Whilst a number of studies have examined the effects of biodiversity conservation on the delivery of ecosystem services, they are often limited in the scope of the ecosystem services (ES) assessed and can suffer from confounding spatial issues. This paper examines the impacts of nature conservation on the delivery of a full suite of ES across nine case studies in the UK, using expert opinion. The case studies covered a range of habitats and explore the delivery of ES from a 'protected site' and a comparable 'non-protected' site. By conducting pair-wise comparisons of ES delivery between comparable sites our study attempts to mitigate confounding cause and effect factors in relation to spatial context in correlative studies. The analysis showed that protected sites deliver higher levels of ecosystem services than non-protected sites, with the main differences being in the cultural and regulating ecosystem services. Against expectations, there was no consistent negative impact of protection on provisioning services across these case studies. Whilst the analysis demonstrated general patterns in ES delivery between protected and non-protected sites, the individual responses in each case study highlights the importance of the local social, biophysical, economic and temporal context of individual protected areas and the associated management.
The mass ratio hypothesis provides the key link between plant functional traits (PFTs) and ecosystem processes. Despite its centrality to the field it has had few direct tests. A litter decomposition study using grassland species, singly and in mixtures, was set up to see whether simple leaf traits could be used to predict the decomposition of leaf mixtures. Leaf Dry Matter Content (LDMC) was the trait that performed best. Mass loss in single species bags was best predicted using an exponential model. LDMC explained 48% of the variance in mixture mass loss. There was no significant impact of mixture species richness on mass loss. This study generally confirmed the predictions of the mass ratio hypothesis, but adds some support to other studies that indicate it needs broadening to take into account non-linear and threshold relationships between PFTs and ecosystem processes.
Question Does the seed bank have a different functional trait signature to the vegetation and is this difference affected by productivity and disturbance? Do functional diversity differences exist between the vegetation and seed bank and are the differences modulated by productivity and disturbance. Location An area of diverse land use on the west coast of Scotland. Methods Parallel vegetation and seed bank surveys were carried out across 30 sites contrasting in land use, and hence productivity and disturbance regime. Data were analysed to assess overall differences between the seed bank and vegetation in community‐weighted mean for selected functional traits and to test if the difference was affected by productivity or disturbance. Three functional diversity indices were calculated for each seed bank and vegetation sample – functional richness, functional divergence and functional evenness – and each index was assessed for overall differences between the seed bank, the vegetation and differences modulated by disturbance and productivity. Results There were clear differences in many community‐weighted mean traits between the seed bank and the vegetation. Plants in the vegetation were characterized by increased stature, more conservative leaf traits, wind pollination and by being perennial, whereas plants in the seed bank had higher seed longevity, higher seed masses and were more frequently insect‐ or self‐pollinated. There was no difference in functional richness between the seed bank and the vegetation, and while both the seed bank and the vegetation functional richness were significantly lower than expected, the vegetation showed a bigger deviation from expectations compared to the seed bank. The functional diversity indices revealed different relationships between seed bank and vegetation against productivity and disturbance. Functional divergence (and its standardized effect size) indicated stronger habitat filtering for the vegetation at high levels of productivity or disturbance, while the effect size of functional richness and functional evenness suggested stronger filtering on the seed bank at high levels of productivity and disturbance. Conclusions The significant difference in traits between the seed bank and vegetation mean that following disturbance this is likely to have a considerable impact (at least in the short term) on ecosystem function. Functional diversity patterns were less clear, with conflicting evidence on habitat filtering, depending on the metric chosen.
Climate change is expected to have an impact on plant communities as increased temperatures are expected to drive individual species' distributions polewards. The results of a revisitation study after c. 34 years of 89 coastal sites in Scotland, UK, were examined to assess the degree of shifts in species composition that could be accounted for by climate change. There was little evidence for either species retreat northwards or for plots to become more dominated by species with a more southern distribution. At a few sites where significant change occurred, the changes were accounted for by the invasion, or in one instance the removal, of woody species. Also, the vegetation types that showed the most sensitivity to change were all early successional types and changes were primarily the result of succession rather than climate-driven changes. Dune vegetation appears resistant to climate change impacts on the vegetation, either as the vegetation is inherently resistant to change, management prevents increased dominance of more southerly species or because of dispersal limitation to geographically isolated sites.
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