14 DAY TRIAL // Climate change, pollution and other forms of environmental stress are known to affect ecosystems significantly, researchers say, but a new study unexpectedly revealed that biodiversity loss has an equally damaging effect as well.
Scientists with an international collaboration discovered that losing many of its native species damages ecosystems considerably, while also making them more prone to influences from other environmental stress factors.
This investigation represents the first time a comprehensive effort was made to compare the effects of biodiversity loss and a wide array of human-induced environmental changes on ecosystems at large.
The work was led by researchers from the United States, Canada and Sweden, and was detailed in this week's issue of the top scientific journal Nature. The study again underlines the necessity for adopting local, national and international measures to protect biodiversity, and limit pollution and warming.
According to experts, this work provides additional evidence that more biodiverse ecosystems are more productive. This was the conclusion of studies conducted worldwide, over the past 20 years.
“This analysis establishes that reduced biodiversity affects ecosystems at levels comparable to those of global warming and air pollution,” says Division of Environmental Biology Program Director, Henry Gholz, from the US National Science Foundation (NSF).
The DEB funded this investigation both directly, and through the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. The organization is very interested in determining how human activities such as pollution or over-harvesting lead to habitat loss, species going extinct, and climate instability.
“Some people have assumed that biodiversity effects are relatively minor compared to other environmental stressors,” says the lead author of the Nature paper, David Hooper, who holds an appointment as a biologist at the Western Washington University/
“Our results show that future loss of species has the potential to reduce plant production just as much as global warming and pollution,” the investigator goes on to say, adding that extinction rates nowadays are very high around the world.
“Loss of biological diversity due to species extinctions is going to have major effects on our planet, and we need to prepare ourselves to deal with them. These extinctions may well rank as one of the top five drivers of global change,” University of Michigan ecologist and paper coauthor, Bradley Cardinale, concludes.