Recovering ecosystem functions in a restored salt marsh by leveraging positive effects of biodiversity

摘要: Natural and managed ecosystems provide a variety of ecological, economic, and cultural benefits; yet most have been altered by human activity such that they exhibit deficits in both biodiversity and functionality. Identifying factors accelerating the recovery of key species and associated functions in degraded systems is therefore a global priority. We tested the hypotheses that explicitly incorporating biodiversity into restoration design will lead to greater ecosystem function and that positive effects of diversity will strengthen over time due to an increase in the importance of complementarity relative to selection effects. We did this by manipulating salt marsh plant species richness across a tidal elevation gradient as part of a coastal wetland restoration project in southern California. Overall, diversity enhanced biomass accumulation in experimental plots, with the magnitude of the effect strengthening from one to three …