Landscape diversity is correlated with satellite-sensed primary productivity in North America

  • Sarah Mayor (Creator)
  • Florian Altermatt (Creator)
  • Tom W. Crowther (Creator)
  • Iris Hordijk (Creator)
  • Simon Landauer (Creator)
  • Jacqueline Oehri (Creator)
  • Merin Reji Chacko (Creator)
  • Michael E. Schaepman (Creator)
  • Bernhard Schmid (Creator)
  • Pascal A. Niklaus (Creator)

Dataset

Description

Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) experiments have established generally positive species richness-productivity relationships in plots of single ecosystem types. Here, we analyzed effects of landscape-level diversity, measured as the number of land-cover types (different ecosystems) per 250 × 250 m, across all of North America. We find that this metric is positively related to landscape-wide remotely-sensed primary production, and that a higher number of land-cover types also is associated with greater temporal stability of productivity, and with accelerated 20-year greening trends, in particular at high latitudes. Species diversity was correlated with landscape-level productivity, but the effect of species diversity and landscape diversity were independent. This indicates that diversity-functioning patterns resembling the ones at smaller scales also exist at higher levels of biological organization.
Date made available5 Sept 2024
PublisherUniversity of Zurich

Keywords

  • Biological sciences
  • NDVI
  • Biodiversity
  • Ecological productivity
  • Remote sensing
  • Spatial and landscape ecology
  • land cover

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