ORCID Profile
0000-0003-0471-1371
Current Organisation
University of Colorado at Boulder
Does something not look right? The information on this page has been harvested from data sources that may not be up to date. We continue to work with information providers to improve coverage and quality. To report an issue, use the Feedback Form.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 12-07-2023
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 29-08-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-019-11890-7
Abstract: Ecological systems are made up of complex and often unknown interactions and feedbacks. Uncovering these interactions and feedbacks among species, ecosystem functions, and ecosystem services is challenging, costly, and time-consuming. Here, we ask: for which ecosystem features does resolving the uncertainty about the feedbacks from ecosystem function to species improve management outcomes? We develop a dynamic value of information analysis for risk-neutral and risk-prone managers on motif ecosystems and explore the influence of five ecological features. We find that learning the feedbacks from ecosystem function to species does not improve management outcomes for maximising bio ersity, yet learning which species benefit from an ecosystem function improves management outcomes for ecosystem services by up to 25% for risk-neutral managers and 231% for risk-prone managers. Our general approach provides useful guidance for managers and researchers on when learning feedbacks from ecosystem function to species can improve management outcomes for multiple conservation objectives.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-2019
DOI: 10.1002/ECS2.2625
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 02-11-2020
Abstract: Valuing, managing and conserving marine bio ersity and a full range of ecosystem services is at the forefront of research and policy agendas. However, bio ersity is being lost at up to a thousand times the average background rate. Traditional disciplinary and siloed conservation approaches are not able to tackle this massive loss of bio ersity because they generally ignore or overlook the interactive and dynamic nature of ecosystems processes, limiting their predictability. To conserve marine bio ersity, we must assess the interactions and impacts among bio ersity and ecosystem services (BD-ES). The scaling up in complexity from single species to entire communities is necessary, albeit challenging, for a deeper understanding of how ecosystem services relate to bio ersity and the roles species have in ecosystem service provision. These interactions are challenging to map, let alone fully assess, but network and system-based approaches provide a powerful way to progress beyond those limitations. Here, we introduce a conceptual multi-layered network approach to understanding how ecosystem services supported by bio ersity drive the total service provision, how different stressors impact BD-ES and where conservation efforts should be placed to optimize the delivery of ecosystem services and protection of bio ersity. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Integrative research perspectives on marine conservation’.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-10-2020
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-020-19252-4
Abstract: Eutrophication is a widespread environmental change that usually reduces the stabilizing effect of plant ersity on productivity in local communities. Whether this effect is scale dependent remains to be elucidated. Here, we determine the relationship between plant ersity and temporal stability of productivity for 243 plant communities from 42 grasslands across the globe and quantify the effect of chronic fertilization on these relationships. Unfertilized local communities with more plant species exhibit greater asynchronous dynamics among species in response to natural environmental fluctuations, resulting in greater local stability (alpha stability). Moreover, neighborhood communities that have greater spatial variation in plant species composition within sites (higher beta ersity) have greater spatial asynchrony of productivity among communities, resulting in greater stability at the larger scale (gamma stability). Importantly, fertilization consistently weakens the contribution of plant ersity to both of these stabilizing mechanisms, thus diminishing the positive effect of bio ersity on stability at differing spatial scales. Our findings suggest that preserving grassland functional stability requires conservation of plant ersity within and among ecological communities.
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Date: 2017
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-09-2017
DOI: 10.1111/GCB.13457
Abstract: Climate change is having a significant impact on ecosystem services and is likely to become increasingly important as this phenomenon intensifies. Future impacts can be difficult to assess as they often involve long timescales, dynamic systems with high uncertainties, and are typically confounded by other drivers of change. Despite a growing literature on climate change impacts on ecosystem services, no quantitative syntheses exist. Hence, we lack an overarching understanding of the impacts of climate change, how they are being assessed, and the extent to which other drivers, uncertainties, and decision making are incorporated. To address this, we systematically reviewed the peer-reviewed literature that assesses climate change impacts on ecosystem services at subglobal scales. We found that the impact of climate change on most types of services was predominantly negative (59% negative, 24% mixed, 4% neutral, 13% positive), but varied across services, drivers, and assessment methods. Although uncertainty was usually incorporated, there were substantial gaps in the sources of uncertainty included, along with the methods used to incorporate them. We found that relatively few studies integrated decision making, and even fewer studies aimed to identify solutions that were robust to uncertainty. For management or policy to ensure the delivery of ecosystem services, integrated approaches that incorporate multiple drivers of change and account for multiple sources of uncertainty are needed. This is undoubtedly a challenging task, but ignoring these complexities can result in misleading assessments of the impacts of climate change, suboptimal management outcomes, and the inefficient allocation of resources for climate adaptation.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2017
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-01-2021
DOI: 10.1002/ECY.3218
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 2023
DOI: 10.1002/ECS2.4342
