A million and more trees for science
(2018) Nature Ecology & Evolution — Vol. 2, n° 5, p. 763-766 (2018)
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- Abstract
- Forests now cover approximately 30% of the Earth’s land surface1, support high levels of biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services to humanity2. About 30% of the world’s forests were lost during the past 5,000 years following human population growth, and forest cover is still being reduced at unprecedented rates, through deforestation and conversion to agriculture1. Reforestation and afforestation programmes exist in many countries to compensate for the loss of forest cover, with China’s Grain-for-Green programme being the largest. It is predicted that > 50% of industrial timber will come from plantations by around the middle of this century3. While planting restores tree cover, virtually all industrial plantations are single-species monocultures, most often of fast-growing cultivars or hybrids of pine, eucalypt, acacia, spruce, poplar or larch. Foremost among the many reasons for this are the high yields normally achieved with intensive, high-input silviculture under a predictable and stable climate, low disturbances, and minimal pests and diseases. However, with increasing recognition of the environmental costs of high-input systems, a changing climate, increasing exotic pests and diseases, and the increasing importance given to other ecosystem services provided by forests, the historical arguments in favour of monocultures are becoming less persuasive4. Indeed, over the past quarter century, research demonstrated a general trend for ecosystem functioning and the provisioning of ecosystem services to increase with higher levels of diversity5. This research was generally conducted with herbaceous plants that are more convenient experimental systems, but forests are now one of the main areas of research in this field despite the challenges they present.
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Citations
Paquette, A., Hector, A., Castagneyrol, B., Vanhellemont, M., Koricheva, J., Scherer-Lorenzen, M., Verheyen, K., Abdala-Roberts L, Auge H, Barsoum N, Bauhus J, Baum C, Bruelheide H, Cavender-Bares J, Eisenhauer N, Ferlian O, Ganade G, Godbold D, Gravel D, et al. (2018). A million and more trees for science. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2(5), 763-766. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0544-0 (Original work published 2018)