Executive summary

From IAI CRN 2015

Land use change is believed to be the global change driver with the greatest potential to affect biodiversity and ecosystem processes and services in the next decades. One of the main ways in which land use change can alter ecosystem functioning is by causing shifts in the plant functional biodiversity (i.e. the value, range and relative abundance of plant functional traits present in a given ecosystem, hereafter FD). These alterations modify the ecosystem services perceived by different stakeholders, both locally and remotely.

Our research will focus on the design and implementation of a new interdisciplinary framework to analyze and compare field studies of land use change in the Americas from the tropics to the tundra . We will build a conceptual link between major land use change trajectories, FD, ecosystem processes and services, and vulnerability-sustainability of the production systems that are based on them. We will give empirical content to such framework through the integration of new and on-going studies of FD and ecosystem processes, and by linking ecological and socio-economic conceptual models and empirical information on perceived ecosystem services obtained in the field. Traditional natural and social science methods of gathering empirical information in the field will be combined with participatory methodologies in order to promote the involvement of different stakeholders from the early stages of the process.

In order to develop our interdisciplinary framework, we propose:

• To construct a network of scientists addressing links between land use as a driver of global change, FD shifts, and ecosystem processes and services in the Americas;
• To develop the first comparison of the effects of land use on FD and to establish how this in turn has the potential to modify ecosystem processes in systems under different degrees of climatic control;
• To establish links between FD, ecosystem functioning and major ecosystem services perceived by different local and non-local stakeholders;
• To develop a conceptual framework and a set of empirical tools and recommendations, available to a wide community of scientists, para-scientist and land-managers, to be used as the basis for management decisions aimed to assess and optimize the ecosystem-service value of the land considering the interests of different stakeholders.

Our project has the potential to advance the interdisciplinary field of ecology and sustainability in the region. We will advance the scientific understanding of the links between FD and ecosystem processes, and we will carry out the first large-scale attempt to evaluate FD in megadiverse neotropical forests. A set of standard protocols that could be used widely in the study and management of FD in the region will be developed in the process and made available to the wider community. We will provide the first conceptual framework, backed up by empirical data and validated by the participation of different stakeholders, about the links between FD and the ecosystem services obtained or lost by different land use practices common in the region. We will contribute to capacity building in interdisciplinary ecosystem assessment in the Americas, with emphasis in Latin America. at different levels, from scientists to managers to grassroots organizations.