Abstract: Synthesis research in ecology and environmental science improves understanding, advances theory, identifies research priorities, and supports management strategies by linking data, ideas, and tools. Accelerating environmental challenges increases the need to focus synthesis science on the most pressing questions. To leverage input from the broader research community, we convened a virtual workshop with participants from many countries and disciplines to examine how and where synthesis can address key questions and themes in ecology and environmental science in the coming decade. Seven priority research topics emerged: (1) ersity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ), (2) human and natural systems, (3) actionable and use‐inspired science, (4) scale, (5) generality, (6) complexity and resilience, and (7) predictability. Additionally, two issues regarding the general practice of synthesis emerged: the need for increased participant ersity and inclusive research practices and increased and improved data flow, access, and skill‐building. These topics and practices provide a strategic vision for future synthesis in ecology and environmental science.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 25-06-2018
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 14-12-2021
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 10-04-2023
DOI: 10.1111/ELE.14212
Abstract: Ecological communities are increasingly subject to natural and human‐induced additions of species, as species shift their ranges under climate change, are introduced for conservation and are unintentionally moved by humans. As such, decisions about how to manage ecosystems subject to species introductions and considering multiple management objectives need to be made. However, the impacts of gaining new species on ecological communities are difficult to predict due to uncertainty in introduced species characteristics, the novel interactions that will be produced by that species, and the recipient ecosystem structure. Drawing on ecological and conservation decision theory, we synthesise literature into a conceptual framework for species introduction decision‐making based on ecological networks in high‐uncertainty contexts. We demonstrate the application of this framework to a theoretical decision surrounding assisted migration considering both bio ersity and ecosystem service objectives. We show that this framework can be used to evaluate trade‐offs between outcomes, predict worst‐case scenarios, suggest when one should collect additional data, and allow for improving knowledge of the system over time.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.TREE.2016.10.011
Abstract: Managing ecosystems to provide ecosystem services in the face of global change is a pressing challenge for policy and science. Predicting how alternative management actions and changing future conditions will alter services is complicated by interactions among components in ecological and socioeconomic systems. Failure to understand those interactions can lead to detrimental outcomes from management decisions. Network theory that integrates ecological and socioeconomic systems may provide a path to meeting this challenge. While network theory offers promising approaches to examine ecosystem services, few studies have identified how to operationalize networks for managing and assessing erse ecosystem services. We propose a framework for how to use networks to assess how drivers and management actions will directly and indirectly alter ecosystem services.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-07-2022
DOI: 10.1002/FEE.2536
Abstract: Despite substantial progress in understanding global bio ersity loss, major taxonomic and geographic knowledge gaps remain. Decision makers often rely on expert judgement to fill knowledge gaps, but are rarely able to engage with sufficiently large and erse groups of specialists. To improve understanding of the perspectives of thousands of bio ersity experts worldwide, we conducted a survey and asked experts to focus on the taxa and freshwater, terrestrial, or marine ecosystem with which they are most familiar. We found several points of overwhelming consensus (for instance, multiple drivers of bio ersity loss interact synergistically) and important demographic and geographic differences in specialists’ perspectives and estimates. Experts from groups that are underrepresented in bio ersity science, including women and those from the Global South, recommended different priorities for conservation solutions, with less emphasis on acquiring new protected areas, and provided higher estimates of bio ersity loss and its impacts. This may in part be because they disproportionately study the most highly threatened taxa and habitats. Front Ecol Environ 2022
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-05-2023
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-023-37194-5
Abstract: Causal effects of bio ersity on ecosystem functions can be estimated using experimental or observational designs — designs that pose a tradeoff between drawing credible causal inferences from correlations and drawing generalizable inferences. Here, we develop a design that reduces this tradeoff and revisits the question of how plant species ersity affects productivity. Our design leverages longitudinal data from 43 grasslands in 11 countries and approaches borrowed from fields outside of ecology to draw causal inferences from observational data. Contrary to many prior studies, we estimate that increases in plot-level species richness caused productivity to decline: a 10% increase in richness decreased productivity by 2.4%, 95% CI [−4.1, −0.74]. This contradiction stems from two sources. First, prior observational studies incompletely control for confounding factors. Second, most experiments plant fewer rare and non-native species than exist in nature. Although increases in native, dominant species increased productivity, increases in rare and non-native species decreased productivity, making the average effect negative in our study. By reducing the tradeoff between experimental and observational designs, our study demonstrates how observational studies can complement prior ecological experiments and inform future ones.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 23-03-2022
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 21-01-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-021-20997-9
Abstract: A Correction to this paper has been published: 0.1038/s41467-021-20997-9.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 24-06-2019
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2022
DOI: 10.1016/J.TREE.2021.11.012
Abstract: Social-ecological networks (SENs) represent the complex relationships between ecological and social systems and are a useful tool for analyzing and managing ecosystem services. However, mainstreaming the application of SENs in ecosystem service research has been hindered by a lack of clarity about how to match research questions to ecosystem service conceptualizations in SEN (i.e., as nodes, links, attributes, or emergent properties). Building from different disciplines, we propose a typology to represent ecosystem service in SENs and identify opportunities and challenges of using SENs in ecosystem service research. Our typology provides guidance for this growing field to improve research design and increase the breadth of questions that can be addressed with SEN to understand human-nature interdependencies in a changing world.
No related grants have been discovered for Laura Dee.