SG: Synthetic analysis of the importance of species richness to ecosystem services in natural systems

SG：自然系统中物种丰富度对生态系统服务重要性的综合分析

• 批准号: 1754658
• 负责人: Mark Genung
• 金额: $ 15万
• 依托单位: Rutgers University New Brunswick
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-08-15 至 2019-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1754658&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SG; Synthetic; analysis; importance; species

Nature provides ecosystem services that benefit humans: crops rely on pollinators, marshes protect coasts from storm surges, and forests remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The world is rapidly losing biodiversity, and understanding how biodiversity loss will affect ecosystem services is important for human well-being. Most attempts to do this have used experiments in the field and laboratory. Natural communities, in which ecosystem services are provided, rarely look like experiments. Scientists acknowledge this, but it has been hard to study the effect of biodiversity loss on ecosystem services in the real world, in large part because of limitations in the analysis of complex natural communities. In this project, the researchers will use a new method that overcomes previous limitations to analyze some of the world's largest data sets, with the goal of understanding what aspects of natural communities are needed for ecosystem services. For example, is it enough to have many individuals of a few species, or do we need many different species to provide ecosystem services? This research will provide society benefits through a better understanding of how biodiversity influences ecosystem function, which could have relevance for science policy. Additionally, data and coding from the project will be made available to the public. Knowledge of what drives ecosystem services at large scales is rudimentary, and the widespread belief that species richness is necessary for ecosystem services in natural systems is more of an assumption than an established fact. This project will use a novel and powerful analytical approach, based on the Price equation from evolutionary biology, to determine the importance of biodiversity to multiple ecosystem services. Specifically, the Price equation partitions differences in ecosystem services into three additive terms: richness, composition, and context dependence (which includes abundance variation as well as environmental factors). The PIs will compile the largest and most complete publicly-available data sets, and use them to conduct a synthetic analysis. The research will determine: (1) the relative importance of richness, composition, and context dependence in producing the mean levels and temporal variance of ecosystem services, (2) the role of spatial and temporal scale in ecosystem functions, and (3) the extent to which data from the worlds' largest biodiversity-function experiments align with results from ecosystems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

大自然提供了有益于人类的生态系统服务：作物依赖传粉媒介，沼泽保护海岸免受风暴潮的影响，森林从大气中去除二氧化碳。世界正在迅速丧失生物多样性，了解生物多样性丧失将如何影响生态系统服务对人类福祉至关重要。大多数这样做的尝试都是在实地和实验室进行实验。提供生态系统服务的自然群落很少看起来像实验。科学家们承认这一点，但在现实世界中研究生物多样性丧失对生态系统服务的影响一直很困难，这在很大程度上是因为对复杂自然群落的分析存在局限性。在这个项目中，研究人员将使用一种新的方法来克服以前的限制，分析一些世界上最大的数据集，目的是了解生态系统服务需要自然群落的哪些方面。例如，拥有少数物种的许多个体就足够了吗？还是我们需要许多不同的物种来提供生态系统服务？这项研究将通过更好地理解生物多样性如何影响生态系统功能来提供社会效益，这可能与科学政策相关。此外，该项目的数据和编码将向公众开放。在大尺度上驱动生态系统服务的知识是基本的，而且普遍认为物种丰富度是自然系统中生态系统服务所必需的，这更多的是一种假设，而不是既定事实。该项目将使用一种新颖而强大的分析方法，基于进化生物学的Price方程，来确定生物多样性对多种生态系统服务的重要性。具体来说，Price方程将生态系统服务的差异划分为三个附加项：丰富度、组成和环境依赖性（包括丰度变化和环境因素）。pi将汇编最大和最完整的公开数据集，并使用它们进行综合分析。研究将确定：(1)丰富度、组成和环境依赖性在产生生态系统服务的平均水平和时间变化中的相对重要性；(2)生态系统功能的时空尺度作用；(3)世界上最大的生物多样性功能实验数据与生态系统结果的一致程度。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。