Study: Nature Creates Buffer Against Climate Change
Biodiversity promotes healthy ecosystems
January 18, 2012
Plant diversity is key to a healthy ecosystem and a buffer against desertification in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya.
The most extensive study ever of biodiversity confirms what scientists have long believed, that natural ecosystems are healthier and more resilient when they support a large variety of plant life.
Reported in the
Journal Science
, this globe-spanning research finds that abundant forms of plant life keep soils more fertile and productive, and help to buffer ecosystems against the stresses of a changing climate
.
The study focused on semi-arid ecosystems which cover 40 percent of the planet and support 40 percent of the human population. Co-author David Eldridge, with the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at Australia’s University of New South Wales, says these dry lands are also among the ecosystems most at risk “from changes in management, changes in rainfall, changes in climate.”
An international team of scientists studied dry lands on every continent, except Antarctica. Eldridge points out that on each, they marked out 30-by-30-meter plots, inventoried the plant life within and measured how it cycled carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus, elements considered essential for life on earth.
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