Plant Biodiversity, Nutrient Use Efficiency and Productivity.

Changes in plant biodiversity can have greater impacts on the productivity of prairie grassland ecosystems than nitrogen fertilization, irrigation, elevated CO2, and fire. Biodiversity also greatly impacts ecosystem stability, invasion resistance, disease incidence, and the structure of consumer foodwebs. Factors, such an nitrogen fertilization, that initially increase productivity but that also cause the loss of plant diversity have their effects on productivity decreases in direct proportion to the loss of plant biodiversity that they cause. Indeed, analyses of the impacts of fertilization, irrigation, elevated CO2, and fire on a variety of ecosystem processes shows that their impacts often come from how these factors change biodiversity, with biodiversity being the actual direct driver of the changes in ecosystem functioning. In total, the past two decades of research on the ecological impacts of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning suggests that biodiversity has much great importance than previously suspected.