Unravelling biodiversity–productivity relationships across a large temperate forest region

Abstract

1. Biodiversity-productivity relationship (BPR) has become a central issue of ecology and conservation biology. The current understanding of BPR mainly comes from local scales, which is, however, difficult to extend to the BPR pattern at the regional scale owing to the scale dependence of regional communities. 2. To elucidate the BPR at the regional communities across multiple spatial scales, we investigated the 328 plots with about 30,000 trees across 700,000 km 2 regional area in the temperate forests. In this study, the n closest plots were aggregated to form regional clusters representing the spatial scale characterized by the spatial extent of regional communities, which were used to explore the relationships of multiple facets of biodiversity (i.e. taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity) with the productivity of regional communities.3. Our study provides insight into the discrepancy among taxonomic, functional, phylogenetic biodiversity in modulating productivity across the different specific biogeographical clusters within a large regional area. We found that the spatial extent of the tree community could change the importance of the multiple facets of biodiversity on productivity. Phylogenetic diversity may be a better driver of productivity at the smaller spatial scale of the regional communities. In contrast, taxonomic diversity appears to be more predominant in affecting productivity at the broader spatial scale. 4. Our results suggest that the understanding of the BPR patterns benefited from the multiple facets of biodiversity. The findings highlight the scale dependence of the BPRs, representing the significance of the spatial extent of the regional communities on them. This would improve our abilities to interpret and predict temperate forest productivity across the different spatial scales of the regional communities.

Spatial asynchrony matters more than alpha stability in stabilizing ecosystem productivity in a large temperate forest region

“…The elevation variable was measured in the field. The environmental conditions of each metacommunity were calculated as the average value of the constituent plots (Qiao et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2020). The environmental heterogeneity of annual mean precipitation, soil pH and elevation is known to be a strong predictor of terrestrial species diversity at broad scales (Heidrich et al., 2020; Stein & Kreft, 2015).…”

“…Each local plot was initially set as the focal plot. Then, the n nearest plots were selected for each focal plot to form scaled metacommunities with particular focal plots (Qiao et al., 2021). Each metacommunity was thus composed of N = n + 1 local communities (i.e., the n nearest local communities plus the focal community), and N was used to measure the spatial extent of each metacommunity (Figure 2b).…”

Unravelling Trait–Environment Relationships at Local and Regional Scales in Temperate Forests

“…For the regional-scale study, we established a total of 358 circular forest plots (0.1 ha) that cover the whole study region in the summer of 2017 and 2018 ( Figure 1 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ; Qiao et al, 2021 ). The latitudinal and longitudinal, respectively, ranges extend from 39°42′48″ to 50°44′22″ and from 122°02′57″ to 133°58′35″.…”

Assessing scale‐dependent effects on Forest biomass productivity based on machine learning

“…Tree trunks and branches contain a massive ratio of these C, which is called above‐ground biomass (AGB) (Fahey et al, 2010; Fotis et al, 2018). The relationships between biodiversity and AGB or productivity have drawn ample attention in ecology and conservation biology (Cadotte, 2015; Cardinale et al, 2012; Isbell et al, 2011; Liang et al, 2016; Qiao et al, 2021). Numerous debates have been initiated with respect to the impacts of species diversity on productivity or AGB, with positive, negative, hump‐shaped or U‐shaped relationships (Mittelbach, 2010; Poorter et al, 2017; Ruiz‐Benito et al, 2014; Whittaker, 2010; Zhang et al, 2015).…”

“…conservation biology (Cadotte, 2015;Cardinale et al, 2012;Isbell et al, 2011;Liang et al, 2016;Qiao et al, 2021). Numerous debates have been initiated with respect to the impacts of species diversity on productivity or AGB, with positive, negative, hump-shaped or U-shaped relationships (Mittelbach, 2010;Poorter et al, 2017;Ruiz-Benito et al, 2014;Whittaker, 2010;Zhang et al, 2015).…”