Biodiversity offsetting has quickly gained political support all around the world. Avoided loss (averted risk) offsetting means compensation for ecological damage via averted loss of anticipated impacts through the removal of threatening processes in compensation areas.Leakage means the phenomenon of environmentally damaging activity relocating elsewhere after being stopped locally by avoided l...

Theory predicts shifts in the magnitude and direction of biodiversity effects on ecosystem function (BEF) over succession, but this theory remains largely untested. We studied the relationship between aboveground tree biomass dynamics (Δbiomass) and multiple dimensions of biodiversity over 8-16 years in eight successional rainforests. We tested whether successional changes in diversity-Δbiomass...

As a potential mechanism to explain how biodiversity loss may influence variability in ecosystem functioning, we examine the hypothesis that biodiversity loss lowers similarity in species composition among local communities and that this decreased similarity in turn lowers ecosystem reliability. Ecosystem reliability refers to the probability that a system will provide a consistent level of per...

This paper describes a novel archaeological resource--preserved epiphytes on the timber structure of vernacular buildings--used, to our knowledge, for the first time to quantify a loss of biodiversity between pre-industrial and post-industrial landscapes. By matching the confirmed occurrence of epiphyte species for the pre-industrial period, with a statistical likelihood for their absence in th...

Although the impacts of the loss of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning are well established, the importance of the loss of biodiversity relative to other human-caused drivers of environmental change remains uncertain. Results of 11 experiments show that ecologically relevant decreases in grassland plant diversity influenced productivity at least as much as ecologically relevant changes in ni...

Strong feedback between global biodiversity loss and persistent, extreme rural poverty are major challenges in the face of concurrent food, energy, and environmental crises. This paper examines the role of industrial agricultural intensification and market integration as exogenous socio-ecological drivers of biodiversity loss and poverty traps in Latin America. We then analyze the potential of ...