Incorporating plant functional diversity effects in ecosystem service assessments

TLDR

Global environmental change threatens ecosystem services, which are shaped by abiotic drivers, land use, and the functional diversity of plant communities, yet existing models linking functional traits to ecosystem properties remain fragmented and inconsistently supported. This article aims to integrate the mechanisms by which functional diversity influences ecosystem properties relevant to services and proposes a systematic approach to study how land‑cover change alters these properties via functional diversity. The authors develop a unified conceptual and methodological framework that integrates functional diversity components, illustrates it with literature examples, and applies it to a French alpine grassland to test how land‑use change mediated by functional diversity alters ecosystem service provision. The framework demonstrates that functional diversity mediates the impact of land‑use change on ecosystem services, opening a new research frontier at the intersection of land‑change science and fundamental ecology.

Abstract

Global environmental change affects the sustained provision of a wide set of ecosystem services. Although the delivery of ecosystem services is strongly affected by abiotic drivers and direct land use effects, it is also modulated by the functional diversity of biological communities (the value, range, and relative abundance of functional traits in a given ecosystem). The focus of this article is on integrating the different possible mechanisms by which functional diversity affects ecosystem properties that are directly relevant to ecosystem services. We propose a systematic way for progressing in understanding how land cover change affects these ecosystem properties through functional diversity modifications. Models on links between ecosystem properties and the local mean, range, and distribution of plant trait values are numerous, but they have been scattered in the literature, with varying degrees of empirical support and varying functional diversity components analyzed. Here we articulate these different components in a single conceptual and methodological framework that allows testing them in combination. We illustrate our approach with examples from the literature and apply the proposed framework to a grassland system in the central French Alps in which functional diversity, by responding to land use change, alters the provision of ecosystem services important to local stakeholders. We claim that our framework contributes to opening a new area of research at the interface of land change science and fundamental ecology.