo Convertino. "Temperature increase drives critical slowing down of fish ecosystems." PLOS ONE 16, no. 10 (October 20, 2021): e0246222. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246222.

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Fish ecosystems perform ecological functions that are critically important for the sustainability of marine ecosystems, such as global food security and carbon stock. During the 21st century, significant global warming caused by climate change has created pressing challenges for fish ecosystems that threaten species existence and global ecosystem health. Here, we study a coastal fish community in Maizuru Bay, Japan, and investigate the relationships between fluctuations of ST, abundance-based species interactions and salient fish biodiversity. Observations show that a local 20% increase in temperature from 2002 to 2014 underpins a long-term reduction in fish diversity (∼25%) played out by some native and invasive species (e.g. Chinese wrasse) becoming exceedingly abundant; this causes a large decay in commercially valuable species (e.g. Japanese anchovy) coupled to an increase in ecological productivity. The fish community is analyzed considering five temperature ranges to understand its atemporal seasonal sensitivity to ST changes, and long-term trends. An optimal information flow model is used to reconstruct species interaction networks that emerge as topologically different for distinct temperature ranges and species dynamics. Networks for low temperatures are more scale-free compared to ones for intermediate (15-20°C) temperatures in which the fish ecosystem experiences a first-order phase transition in interactions from locally stable to metastable and globally unstable for high temperatures states as suggested by abundance-spectrum transitions. The dynamic dominant eigenvalue of species interactions shows increasing instability for competitive species (spiking in summer due to intermediate-season critical transitions) leading to enhanced community variability and critical slowing down despite higher time-point resilience. Native competitive species whose abundance is distributed more exponentially have the highest total directed interactions and are keystone species (e.g. Wrasse and Horse mackerel) for the most salient links with cooperative decaying species. Competitive species, with higher eco-climatic memory and synchronization, are the most affected by temperature and play an important role in maintaining fish ecosystem stability via multitrophic cascades (via cooperative-competitive species imbalance), and as bioindicators of change. More climate-fitted species follow temperature increase causing larger divergence divergence between competitive and cooperative species. Decreasing dominant eigenvalues and lower relative network optimality for warmer oceans indicate fishery more attracted toward persistent oscillatory states, yet unpredictable, with lower cooperation, diversity and fish stock despite the increase in community abundance due to non-commercial and venomous species. We emphasize how changes in species interaction organization, primarily affected by temperature fluctuations, are the backbone of biodiversity dynamics and yet for functional diversity in contrast to taxonomic richness. Abundance and richness manifest gradual shifts while interactions show sudden shift. The work provides data-driven tools for analyzing and monitoring fish ecosystems under the pressure of global warming or other stressors. Abundance and interaction patterns derived by network-based analyses proved useful to assess ecosystem susceptibility and effective change, and formulate predictive dynamic information for science-based fishery policy aimed to maintain marine ecosystems stable and sustainable.

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Li, Yuanyuan, Huiwen Xiang, Zongsheng Huang, Yuanbo Zhang, Jun Zou, Yuhong Fu, and Changjiang Qian. "Carbon sequestration characteristics of two plantation forest ecosystems with different lithologies of karst." PLOS ONE 17, no. 12 (December 1, 2022): e0276537. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276537.

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In karst regions, the majority of studies have focused on ecosystem carbon sequestration in the same lithology, but no studies in different lithologies. In this study, actual measurements were used to reveal carbon sequestration characteristics of two plantation forest ecosystems (Bodinieri cinnamon and Cupressus funebris) with different lithologies of karst. The results showed that the tree layer showed the highest vegetation biomass, carbon content, carbon density, and ratio of aboveground biomass to belowground biomass. The carbon density of B. cinnamon plantation and C. funebris plantation was high in dolomite and in limestone respectively. The soil quality and carbon density of bare ground and plantation varied across different lithologies. The carbon density of various ecosystem components was in the order of vegetation>soil>litterfall. The carbon density and net carbon density of plantation varied across different lithologies. In B. cinnamon plantation, the carbon sequestration rate of vegetation and ecosystem was high in dolomite, moderate in limestone, and low in dolomitic sandstone. In Cupressus funebris plantation, the carbon sequestration rate was in the order of limestone>dolomite>dolomitic sandstone. These findings revealed that lithology is an important factor affecting ecosystem carbon pools, and plantation ecosystems have low biomass and low carbon density in karst areas.

