Balslev, H. & Skov, F. (eds.) 2009: Biodiversity at the Ecosystem Level – Patterns and Processes. Proceedings of the 2nd DanBIF conference, 26-27 April 2009. National Environmental Research Institute, Aarhus University. 44 pp. – NERI Technical Report no. 741.
When the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF[1]) was planned in the late 1990’es and started in 2001 it was decided to focus on so-called primary biodiversity data, i.e., the 1.5–3 billion specimens in the World's natural history museums. This inevitably gave a strong focus on the organismic level of biodiversity, a focus which would make the project more feasible given the available resources, and also a focus which would distinguish GBIF from other related activities that were concerned with biodiversity research and informatics. When the group behind the Danish participant node of GBIF (DanBIF) applied for funding to the Danish Natural Science Research Council, it pledged also to explore the relationship between biodiversity informatics at the organismic level and other levels of biodiversity, such as the molecular level and the ecosystem level.
Consequently, DanBIF[2] has arranged a series of conferences. On 11-12 March 2004 the first of these conferences, dealing with Molecular Biodiversity was held at the University of Copenhagen. The main questions of that conference were: What is molecular biodiversity? What is the connection between molecular biodiversity and other levels of biodiversity? How do we manage molecular biodiversity? What might be gained by combining the different fields of biodiversity sciences? The main conclusions of the conference were that the science of molecular and organismic biodiversity is one science. Despite differences in methods used, the research questions are quite similar. Moreover, the two approaches are complementary and one approach does not make sense without the other
This publication contains the presentations and discussion from a second DanBIF conference, entitled Biodiversity at the Ecosystem Level – Patterns and Processes[3], held 26–27 April 2006 at Aarhus University. The questions asked at this conference were: What is biodiversity at the ecosystem level? How is it related to biodiversity at other levels of organization? How may GBIF deal with ecosystem level data and informatics?
The conference had two important goals. The first was to present an overview of contemporary research related to ecosystem level biodiversity and the second was to help GBIF formulate a strategy for dealing with biodiversity above the species and molecular levels and make data available for the end-users.
To set the scene for the presentations and discussions we asked the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) to present its view of biodiversity informatics from a global perspective, and in particular its understanding of how ecosystem-level data can be integrated with organismic-level data in web-based information systems such as that of GBIF. We also asked the European Environment Agency (EEA) to provide background information about how an agency — charged with coordinating international biodiversity management — handles the integration of different levels of biodiversity. Finally we asked the Danish Forest and Nature Agency to provide a perspective of how different levels of biodiversity can be integrated in concrete management plans.
On the background provided by these brokers and users of biodiversity information the scientific programme set out to explore fundamental aspects of biodiversity at the ecosystem level and how it relates to biodiversity at other levels of biological organization. This was done in three sessions, each with a few expert presentations followed by discussions. We asked two discussants to analyse each expert presentation and moderate the discussion so that it would contribute to the goals of the conference: to define biodiversity at the ecosystem level and provide operational suggestions for how ecosystem level biodiversity data can be handled in conjunction with data relating to other levels of biodiversity.
The presentations and discussions were presented under three themes.
In his opening lecture Robert Whittaker (Oxford) reminded the audience of Tansley’s definition for the term ecosystem, which involve both the organism-complex but also the interrelationships between organisms and their environment, and we were also remindend of how this definition encompass systems that vary in size from very small ones to very large ones. The problem of scale was discussed and also how, at the larger scales, the ecosystem concept is not clearly separated from other concepts such as biome, life zones or ecoregions. Not surprisingly then, ecosystem diversity appears not to have an agreed on definition but when discussed usually cover such features as diversity of species assemblages or the variety of ecosystems or habitats in a region. Therefore when discussing ecosystem diversity it is important to clarify what we measure and the spatial scale of application. The richness of the system affects our capacity to study it; the richer the system the more difficult it becomes to obtain even simple measures such as species richness at landscape level. In conclusion ecosystem diversity remains a concept without clear and agreed on definitions and the design of experiments and analyses and interpretation of data remains a challenge.
Tom Fenchel (Copenhagen) drew the attention to important differences in population structure and biogeography of large and small organisms. Most species measure about 1 cm and larger and smaller species are less numerous. The low number of large species is accompanied by low population sizes and higher extinction rates, whereas smaller species in general have very large population sizes and therefore remain more resistant to extinction events. Large species also tend to be narrowly distributed whereas small species have much wider ranges. At the ecosystem level this translates into a situation where the small species are less specific to the ecosystem, whereas the larger ones tends to be more specific. In the discussion, conservation aspects of these differences were emphasised concluding that the larger species would be more threatened and in need of conservation measures.
