The proportion of people living in urban areas is growing globally. Understanding how to manage urban biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and ecosystem services is becoming more important. Biodiversity can increase ecosystem functioning in non-urban systems. However, few studies have reviewed the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in urban areas, which differ in species compositions, abiotic environments, food webs, and turnover rates. We reviewed evidence of biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships in urban environments and assessed factors that influence the relationship direction. Based on 70 studies, relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning were more positive than negative in urban areas, especially for pollination and nutrient cycling and retention. Surprisingly, positive and negative relationships between biodiversity and biomass production and storage were equally not statistically different, perhaps due to extensive plant management in urban areas. The number of studies and geographic coverage of our review was still insufficient to provide a general predictive framework for when biodiversity positively impacts ecosystem functioning. We identify gaps and opportunities to improve urban biodiversity–ecosystem functioning research and discuss how our findings can improve urban green space management.

中文翻译：

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生物多样性促进城市生态系统功能


全球居住在城市地区的人口比例正在增长。了解如何管理城市生物多样性、生态系统功能和生态系统服务变得越来越重要。生物多样性可以增强非城市系统的生态系统功能。然而，很少有研究回顾城市地区生物多样性和生态系统功能之间的关系，因为城市地区的物种组成、非生物环境、食物网和周转率各不相同。我们回顾了城市环境中生物多样性与生态系统功能关系的证据，并评估了影响关系方向的因素。根据 70 项研究，在城市地区，生物多样性和生态系统功能之间的关系是积极的，而不是消极的，特别是在授粉和养分循环和保留方面。令人惊讶的是，生物多样性与生物质生产和储存之间的正向和负向关系在统计上同样没有差异，这可能是由于城市地区广泛的植物管理所致。我们审查的研究数量和地理覆盖范围仍然不足以为生物多样性何时对生态系统功能产生积极影响提供一般预测框架。我们确定了改善城市生物多样性——生态系统功能研究的差距和机会，并讨论了我们的研究结果如何改善城市绿地管理。