Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services
Year: 2006
Type: review
Abstract: Human-dominated marine ecosystems are experiencing accelerating loss of populations and species, with largely unknown consequences. We analyzed local experiments, long-term regional time series, and global fisheries data to test how biodiversity loss affects marine ecosystem services across temporal and spatial scales. Overall, rates of resource collapse increased and recovery potential, stability, and water quality decreased exponentially with declining diversity. Restoration of biodiversity, in contrast, increased productivity fourfold and decreased variability by 21%, on average. We conclude that marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean's capacity to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations. Yet available data suggest that at this point, these trends are still reversible.
Source: Science
Institutions: University of Wyoming, Dalhousie University, Stockholm University, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University, University of California, Davis, University of British Columbia
Language: English
Subfield: Aquatic Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2156709416