The economic value of grassland species for carbon storage

Authors

Bruce A. Hungate, Northern Arizona University
Edward B. Barbier, University of Wyoming
Amy W. Ando, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Samuel P. Marks, Northern Arizona University
Peter B. Reich, University of Minnesota
Natasja van Gestel, Northern Arizona University
David Tilman, University of Minnesota
Johannes M. H. Knops, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
David U. Hooper, Western Washington University
Bradley J. Butterfield, Northern Arizona University
Bradley J. Cardinale, The University Of Michigan

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2017

Citation

Hungate et al., Sci. Adv. 2017;3: e1601880

Comments

2017 © The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

Abstract

Carbon storage by ecosystems is valuable for climate protection. Biodiversity conservation may help increase carbon storage, but the value of this influence has been difficult to assess. We use plant, soil, and ecosystem carbon storage data from two grassland biodiversity experiments to show that greater species richness increases economic value: Increasing species richness from 1 to 10 had twice the economic value of increasing species richness from 1 to 2. The marginal value of each additional species declined as species accumulated, reflecting the nonlinear relationship between species richness and plant biomass production. Our demonstration of the economic value of biodiversity for enhancing carbon storage provides a foundation for assessing the value of biodiversity for decisions about land management. Combining carbon storage with other ecosystem services affected by biodiversity may well enhance the economic arguments for conservation even further.