Search for: All records

Abstract Groundwater is a vital ecosystem of the global water cycle, hosting unique biodiversity and providing essential services to societies. Despite being the largest unfrozen freshwater resource, in a period of depletion by extraction and pollution, groundwater environments have been repeatedly overlooked in global biodiversity conservation agendas. Disregarding the importance of groundwater as an ecosystem ignores its critical role in preserving surface biomes. To foster timely global conservation of groundwater, we propose elevating the concept of keystone species into the realm of ecosystems, claiming groundwater as a keystone ecosystem that influences the integrity of many dependent ecosystems. Our global analysis shows that over half of land surface areas (52.6%) has a medium‐to‐high interaction with groundwater, reaching up to 74.9% when deserts and high mountains are excluded. We postulate that the intrinsic transboundary features of groundwater are critical for shifting perspectives towards more holistic approaches in aquatic ecology and beyond. Furthermore, we propose eight key themes to develop a science‐policy integrated groundwater conservation agenda. Given ecosystems above and below the ground intersect at many levels, considering groundwater as an essential component of planetary health is pivotal to reduce biodiversity loss and buffer against climate change. 

Abstract Humans have long sought to restore species but little attention has been directed at how to best select a subset of foundation species for maintaining rich assemblages that support ecosystems, like coral reefs and rainforests, which are increasingly threatened by environmental change.We propose a two‐part hedging approach that selects optimized sets of species for restoration. The first part acknowledges that biodiversity supports ecosystem functions and services, and so it ensures precaution against loss by allocating an even spread of phenotypic traits. The second part maximizes species and ecosystem persistence by weighting species based on characteristics that are known to improve ecological persistence—for example abundance, species range and tolerance to environmental change.Using existing phenotypic‐trait and ecological data for reef building corals, we identified sets of ecologically persistent species by examining marginal returns in occupancy of phenotypic trait space. We compared optimal sets of species with those from the world's southern‐most coral reef, which naturally harbours low coral diversity, to show these occupy much of the trait space. Comparison with an existing coral restoration program indicated that current corals used for restoration only cover part of the desired trait space and programs may be improved by including species with different traits.Synthesis and applications. While there are many possible criteria for selecting species for restoration, the approach proposed here addresses the need to insure against unpredictable losses of ecosystem services by focusing on a wide range of phenotypic traits and ecological characteristics. Furthermore, the flexibility of the approach enables the functional goals of restoration to vary depending on environmental context, stakeholder values, and the spatial and temporal scales at which meaningful impacts can be achieved.