CAREER: Scaling-up effects of biodiversity on ecosystem productivity: from local communities to landscapes

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Many species of plants and animals are being driven extinct. This loss of biodiversity is likely reducing the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. Some of these benefits are directly related to plants, including the production of livestock forage in grasslands and wood in forests. There has been some progress in understanding the consequences of biodiversity loss. But it remains challenging to quantify how species loss affects ecosystems over large areas. This study establishes new experiments to expand knowledge of plant productivity and biodiversity. The key advance of this project is to study the mechanisms linking productivity and biodiversity at different spatial scales. Data will be made publicly available through the Cedar Creek Long Term Ecological Research website. Results will be incorporated into Cedar Creek's K-12 education and community engagement programs. These programs serve more than 10,500 K-12 students and visitors each year. The study will also help understand how the diversity of teams can enhance learning and productivity.This study will test predictions about ecosystem productivity. Productivity depends on local plant diversity and species interactions at small spatial scales. However, at larger scales, additional factors such as dispersal and species sorting are likely more important. At these larger scales, it is important to develop new techniques to measure biodiversity such as remote sensing using hyperspectral imagery and LiDAR. This study will investigate the landscape-scale dependence of productivity on biodiversity using three approaches. First, the impact of dispersal on biodiversity and productivity in grassland plant communities will be experimentally tested. Second, remote sensing techniques will be used to quantify how biodiversity effects on productivity change from local to landscape scales. Third, the role of dominant species will be experimentally tested across several habitat types, including grassland, savanna, deciduous forest, coniferous forest. The hypothesis will be tested that dominant plant species are optimally sorted across heterogeneous landscapes. This would create positive effects of landscape diversity on productivity.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.