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Barnosky, Anthony D., Emily L. Lindsey, Natalia A. Villavicencio, Enrique Bostelmann, Elizabeth A. Hadly, James Wanket, and Charles R. Marshall. "Variable impact of late-Quaternary megafaunal extinction in causing ecological state shifts in North and South America." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 4 (October 26, 2015): 856–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1505295112.

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Loss of megafauna, an aspect of defaunation, can precipitate many ecological changes over short time scales. We examine whether megafauna loss can also explain features of lasting ecological state shifts that occurred as the Pleistocene gave way to the Holocene. We compare ecological impacts of late-Quaternary megafauna extinction in five American regions: southwestern Patagonia, the Pampas, northeastern United States, northwestern United States, and Beringia. We find that major ecological state shifts were consistent with expectations of defaunation in North American sites but not in South American ones. The differential responses highlight two factors necessary for defaunation to trigger lasting ecological state shifts discernable in the fossil record: (i) lost megafauna need to have been effective ecosystem engineers, like proboscideans; and (ii) historical contingencies must have provided the ecosystem with plant species likely to respond to megafaunal loss. These findings help in identifying modern ecosystems that are most at risk for disappearing should current pressures on the ecosystems’ large animals continue and highlight the critical role of both individual species ecologies and ecosystem context in predicting the lasting impacts of defaunation currently underway.

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42

Long, Kelsie E., Larissa Schneider, Simon E. Connor, Niamh Shulmeister, Janet Finn, Georgia L. Roberts, Atun Zawadzki, et al. "Human impacts and Anthropocene environmental change at Lake Kutubu, a Ramsar wetland in Papua New Guinea." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, no. 40 (September 27, 2021): e2022216118. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022216118.

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The impacts of human-induced environmental change that characterize the Anthropocene are not felt equally across the globe. In the tropics, the potential for the sudden collapse of ecosystems in response to multiple interacting pressures has been of increasing concern in ecological and conservation research. The tropical ecosystems of Papua New Guinea are areas of diverse rainforest flora and fauna, inhabited by human populations that are equally diverse, both culturally and linguistically. These people and the ecosystems they rely on are being put under increasing pressure from mineral resource extraction, population growth, land clearing, invasive species, and novel pollutants. This study details the last ∼90 y of impacts on ecosystem dynamics in one of the most biologically diverse, yet poorly understood, tropical wetland ecosystems of the region. The lake is listed as a Ramsar wetland of international importance, yet, since initial European contact in the 1930s and the opening of mineral resource extraction facilities in the 1990s, there has been a dramatic increase in deforestation and an influx of people to the area. Using multiproxy paleoenvironmental records from lake sediments, we show how these anthropogenic impacts have transformed Lake Kutubu. The recent collapse of algal communities represents an ecological tipping point that is likely to have ongoing repercussions for this important wetland’s ecosystems. We argue that the incorporation of an adequate historical perspective into models for wetland management and conservation is critical in understanding how to mitigate the impacts of ecological catastrophes such as biodiversity loss.

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Woodson, C. Brock, and Steven Y. Litvin. "Ocean fronts drive marine fishery production and biogeochemical cycling." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 6 (January 26, 2015): 1710–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1417143112.

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Long-term changes in nutrient supply and primary production reportedly foreshadow substantial declines in global marine fishery production. These declines combined with current overfishing, habitat degradation, and pollution paint a grim picture for the future of marine fisheries and ecosystems. However, current models forecasting such declines do not account for the effects of ocean fronts as biogeochemical hotspots. Here we apply a fundamental technique from fluid dynamics to an ecosystem model to show how fronts increase total ecosystem biomass, explain fishery production, cause regime shifts, and contribute significantly to global biogeochemical budgets by channeling nutrients through alternate trophic pathways. We then illustrate how ocean fronts affect fishery abundance and yield, using long-term records of anchovy–sardine regimes and salmon abundances in the California Current. These results elucidate the fundamental importance of biophysical coupling as a driver of bottom–up vs. top–down regulation and high productivity in marine ecosystems.

