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The proportion of people living in urban areas is growing globally. Understanding how to manage urban biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and ecosystem services is becoming more important. Biodiversity can increase ecosystem functioning in non-urban systems. However, few studies have reviewed the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in urban areas, which differ in species compositions, abiotic environments, food webs, and turnover rates. We reviewed evidence of biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships in urban environments and assessed factors that influence the relationship direction. Based on 70 studies, relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning were more positive...
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This database contains documented observations of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in urban areas globally published between 2006 and June 2023. We systematically reviewed publications from Web of Science. To be included, studies needed to explicitly assess how at least one metric of biodiversity related to at least one ecosystem function and must have been conducted in an urban setting (as defined by the study author). We only included studies that explicitly assessed correlations between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning or tested cause/effect models or experiments. We extracted data related to basic study information and methodology, and the ecosystem function assessed, focal...
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Natural ecosystems store large amounts of carbon globally, as organisms absorb carbon from the atmosphere to build large, long-lasting, or slow-decaying structures such as tree bark or root systems. An ecosystem’s carbon sequestration potential is tightly linked to its biological diversity. Yet when considering future projections, many carbon sequestration models fail to account for the role biodiversity plays in carbon storage. Here, we assess the consequences of plant biodiversity loss for carbon storage under multiple climate and land-use change scenarios. We link a macroecological model projecting changes in vascular plant richness under different scenarios with empirical data on relationships between biodiversity...
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