Biodiversity and global land use change: Piecing together the broad picture

DÍAZ S

Beijing, China

Congreso; Global Land Project symposium on Biodiversity, Land Managem. Earth Science Patnership Open Science Meeting on Global Environmental Changeent and Ecosystem Responses; 2006

Earth Science Patnership

Major global change drivers, including changes in climate, atmospheric composition, land use/disturbance regime, and biotic exchanges, affect and are affected by different components of biodiversity in a non-random, and often predictable way. As a result, biodiversity in the broad sense strongly influences the provision of ecosystem services and thus human well-being. The role of the kind of plant functional traits that are present in higher abundance in a system and, to a lesser degree, that of the range of traits present, have been the focus of numerous studies and we are now getting closer to some generalizations. However, three major challenges emerge for the study of the links between biodiversity and land use change. The first is the need to deal with biodiversity at spatial scales larger than that of local plots. The second challenge is related to non-linearities that are triggered by changes in climate, land use regime and/or biotic interactions, involve altered functional biodiversity, and in turn affect global change drivers and ecosystem services, representing a major threat to the integrity of the life-support systems. The third challenge is the integration of natural and social sciences in the definition of ecosystem services and vulnerabilities relevant to different stakeholders, and the possible conflicts that can arise among them. These three areas represent major research opportunities for the incorporation of biodiversity into the Global Land Project.