Ecosystem services articles within Nature Communications

Featured

• Article
  16 January 2017 | Open Access

  Fisheries portfolio diversification and turnover buffer Alaskan fishing communities from abrupt resource and market changes

  Economies dependent on natural resources could gain resilience to abrupt ecosystem and market shifts through proactive risk-buffering approaches. Using data from Alaskan fisheries, Clineet al. show that communities relying on diverse fisheries were more resilient to major ocean and market regime shifts in 1989.

  • Timothy J. Cline
  • , Daniel E. Schindler
  •  & Ray Hilborn

• Article
  01 November 2016 | Open Access

  Estimating economic losses to tourism in Africa from the illegal killing of elephants

  An ongoing elephant poaching crisis is threatening not only elephant populations but also the local economies that rely on nature-based tourism. Here, Naidoo and colleagues use an economic model to estimate the financial contribution of elephants to tourism and the possible consequences of their loss.

  • Robin Naidoo
  • , Brendan Fisher
  •  & Andrew Balmford

• Article
  11 October 2016 | Open Access

  Land-use choices follow profitability at the expense of ecological functions in Indonesian smallholder landscapes

  Small-scale farmers in Southeast Asia are increasingly turning to monocultures of oil palm and rubber to maximize income. Clough and colleagues demonstrate that this land-use change in Indonesia comes at a cost to a wide array of ecosystem functions and biodiversity.

  • Yann Clough
  • , Vijesh V. Krishna
  •  & Stefan Scheu

• Article
  07 October 2016 | Open Access

  Disaggregating the evidence linking biodiversity and ecosystem services

  Biodiversity can enhance ecosystem services such as crop pollination. Here, Ricketts et al. synthesize 14 years of literature to show that biodiversity-ecosystem services relationships depend on the service, how services and biodiversity are each measured, and the approach used to link them.

  • Taylor H. Ricketts
  • , Keri B. Watson
  •  & Laura J. Sonter

• Article
  20 September 2016 | Open Access

  Climate analogues suggest limited potential for intensification of production on current croplands under climate change

  Simulations of the impact of future climate change on crop yield vary considerably. Here, the authors use a climate analogue approach to estimate the response of maximum attainable yield to climate change and predict that large shifts in land use and crop choice would be required to meet demand.

  • T.A.M. Pugh
  • , C. Müller
  •  & A. Arneth

• Article
  13 June 2016 | Open Access

  Compositional diversity of rehabilitated tropical lands supports multiple ecosystem services and buffers uncertainties

  Land use becomes more diverse when it considers uncertain interactions of multiple ecosystem services. Here, Knoke and colleagues show that uncertainty plays a larger role if ecosystem services are optimized only for a single service, or if services correlate.

  • Thomas Knoke
  • , Carola Paul
  •  & Jörg Bendix

• Article | 08 May 2014

  Correlated loss of ecosystem services in coupled mutualistic networks

  Species interactions are known to promote biodiversity and ecosystem stability. Here, the authors assess the effect of habitat alteration on a species network that considers multiple interaction types, and find that plants mediate the response of pollinators and seed dispersers to habitat degradation.

  • Jörg Albrecht
  • , Dana Gertrud Berens
  •  & Nina Farwig

• Article
  29 January 2013 | Open Access

  Caribbean-wide decline in carbonate production threatens coral reef growth

  Coral reef health is declining globally and is projected to lead to net loss of reef structure. This study shows that ecological change across the Caribbean has reduced reef growth rates to levels lower than those measured over the last ~8,000 years, threatening the ability of reefs to keep pace with future sea-level rise.

  • Chris T. Perry
  • , Gary N. Murphy
  •  & Peter J. Mumby

• Article
  08 January 2013 | Open Access

  Higher levels of multiple ecosystem services are found in forests with more tree species

  Tree diversity is thought to benefit forest ecosystems, but evidence from large-scale studies is scarce. This study of a 400,000 km²forest area shows that higher tree species richness supports higher levels of multiple ecosystem services, and therefore also a more sustainable management of production forests.

  • Lars Gamfeldt
  • , Tord Snäll
  •  & Jan Bengtsson

• Article
  29 March 2011 | Open Access

  Ants and termites increase crop yield in a dry climate

  The presence of earthworms is known to enhance the quality and moisture of soil in cool and wet climates. Evanset al. show that termites and ants can improve soil quality in warmer and drier climates—their presence results in elevated water infiltration and nitrogen content, leading to increased wheat yields.

  • Theodore A. Evans
  • , Tracy Z. Dawes
  •  & Nathan Lo