Abstract

Global biodiversity is affected by numerous environmental drivers. Yet, the extent to which global environmental changes contribute to changes in local diversity is poorly understood. We investigated biodiversity changes in a meta-analysis of 39 resurvey studies in European temperate forests (3988 vegetation records in total, 17-75years between the two surveys) by assessing the importance of (i) coarse-resolution (i.e., among sites) vs. fine-resolution (i.e., within sites) environmental differences and (ii) changing environmental conditions between surveys. Our results clarify the mechanisms underlying the direction and magnitude of local-scale biodiversity changes. While not detecting any net local diversity loss, we observed considerable among-site variation, partly explained by temporal changes in light availability (a local driver) and density of large herbivores (a regional driver). Furthermore, strong evidence was found that presurvey levels of nitrogen deposition determined subsequent diversity changes. We conclude that models forecasting future biodiversity changes should consider coarse-resolution environmental changes, account for differences in baseline environmental conditions and for local changes in fine-resolution environmental conditions.

Keywords

atmospheric nitrogen deposition; evenness; forestREplot; forest management; game browsing; Shannon diversity; spatiotemporal resurvey data; species richness

Published in

Global Change Biology
2015, Volume: 21, number: 10, pages: 3726-3737
Publisher: WILEY-BLACKWELL

SLU Authors

• Brunet, Jörg

  • Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG15 Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
SDG13 Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts


UKÄ Subject classification

Botany
Climate Research
Forest Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12993

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/69267