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Landscape Ecology - Understanding relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem services in real landscapes

Guest Editors

Jiangxiao Qiu, University of Florida, School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences, Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA
Matthew Mitchell, University of British Columbia, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, Vancouver, BC Canada

Theme & Objective

Human actions are causing rapid biodiversity declines worldwide. Recent global assessments reveal that >75% of species have been lost in the most severely human-impacted ecosystems, and current rates of species extinction are ~100 to 1000 times faster than background rates observed in the fossil record.

There is now a general consensus that biodiversity loss is altering fundamental processes that underlie the production of ecosystem goods and services essential for human wellbeing (e.g., food, timber, clean air and water). However, most of this consensus has been built from experiments performed at relatively small spatial scales over short time-frames – scales that suffer from a lack of realism and match poorly with the scales at which human actions, landscape changes, conservation policy and management decisions take place. Ecological theory and recent empirical studies suggest that the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem services might differ fundamentally in large-scale, real-world landscapes from those revealed in small-scale, controlled experiments.

At present, such knowledge is scattered across studies from a range of systems and services, and also very few studies have taken a social-ecological approach to examining the role of biodiversity. In response to these research needs, we propose this special issue to review, synthesize and advance our understanding on the patterns and mechanisms of how biodiversity changes in real-world landscapes may alter the provision of ecosystem services that directly affect human wellbeing.

Specifically, this collection will bring together reviews (this opens in a new tab), perspectives (this opens in a new tab), and empirical case studies across different systems (e.g., terrestrial, aquatic and marine) using diverse approaches such as field observations and experiments, modelling, and data synthesis. The outcomes of this collection will help to:

  1. synthesize commonalities across different systems while addressing variations in biodiversity effects on ecosystem services;
  2. identify general patterns of biodiversity effects on different types of services;
  3. infer how effects of biodiversity may scale up from small experiments to real landscapes with greater spatial and temporal heterogeneity; and
  4. shed light on the role of landscape-scale abiotic and human factors and processes in mediating mechanistic linkages between biodiversity and ecosystem services.


Insights from this collection will summarize current knowledge on this topic, and identify research priorities to inform conservation, management and policy actions to sustain biodiversity and ecosystem services at landscape scales in the Anthropocene, and help support and amplify United Nation Sustainable Development Goals 12: Responsible Consumption & Production (this opens in a new tab), 13: Climate Action (this opens in a new tab), 14: Life Below Water (this opens in a new tab), and 15: Life on Land (this opens in a new tab).

Students and Early Career Researchers (this opens in a new tab) are also encouraged to submit their research to this collection.

Pre-submission enquiries are welcome.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: December 31, 2023


EXPECTED PUBLICATION: 2024

Landscape Ecology is a fully open access publication in which an article processing charge applies (this opens in a new tab). Please see our Journal Pricing FAQs (this opens in a new tab) for general APC information and our APC Funding & Support Services (this opens in a new tab) for assistance.

About the Guest Editors

Dr. Jiangxiao Qiu is broadly interested in landscape ecology, ecosystem service, global change ecology, conservation biology, and sustainability science. His research goal is to understand and predict how global environmental changes alter ecosystems and biodiversity at regional to global scales, and their consequences for a range of ecosystem services (benefits people obtain from nature such as food, freshwater, flood mitigation, erosion control, climate regulation and recreation) that underpins human well-being. Dr. Qiu is particularly interested in understanding effects of multiple drivers of change (e.g., climate change and extremes, sea-level rise, land use and land management, biological invasions) and their interactions. His research is highly interdisciplinary, and uses approaches integrating computational modeling, remote sensing, landscape analysis, field observation and experiment, data synthesis, and social sciences to address basic and applied research questions across a range of spatial and temporal scales. The ultimate goal of Dr. Qiu’s research is to produce knowledge that is critical for developing solutions for real-world conservation, management and policy challenges.

Mr. Matthew Mitchell seeks to understand how spatial patterns of human activities across landscapes impact biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being, with an emphasis on agricultural and urban systems. To investigate these linkages, he uses diverse techniques, including conceptual, modeling, empirical, remote sensing, and advanced spatial analysis approaches. This has led Mr. Mitchell to develop conceptual advances regarding the effects of landscape fragmentation on ecosystem services, innovative work to understand the how forest fragments influence agricultural ecosystem services and use this knowledge to inform decision-making, and novel spatial analyses using high-resolution remotely sensed data to link urban land use patterns with three-dimensional vegetation structure and carbon storage. His future research agenda focuses on combining field-based and remotely-sensed spatial data from the natural and social sciences in new and innovative ways to allow the development of more multi-functional and sustainable agricultural and urban landscapes. Mr. Mitchell’s full biography can be viewed here (this opens in a new tab).


Contact Information

Jiangxiao Qiu
University of Florida
School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences
Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center
Fort Lauderdale, FL
USA
qiuj@ufl.edu (this opens in a new tab)
@Jiangxiao_Qiu (this opens in a new tab)

Matthew Mitchell
University of British Columbia
Faculty of Land and Food Systems
Vancouver, BC
Canada
matthew.mitchell@ubc.ca (this opens in a new tab)
@MGEMitchell (this opens in a new tab)

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