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Stability of ecosystem functioning and diversity of grasslands at the landscape scale

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Abstract

Diversity often increases ecosystem functioning and enhances stability, but this relationship has been evaluated at the community scale and considering, for the most part, only species richness. Here, we explored the relationship between landscape diversity and either the coefficient of variation or the interannual standard deviation of greenness in Pampean grasslands and Patagonian meadows, and tried to elucidate the mechanisms responsible for the resulting patterns. The coefficient of variation decreased with increasing landscape richness in Pampas but remained constant in Patagonia, while the interannual standard deviation of greenness decreased in both regions. The diversity–variability relationship in Pampean grasslands was largely accounted for by the mechanism of statistical averaging, while in Patagonian meadows, it was accounted for by a combination of statistical averaging, mean–variance rescaling and positive covariation of landscape units. There were no cases of negative covariance among landscape units. This is the first demonstration that landscape diversity increases stability of ecosystem functioning.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI), Fondo para Investigación Ciéntifica y Tecnológica (FONCyt), Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) and Fundación Antorchas. The research and the manuscript were improved by helpful comments from W. Batista, M. Aguiar, E. Jobbagy, G. Baldi, F. Biganzoli and R. Grau.

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  1. Roxana Aragón

    Present address: Instituto de Ecología Regional (IER-University of Tucumán), Yerba Buena, CC 34 (4107), Tucumán, Argentina

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agronomy, Applied Quantitative Methods, IFEVA-CONICET, University of Buenos Aires, Av. San Martín 4453, C1417DSE, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Roxana Aragón & Marcos Texeira

  2. Department of Agronomy, Cátedra de Ecología, IFEVA-CONICET, University of Buenos Aires, Av. San Martín 4453, C1417DSE, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Martín Oesterheld & Gonzalo Irisarri

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  1. Roxana Aragón
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Correspondence to Roxana Aragón.

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Aragón, R., Oesterheld, M., Irisarri, G. et al. Stability of ecosystem functioning and diversity of grasslands at the landscape scale. Landscape Ecol 26, 1011–1022 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-011-9625-z

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