Allan, Eric; Manning, Peter; Alt, Fabian; Binkenstein, Julia; Blaser, Stefan; Blüthgen, Nico; Böhm, Stefan; Grassein, Fabrice; Hölzel, Norbert; Klaus, Valentin H.; Kleinebecker, Till; Morris, E. Kathryn; Oelmann, Yvonne; Prati, Daniel; Renner, Swen C.; Rillig, Matthias C.; Schaefer, Martin; Schloter, Michael; Schmitt, Barbara; Schöning, Ingo; ... (2015). Land use intensification alters ecosystem multifunctionality via loss of biodiversity and changes to functional composition. Ecology Letters, 18(8), pp. 834-843. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing 10.1111/ele.12469
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Global change, especially land-use intensification, affects human well-being by impacting the deliv-ery of multiple ecosystem services (multifunctionality). However, whether biodiversity loss is amajor component of global change effects on multifunctionality in real-world ecosystems, as inexperimental ones, remains unclear. Therefore, we assessed biodiversity, functional compositionand 14 ecosystem services on 150 agricultural grasslands differing in land-use intensity. We alsointroduce five multifunctionality measures in which ecosystem services were weighted according torealistic land-use objectives. We found that indirect land-use effects, i.e. those mediated by biodi-versity loss and by changes to functional composition, were as strong as direct effects on average.Their strength varied with land-use objectives and regional context. Biodiversity loss explainedindirect effects in a region of intermediate productivity and was most damaging when land-useobjectives favoured supporting and cultural services. In contrast, functional composition shifts,towards fast-growing plant species, strongly increased provisioning services in more inherentlyunproductive grasslands.
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