Researchers Solve Long-standing Ecological Riddle
Researchers have found clear evidence that communities rich in species are substantially healthier and more productive than those depleted of species, once complicating factors are removed. An international group of scientists led by USGS research ecologist Jim Grace has solved this long-standing ecological riddle using new scientific techniques for analyzing complex data to determine: How do we know that conserving biodiversity is actually important in the real world?
"This study shows that you cannot have sustainable, productive ecosystems without maintaining biodiversity in the landscape," said Grace.
?Biodiversity has been hypothesized to be of critical importance for the stability of natural ecosystems and their abilities to provide positive benefits such as oxygen production, soil genesis, and water detoxification to plant and animal communities, as well as to human society. Many of the efforts of conservation agencies around the world are driven by the assumption that this hypothesis is true. While theoretical studies and experiments using artificially created ecosystems have supported this claim, scientists have struggled for the last half-century to clearly isolate such an effect in the real world.
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