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.

Keywords

BiodiversityEcosystemMarine ecosystemEnvironmental scienceProductivityEcosystem servicesResource (disambiguation)Marine biodiversityEcologyEnvironmental resource managementFisheryOceanographyBiologyGeology

MeSH Terms

AnimalsBiodiversityConservation of Natural ResourcesDatabasesFactualEcosystemEukaryotaFisheriesFishesForecastingInvertebratesOceans and SeasPlantsPopulation DynamicsSeafoodSeawaterWater Pollution

Affiliated Institutions

Related Publications

Publication Info

Year
2006
Type
review
Volume
314
Issue
5800
Pages
787-790
Citations
4375
Access
Closed

Social Impact

Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions

Citation Metrics

4375
OpenAlex
71
Influential
3331
CrossRef

Cite This

Boris Worm, Edward B. Barbier, Nicola Beaumont et al. (2006). Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services. Science , 314 (5800) , 787-790. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1132294

Identifiers

DOI
10.1126/science.1132294
PMID
17082450

Data Quality

Data completeness: 81%