Cannabis Indica

Authors
Boris Worm, Edward B Barbier, Nicola Beaumont, J Emmett Duffy, Carl Folke, Benjamin S Halpern, Jeremy BC Jackson, Heike K Lotze, Fiorenza Micheli, Stephen R Palumbi, Enric Sala, Kimberley A Selkoe, John J Stachowicz, Reg Watson
Publication date
2006/11/3
Journal
science
Volume
314
Issue
5800
Pages
787-790
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Description
Human-dominated marine ecosystems are experiencing accelerating loss of populations and species, with largely unknown consequences. We analyzed local experiments, long-term regional time series, and global fisheries data to test how biodiversity loss affects marine ecosystem services across temporal and spatial scales. Overall, rates of resource collapse increased and recovery potential, stability, and water quality decreased exponentially with declining diversity. Restoration of biodiversity, in contrast, increased productivity fourfold and decreased variability by 21%, on average. We conclude that marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean's capacity to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations. Yet available data suggest that at this point, these trends are still reversible.
Total citations
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