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Macroecological processes drive spiritual ecosystem services obtained from giant trees

Nature Plants volume 9, pages 209–213 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Giant trees that have acquired their own unique identities are often named by local people and can inspire a sense of awe and become objects of faith. Although these giant trees provide various kinds of spiritual ecosystem services that benefit the spiritual well-being of human society, the drivers of these services remain unclear. Using structural equation modelling with 38,994 records of giant trees of 237 species across Japan, this study shows that macroecological processes such as annual precipitation and temperature may drive spiritual ecosystem services obtained from giant trees directly and indirectly via tree properties such as size and age.

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Fig. 1: Piecewise SEM explaining links among macroecological processes, giant trees and spiritual ecosystem services.

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Data availability

The giant tree data were downloaded from the giant trees database in Japanese (https://kyoju.biodic.go.jp/) on 19 November 2022. The climate data were downloaded from Mesh Climate Data 2010 (Japan Meteorological Agency, http://nlftp.mlit.go.jp/ksj/gml/datalist/KsjTmplt-G02.html). The compiled dataset is available on figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21200563).

Code availability

The code for the piecewise SEM statistical analysis is available on figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21200563).

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Acknowledgements

I thank Y. Nakawake for suggestions on literature related to cultural studies. R.N. was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant no. 22K15188) and the National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan.

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  1. Biodiversity Division, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Japan

    Ryosuke Nakadai

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  1. Ryosuke Nakadai
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Correspondence to Ryosuke Nakadai.

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Nature Plants thanks Malgorzata Blicharska for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1

Initial model structure for piecewise SEM analysis.

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Nakadai, R. Macroecological processes drive spiritual ecosystem services obtained from giant trees. Nat. Plants 9, 209–213 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01337-1

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