Positive effects of tree diversity on tropical forest restoration in a field-scale experiment

Ryan Veryard; Jinhui Wu; Michael J. O'Brien; Rosila Anthony; Sabine Both; David F.R.P. Burslem; Bin Chen; Elena Fernandez Miranda Cagigal; Charles H.J. Godfray; Elia Godoong; Shunlin Liang; Philippe Saner; Bernhard Schmid; Yap Sau Wai; Jun Xie; Glen Reynolds; Andy Hector

doi:10.1126/sciadv.adf0938

Positive effects of tree diversity on tropical forest restoration in a field-scale experiment

Ryan Veryard, Jinhui Wu, Michael J. O'Brien, Rosila Anthony, Sabine Both, David F.R.P. Burslem, Bin Chen, Elena Fernandez Miranda Cagigal, Charles H.J. Godfray, Elia Godoong, Shunlin Liang, Philippe Saner, Bernhard Schmid, Yap Sau Wai, Jun Xie, Glen Reynolds, Andy Hector^* (Corresponding Author)

^*Corresponding author for this work

Aberdeen Centre For Environmental Sustainability

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Experiments under controlled conditions have established that ecosystem functioning is generally positively related to levels of biodiversity, but it is unclear how widespread these effects are in real-world settings and whether they can be harnessed for ecosystem restoration. We used remote-sensing data from the first decade of a long-term, field-scale tropical restoration experiment initiated in 2002 to test how the diversity of planted trees affected recovery of a 500-ha area of selectively logged forest measured using multiple sources of satellite data. Replanting using species-rich mixtures of tree seedlings with higher phylogenetic and functional diversity accelerated restoration of remotely sensed estimates of aboveground biomass, canopy cover, and leaf area index. Our results are consistent with a positive relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the lowland dipterocarp rainforests of SE Asia and demonstrate that using diverse mixtures of species can enhance their initial recovery after logging.

Original language	English
Article number	eadf0938
Number of pages	11
Journal	Science Advances
Volume	9
Issue number	37
Early online date	15 Sept 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf0938
Publication status	Published - 15 Sept 2023

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgments
We thank all SEARPP research assistants and other collaborators for the help in establishing and maintaining the Sabah Biodiversity Experiment. We acknowledge assistance and support from SEARRP, Sabah Forestry Department, and the Leverhulme Trust—the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery (A.H). Sabah Biodiversity Experiment data collection and maintenance was supported by Agencia Estatal de Investigación de España. This is Sabah Biodiversity Experiment publication 25.
Funding: This work was supported by Natural Environment Research Council grants NE/S007474/1 (R.V.), NE/K016253/1 (A.H., S.B., D.F.R.P.B., and G.R.), and NE/X000281/1 (A.H. and D.F.R.P.B.); Comunidad de Madrid Atracción de Talento Modalidad I Fellowship 2018-T1/AMB-11095 (MJO); Agencia Estatal de Investigación de España (Ramon y Cajal, RYC2021-032049-I) (MJO); University of Zurich Research Priority Program on Global Change and Biodiversity (B.S.); and National Natural Science Foundation of China grant 42101407 (J.W.).

Data Availability Statement

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. The data for this study have been deposited in the database Dryad and can be found at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8w9ghx3rs

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Copyright © 2023 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Veryard, R., Wu, J., O'Brien, M. J., Anthony, R., Both, S., Burslem, D. F. R. P., Chen, B., Cagigal, E. F. M., Godfray, C. H. J., Godoong, E., Liang, S., Saner, P., Schmid, B., Wai, Y. S., Xie, J., Reynolds, G., & Hector, A. (2023). Positive effects of tree diversity on tropical forest restoration in a field-scale experiment. Science Advances, 9(37), Article eadf0938. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf0938

Veryard, R, Wu, J, O'Brien, MJ, Anthony, R, Both, S, Burslem, DFRP, Chen, B, Cagigal, EFM, Godfray, CHJ, Godoong, E, Liang, S, Saner, P, Schmid, B, Wai, YS, Xie, J, Reynolds, G & Hector, A 2023, 'Positive effects of tree diversity on tropical forest restoration in a field-scale experiment', Science Advances, vol. 9, no. 37, eadf0938. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf0938

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title = "Positive effects of tree diversity on tropical forest restoration in a field-scale experiment",

abstract = "Experiments under controlled conditions have established that ecosystem functioning is generally positively related to levels of biodiversity, but it is unclear how widespread these effects are in real-world settings and whether they can be harnessed for ecosystem restoration. We used remote-sensing data from the first decade of a long-term, field-scale tropical restoration experiment initiated in 2002 to test how the diversity of planted trees affected recovery of a 500-ha area of selectively logged forest measured using multiple sources of satellite data. Replanting using species-rich mixtures of tree seedlings with higher phylogenetic and functional diversity accelerated restoration of remotely sensed estimates of aboveground biomass, canopy cover, and leaf area index. Our results are consistent with a positive relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the lowland dipterocarp rainforests of SE Asia and demonstrate that using diverse mixtures of species can enhance their initial recovery after logging.",

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AU - Burslem, David F.R.P.

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AU - Schmid, Bernhard

AU - Wai, Yap Sau

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AU - Reynolds, Glen

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Positive effects of tree diversity on tropical forest restoration in a field-scale experiment

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Data Availability Statement

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