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Carrapa, Barbara, Mark Clementz, and Ran Feng. "Ecological and hydroclimate responses to strengthening of the Hadley circulation in South America during the Late Miocene cooling." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 20 (April 29, 2019): 9747–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1810721116.

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Near-modern ecosystems were established as a result of rapid ecological adaptation and climate change in the Late Miocene. On land, Late Miocene aridification spread in tandem with expansion of open habitats including C4 grassland ecosystems. Proxy records for the central Andes spanning the Late Miocene cooling (LMC) show the reorganization of subtropical ecosystems and hydroclimate in South America between 15 and 35°S. Continental pedogenic carbonates preserved in Neogene basins record a general increase of δ18O and δ13C values from pre-LMC to post-LMC, most robustly occurring in the subtropics (25 to 30°S), suggesting aridification and a shift toward a more C4-plant-dominated ecosystem. These changes are closely tied to the enhancement of the Hadley circulation and moisture divergence away from the subtropics toward the Intertropical Convergence Zone as revealed by climate model simulations with prescribed sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) reflecting different magnitudes of LMC steepening of equator-to-pole temperature gradient and CO2 decline.

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Lu, Fei, Huifeng Hu, Wenjuan Sun, Jiaojun Zhu, Guobin Liu, Wangming Zhou, Quanfa Zhang, et al. "Effects of national ecological restoration projects on carbon sequestration in China from 2001 to 2010." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 16 (April 16, 2018): 4039–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1700294115.

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The long-term stressful utilization of forests and grasslands has led to ecosystem degradation and C loss. Since the late 1970s China has launched six key national ecological restoration projects to protect its environment and restore degraded ecosystems. Here, we conducted a large-scale field investigation and a literature survey of biomass and soil C in China’s forest, shrubland, and grassland ecosystems across the regions where the six projects were implemented (∼16% of the country’s land area). We investigated the changes in the C stocks of these ecosystems to evaluate the contributions of the projects to the country’s C sink between 2001 and 2010. Over this decade, we estimated that the total annual C sink in the project region was 132 Tg C per y (1 Tg = 1012 g), over half of which (74 Tg C per y, 56%) was attributed to the implementation of the projects. Our results demonstrate that these restoration projects have substantially contributed to CO2 mitigation in China.

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Lu, Xiankai, Peter M. Vitousek, Qinggong Mao, Frank S. Gilliam, Yiqi Luo, Guoyi Zhou, Xiaoming Zou, et al. "Plant acclimation to long-term high nitrogen deposition in an N-rich tropical forest." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 20 (May 1, 2018): 5187–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1720777115.

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Anthropogenic nitrogen (N) deposition has accelerated terrestrial N cycling at regional and global scales, causing nutrient imbalance in many natural and seminatural ecosystems. How added N affects ecosystems where N is already abundant, and how plants acclimate to chronic N deposition in such circumstances, remains poorly understood. Here, we conducted an experiment employing a decade of N additions to examine ecosystem responses and plant acclimation to added N in an N-rich tropical forest. We found that N additions accelerated soil acidification and reduced biologically available cations (especially Ca and Mg) in soils, but plants maintained foliar nutrient supply at least in part by increasing transpiration while decreasing soil water leaching below the rooting zone. We suggest a hypothesis that cation-deficient plants can adjust to elevated N deposition by increasing transpiration and thereby maintaining nutrient balance. This result suggests that long-term elevated N deposition can alter hydrological cycling in N-rich forest ecosystems.

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Flint, M. V., S. G. Poyarkov, N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, and A. Yu Miroshnikov. "Marine ecosystems of Siberian Arctic — 2018 (72th cruise of R/V “Akademik Mstislav Keldish”)." Океанология 59, no. 3 (June 26, 2019): 506–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.31857/s0030-1574593506-509.

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Large-scale expedition 72th cruise of R/V “Akademik Mstislav Keldish” was performed form 16 August to 20 September 2018 in a frame of the Program “Marine Ecosystems of Siberian Arctic”. Multidisciplinary ecosystem research was carried out over the shelf and continental slope in the Kara and Laptev seas and Vilkitski Pass. The expedition was organized by Shirshov Institute of Oceanology.

