BIONUCLIM: Biodiversity, nutrient availability, and climate effects on terrestrial ecosystem productivity and stability.

Climate change, biodiversity loss and changes in the availability of nutrients are three of the most important components of global change that are affecting life on Earth. However, despite strong efforts from the scientific community, it is not yet clear how these three components interact with each other in altering the function of ecosystems and the carbon they exchange with the atmosphere. This proposal aims to understand how biodiversity and nutrient availability interact with climate variability to determine ecosystem productivity and stability at different spatial and temporal scales, ranging from local to global and from annual to decadal scales. To achieve this main goal we will gather satellite images and global databases of in situ measured ecosystem carbon flux exchange to i) test the hypothesis that more diverse and nutrient-rich ecosystems are less sensitive to weather conditions and investigate how this affects their ability to absorb CO2, and ii) to test the hypotheses that the increasing climate variability and biodiversity loss are decreasing ecosystem stability at the global scale, and that nutrient availability lessens this detrimental effect. This novel, integrative approach will help us increase our understanding of the role of climate change, biodiversity and nutrient availability in the carbon cycle of terrestrial ecosystems, which is key information for improving predictions about how the biosphere will respond in the future.

Keywords:ECOSYSTEMS

Disciplines:Ecology, Environmental science and management, Other environmental sciences

Project type:Collaboration project