Dead planet, living planet

Correlations between response ratios for biodiversity and for provision of ecosystem services

Response ratio for services

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Supporting Regulating Provisioning Ecosystem service function

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Response ratio for biodiversity

Source: Benayas, et al. Enhancement of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services by Ecological Restoration: A Meta-Analysis, Science, 2009.

Figure 4: The relationship between biodiversity and degree of ecosystem service restored.

The meta-analysis revealed another crucial finding: increases in biodiversity and ecosystem service measures after restora- tion were positively correlated. This indicates that restoration actions focused on enhancing biodiversity should support in- creased provision of ecosystem services, particularly in tropi- cal terrestrial biomes. Conversely, these results suggest that ecosystem restoration focused mainly on improving services should also have a primary aim at restoring biodiversity, as eco- system services and biodiversity are intrinsically linked. Ecological restoration can act as an engine of economy and a source of green employment, so the results of this research give policymakers an extra incentive to restore degraded ecosystems.

(3) regulating (e.g., of climate, water supply, and soil charac- teristics), and (4) cultural (e.g., aesthetic value). In the study only the first three services were assessed, because cultural services were not measured explicitly in any of the studies ad- dressed. Measures of biodiversity were typically related to the abundance, species richness, diversity, growth, or biomass of organisms present. The study revealed that ecological restoration increased pro- vision of biodiversity and ecosystem services by 44 and 25%, respectively across the 89 studies of different restoration proj- ects. However, values of both remained lower in restored ver- sus intact reference ecosystems, underlining the challenges and timescales required to fully restore a degraded ecosystem. Ecological restoration was particularly effective in tropical ter- restrial areas, which hold the largest amounts of biodiversity and are usually subject to high levels of human pressure.

 Figure 5: Ecosystem service response to restoration in differ- ent biomes.

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