Donald Canfield (Odense) painted the grand picture of evolution of life on Earth, reminding us that organisms and ecosystems as we know them today have only existed for relatively short time, and that early biodiversity in many cases depended on energy sources that were quite different from the dominating oxygen producing photosynthetic organisms we know today. Species definition in extant prokaryotes remain difficult and often depend on molecular rather than morphological differences. This raises questions concerning the definition of ecosystems and ecosystem diversity when it involves microbial biodiversity.
Following the first section’s focus on definitions of ecosystem and biodiversity and various problems related to this, Bob Bunce (Wageningen) turned to the more practical aspects of surveillance and monitoring of ecosystem biodiversity across different scales in time and space. Much work in Europe is related to various international initiatives such as EU’s Habitat Directive and Natura 2000 and often depend on data gathered for different purposes and in different contexts. Hence scalability and consistency in the data are major hurdles to using them but much progress has been made, and some of it is represented in the Handbook for Surveillance and Monitoring of European Habitats which was authored by the speaker and his colleagues.
In many parts of the World the diversity of ecosystems may be difficult to appreciate due to strong anthropogenic alterations of the vegetation. The western Amazon basin and the eastern slopes of the Andes may be the only large-scale orogeny and foreland where vegetation patterns are still in a natural condition and where the shaping of a megadiverse complex of ecosystems can be studied. Jukka Salo (Turku) described the intricate processes which, over the past 20 Ma have created a mosaic of ecosystems and habitats that may be the richest on Earth. The richness of the system provides methodological constrains on designing appropriate studies, and the enormity of the complex of ecosystem makes it logistically challenging, especially considering the low number of researchers available for its study. Nonetheless, the past 25 years have shown that the early 20th century notion of one large uniform Amazonian ecosystem can no longer be upheld.
Global Change affects ecosystem and their diversity, both the diversity of their component organisms and the diversity of ecosystems themselves. The drivers of these changes vary over time as explained by Marc Metzger (Wageningen) and in the UK, for example, the main driver in the 1980s was habitat fragmentation but in the 1990s changed to eutrophication. Scenarios suggest that land use change will become a significant driver that causes change in European ecosystems. Modelling remain difficult and even more difficult is it to provide interpretations of the models for the policy domain. Available baseline data remains inadequate when it comes to species information. This becomes a relevant challenge for organisations such as GBIF when making their information available for ecosystem research and management.
Conservation assessment and planning are both practical applications in which profound understanding of the ecosystem diversity and function are crucial. Simon Ferrier (Black Mountain) demonstrated how spatial modelling of biodiversity at the ecosystem level may be a very useful tool in biodiversity management, combining data from multiple species and producing information on spatial patterns in the distribution of biodiversity. This includes predictive mapping of community types, species groups, axes or gradients of compositional variation and macroecological properties such as species richness.
One of the most frequently mentioned applications related to ecosystem diversity is the exploitation of ecosystems for the good of humans, the so-called Ecosystems Services, which have been widely heralded, not least after the appearance of the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. Jan Bengtsson (Uppsala) discussed this and critized the simplistic view that there is a direct correlation between the diversity of organisms in a system and the amount of ecosystem services it provides. Still the questions of how biodiversity and ecosystem services are related and what it means to human welfare remains an important research topic, not least given the rate of land use change and potential loss of biodiversity we are facing. It was suggested that GBIF could be an important player in maintaining focus on this and similar questions.
The study of ecosystem and ecosystem biodiversity lends itself to being done with computer-based tools, especially considering the often very complex nature of the systems. At the same time increasing amounts of data are becoming available in digital form. Nonetheless, the boom in computer software and data has often made it more difficult than before to secure the accuracy of the data and the analyses carried out. The building of integrated workflow systems that can use a variety of tools and databases across heterogeneous data is barely emerging. Andrew Jones (Cardiff) presented some recent finding in the field and also some of the big challenges that remain, one of them being the naming of organism in which one often finds a diversity of scientific opinion and competing taxonomies. Solving that and other similar problems will be crucial or the implementation of workflow systems in the study of ecosystem diversity.
To finalize the conference we had asked two generalist biodiversity workers, a research scientist and a high level biodiversity bureaucrat, to summarize their understanding of the presentations and discussions.
Each speaker was asked to write an extended abstract of his or her presentation. These abstracts and a brief summary of the discussion that took place after each presentation are presented in this booklet.
Contact: Head of Department Flemming Skov, NERI, tel. +45 8920 1525 fs@dmu.dk
Full report in PDF-format (1.1 MB).
