Publications

The leaf economics spectrum(1,2) and the global spectrum of plant forms and functions(3) revealed fundamental axes of variation in plant traits, which represent different ecological strategies that are shaped by the evolutionary development of plant species(2). Ecosystem functions depend on environmental conditions and the traits of species that comprise the ecological communities(4). However, the axes of variation of ecosystem functions are ...

Forests do not only provide a habitat for biodiversity, but they also supply a tremendous flow of ecosystem services and goods to millions of people throughout the world. Aside from timber and non-timber forest products, forest ecosystems play a critical role in climate change mitigation, soil regulation, and water recycling. However, in emerging tropical countries, ongoing human population expansion and concomitant agricultural land demands ...

Biodiversity is essential for maintaining the terrestrial ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF). Recent studies have revealed that the variations in terrestrial ecosystem functions are captured by three key axes: the maximum productivity, water use efficiency, and carbon use efficiency of the ecosystem. However, the role of biodiversity in supporting these three key axes has not yet been explored. In this study, we combined the (i) data collected ...

There has been considerable focus on the impacts of environmental change on ecosystem function arising from changes in species richness. However, environmental change may affect ecosystem function without affecting richness, most notably by affecting population densities and community composition. Using a theoretical model, we find that, despite invariant richness, (1) small environmental effects may already lead to a collapse of function; (2) ...

The melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet is accelerating, with glaciers shifting from marine to land termination and potential consequences for fjord ecosystems downstream. Monthly samples in 2016 in two fjords in southwest Greenland show that subglacial discharge from marine-terminating glaciers sustains high phytoplankton productivity that is dominated by diatoms and grazed by larger mesozooplankton throughout summer. In contrast, melting of ...

Ethiopia is naturally gifted with diverse forest resources accounted for its physiographic and climatic diversity (Fikadu and Melesse, 2014). For example, it is estimated that Ethiopia harbors over 7,000 vascular plants species, of which nearly 840 are reckoned endemic (Tewolde, 1991 as cited in Fikadu and Melesse, 2014). By contrast, the resources are unsustainably utilized leading to increasing onsite (e.g. soil erosion) and offsite (e.g. ...

1.A coordinated continental-scale field experiment across 31 sites was used to compare the biomass yield of monocultures and four species mixtures associated with intensively managed agricultural grassland systems. To increase complementarity in resource use, each of the four species in the experimental design represented a distinct functional type derived from two levels of each of two functional traits, nitrogen acquisition (N2-fixing legume ...