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Dell’Anno, Antonio, Cinzia Corinaldesi, and Roberto Danovaro. "Virus decomposition provides an important contribution to benthic deep-sea ecosystem functioning." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 16 (April 6, 2015): E2014—E2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1422234112.

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Viruses are key biological agents of prokaryotic mortality in the world oceans, particularly in deep-sea ecosystems where nearly all of the prokaryotic C production is transformed into organic detritus. However, the extent to which the decomposition of viral particles (i.e., organic material of viral origin) influences the functioning of benthic deep-sea ecosystems remains completely unknown. Here, using various independent approaches, we show that in deep-sea sediments an important fraction of viruses, once they are released by cell lysis, undergo fast decomposition. Virus decomposition rates in deep-sea sediments are high even at abyssal depths and are controlled primarily by the extracellular enzymatic activities that hydrolyze the proteins of the viral capsids. We estimate that on a global scale the decomposition of benthic viruses releases ∼37–50 megatons of C per year and thus represents an important source of labile organic compounds in deep-sea ecosystems. Organic material released from decomposed viruses is equivalent to 3 ± 1%, 6 ± 2%, and 12 ± 3% of the input of photosynthetically produced C, N, and P supplied through particles sinking to bathyal/abyssal sediments. Our data indicate that the decomposition of viruses provides an important, previously ignored contribution to deep-sea ecosystem functioning and has an important role in nutrient cycling within the largest ecosystem of the biosphere.

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Kang, Le, Xingguo Han, Zhibin Zhang, and Osbert Jianxin Sun. "Grassland ecosystems in China: review of current knowledge and research advancement." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 362, no. 1482 (February 22, 2007): 997–1008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2029.

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Grasslands are the dominant landscape in China, accounting for 40% of the national land area. Research concerning China's grassland ecosystems can be chronologically summarized into four periods: (i) pre-1950s, preliminary research and survey of grassland vegetation and plant species by Russians, Japanese and Western Europeans, (ii) 1950–1975, exploration and survey of vegetation, soils and topography as part of natural resource inventory programmes by regional and national institutions mainly led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, (iii) 1976–1995, establishment of field stations for long-term ecological monitoring and studies of ecosystem processes, (iv) 1996–present, comprehensive studies of community dynamics and ecosystem function integrating multi-scale and multidisciplinary approaches and experimental manipulations. Major findings of scientific significance in China's grassland ecosystem research include: (i) improved knowledge on succession and biogeochemistry of the semi-arid and temperate grassland ecosystems, (ii) elucidation of life-history strategies and diapause characteristics of the native grasshopper species as one of the key grassland pests, and (iii) development of effective management strategies for controlling rodent pests in grassland ecosystems. Opportunities exist for using the natural grasslands in northern China as a model system to test ecosystem theories that so far have proven a challenge to ecologists worldwide.

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Park, Jong-Yeon, Charles A. Stock, John P. Dunne, Xiaosong Yang, and Anthony Rosati. "Seasonal to multiannual marine ecosystem prediction with a global Earth system model." Science 365, no. 6450 (July 18, 2019): 284–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aav6634.

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Climate variations have a profound impact on marine ecosystems and the communities that depend upon them. Anticipating ecosystem shifts using global Earth system models (ESMs) could enable communities to adapt to climate fluctuations and contribute to long-term ecosystem resilience. We show that newly developed ESM-based marine biogeochemical predictions can skillfully predict satellite-derived seasonal to multiannual chlorophyll fluctuations in many regions. Prediction skill arises primarily from successfully simulating the chlorophyll response to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and capturing the winter reemergence of subsurface nutrient anomalies in the extratropics, which subsequently affect spring and summer chlorophyll concentrations. Further investigations suggest that interannual fish-catch variations in selected large marine ecosystems can be anticipated from predicted chlorophyll and sea surface temperature anomalies. This result, together with high predictability for other marine-resource–relevant biogeochemical properties (e.g., oxygen, primary production), suggests a role for ESM-based marine biogeochemical predictions in dynamic marine resource management efforts.

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Journal articles on the topic 'Multidisciplinary and ecosystems'

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