24-26th November 2014, Leipzig (Germany)
A large number of studies have shown that biodiversity can promote ecosystem functioning. However most of the evidence for this comes from small scale experiments in short-lived systems. Forests provide a range of critical ecosystem services and in order to manage them we need to understand the importance of forest diversity in driving ecosystem functioning at the large spatial scales relevant for forest ecosystem service provision. This means up-scaling from plot level studies to countries. The workshop aims to synthesise the extensive datasets generated in the FunDivEurope project. This project has data from: tree diversity experiments; from a network of comparative study plots in mature forests, which were selected to differ in tree species richness and composition, and from European forest inventories. We will bring together researchers from FunDiv and from outside the project to conduct novel synthesis on up-scaling biodiversity effects. We will explore the scale dependency of biodiversity effects on tree growth, comparing data from all three sources. We will then use data from the comparative study plots to study the context dependency of biodiversity effects and how environmental conditions alter the mechanisms behind biodiversity effects. Finally we will put the information together to up-scale biodiversity relations from plots to countries, using a functional trait framework to predict ecosystem functioning in new contexts and to map service delivery across Europe.
