10.5061/DRYAD.T5C97
Moreno Mateos, David
Basque Centre for Climate Change
Barbier, Edward B.
University of Wyoming
Jones, Peter C.
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Jones, Holly P.
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Aronson, James
Missouri Botanical Garden
Lopez-Lopez, Jose A.
University of Bristol
McCrackin, Michelle L.
Stockholm University
Meli, Paula
Fundación Internacional para la Restauración de Ecosistemas, Madrid, Spain
Montoya, Daniel
French National Centre for Scientific Research
Rey Benayas, José
Fundación Internacional para la Restauración de Ecosistemas, Madrid, Spain
Data from: Anthropogenic ecosystem disturbance and the recovery debt
Dryad
dataset
2017
Ecosytem recovery
National Science Foundation
https://ror.org/021nxhr62
DBI-1052875
2017-11-10T00:00:00Z
2017-11-10T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14163
406805 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Ecosystem recovery from anthropogenic disturbances, either without human
intervention or assisted by ecological restoration, is increasingly
occurring worldwide. As ecosystems progress through recovery, it is
important to estimate any resulting deficit in biodiversity and functions.
Here we use data from 3,035 sampling plots worldwide, to quantify the
interim reduction of biodiversity and functions occurring during the
recovery process (that is, the ‘recovery debt’). Compared with reference
levels, recovering ecosystems run annual deficits of 46–51% for organism
abundance, 27–33% for species diversity, 32–42% for carbon cycling and
31–41% for nitrogen cycling. Our results are consistent across biomes but
not across degrading factors. Our results suggest that recovering and
restored ecosystems have less abundance, diversity and cycling of carbon
and nitrogen than ‘undisturbed’ ecosystems, and that even if complete
recovery is reached, an interim recovery debt will accumulate. Under such
circumstances, increasing the quantity of less-functional ecosystems
through ecological restoration and offsetting are inadequate alternatives
to ecosystem protection.
Ecosystem recovery databaseThis meta-analytical database includes data
from 354 studies of ecosystems undergoing recovery worldwide. We include
ecosystem recovering from agriculture, logging, eutrophication, mining,
hydrological disruption, overfishing, oil spills, and one natural
disturbance, hurricanes. We include studies reporting three measures, two
in the recovering ecosystem and one in a reference site.Moreno, Jones
database.xlsxEcosytem recovery R scriptsR scripts used to calculate the
recovery debt values with the meta-analytical database. Includes
generalized mixed models, heterogeneity tests, and variance adjustments to
meet meta-analytical criteria.Rdebt models.R
World