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HERO ID
3287745
Reference Type
Journal Article
Title
Global environmental change effects on ecosystems: the importance of land-use legacies
Author(s)
Perring, MP; De Frenne, P; Baeten, L; Maes, SL; Depauw, L; Blondeel, H; Caron, MM; Verheyen, K
Year
2016
Is Peer Reviewed?
Yes
Journal
Global Change Biology
ISSN:
1354-1013
EISSN:
1365-2486
Volume
22
Issue
4
Page Numbers
1361-1371
Language
English
PMID
26546049
DOI
10.1111/gcb.13146
Web of Science Id
WOS:000371515300004
Abstract
One of the major challenges in ecology is to predict how multiple global environmental changes will affect future ecosystem patterns (e.g. plant community composition) and processes (e.g. nutrient cycling). Here, we highlight arguments for the necessary inclusion of land-use legacies in this endeavour. Alterations in resources and conditions engendered by previous land use, together with influences on plant community processes such as dispersal, selection, drift and speciation, have steered communities and ecosystem functions onto trajectories of change. These trajectories may be modulated by contemporary environmental changes such as climate warming and nitrogen deposition. We performed a literature review which suggests that these potential interactions have rarely been investigated. This crucial oversight is potentially due to an assumption that knowledge of the contemporary state allows accurate projection into the future. Lessons from other complex dynamic systems, and the recent recognition of the importance of previous conditions in explaining contemporary and future ecosystem properties, demand the testing of this assumption. Vegetation resurvey databases across gradients of land use and environmental change, complemented by rigorous experiments, offer a means to test for interactions between land-use legacies and multiple environmental changes. Implementing these tests in the context of a trait-based framework will allow biologists to synthesize compositional and functional ecosystem responses. This will further our understanding of the importance of land-use legacies in determining future ecosystem properties, and soundly inform conservation and restoration management actions.
Keywords
climate change; forest understorey; functional traits; historical ecology; land-use history; nitrogen deposition; ozone; response-and-effect framework
Tags
NAAQS
•
ISA-Ozone (2020 Final Project Page)
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