Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services

Abstract

Human-dominated marine ecosystems are experiencing accelerating loss of populations and species, with largely unknown consequences. We analyzed local experiments, long-term regional time series, and global fisheries data to test how biodiversity loss affects marine ecosystem services across temporal and spatial scales. Overall, rates of resource collapse increased and recovery potential, stability, and water quality decreased exponentially with declining diversity. Restoration of biodiversity, in contrast, increased productivity fourfold and decreased variability by 21%, on average. We conclude that marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean's capacity to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations. Yet available data suggest that at this point, these trends are still reversible.

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Affiliated Institutions

• Pacific University US
• Dalhousie University CA
• Plymouth Marine Laboratory GB
• Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute PA
• University of Wyoming US
• National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis US
• University of California, Davis US
• University of British Columbia CA
• Stanford University US
• Stockholm University SE
• Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences SE

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