17. : Functional biodiversity effects on ecosystem processes,
ecosystem services and sustainability in the Americas: An interdisciplinary approach
PI: Sandra M. Díaz, Instituto Multidisciplinario de
Biología Vegetal, CONICET - Universidad Nacional de
Córdoba
Period: 2006-2011
Total budget: US$ 711,937 (for the LPB study USD $378,966)
Funding Agency: Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI)
Summary:
Land use change is believed to be the global change
driver with the greatest potential to affect biodiversity and ecosystem
processes and services in the next decades. One of the main ways in
which land use change can alter ecosystem functioning is by causing
shifts in the plant functional biodiversity (i.e. the value, range and
relative abundance of plant functional traits present in a given
ecosystem, hereafter FD). These alterations modify the ecosystem
services perceived by different stakeholders, both locally and
remotely. Our research will focus on the design and implementation of a
new interdisciplinary framework to analyze and compare field studies of
land use change in the Americas from the tropics to the tundra . We
will build a conceptual link between major land use change
trajectories, FD, ecosystem processes and services, and
vulnerability-sustainability of the production systems that are based
on them. We will give empirical content to such framework through the
integration of new and on-going studies of FD and ecosystem processes,
and by linking ecological and socio-economic conceptual models and
empirical information on perceived ecosystem services obtained in the
field. Traditional natural and social science methods of gathering
empirical information in the field will be combined with participatory
methodologies in order to promote the involvement of different
stakeholders from the early stages of the process. In order to develop
our interdisciplinary framework, we propose:
To construct a network of
scientists addressing links between land use as a driver of global
change, FD shifts, and ecosystem processes and services in the
Americas;
To develop the first
comparison of the effects of land use on FD and to establish how this
in turn has the potential to modify ecosystem processes in systems
under different degrees of climatic control;
To establish links
between FD, ecosystem functioning and major ecosystem services
perceived by different local and non-local stakeholders;
To develop a conceptual framework
and a set of empirical tools and recommendations, available to a wide
community of scientists, para-scientist and land-managers, to be used
as the basis for management decisions aimed to assess and optimize the
ecosystem-service value of the land considering the interests of
different stakeholders.
Our project has the potential to advance the interdisciplinary field of
ecology and sustainability in the region. We will advance the
scientific understanding of the links between FD and ecosystem
processes, and we will carry out the first large-scale attempt to
evaluate FD in megadiverse neotropical forests. A set of standard
protocols that could be used widely in the study and management of FD
in the region will be developed in the process and made available to
the wider community. We will provide the first conceptual framework,
backed up by empirical data and validated by the participation of
different stakeholders, about the links between FD and the ecosystem
services obtained or lost by different land use practices common in the
region. We will contribute to capacity building in interdisciplinary
ecosystem assessment in the Americas, with emphasis in Latin America.
at different levels, from scientists to managers to grassroots
organizations.