Linking biodiversity, ecosystem function, and Nature’s contributions to people: a macroecological energy flux perspective

Evaluating and mapping ecosystem functions and associated Nature’s contributions to people (NCP) across large spatial scales is complex.One particular and often overlooked challenge is to integrate community-level processes, such as species interactions, into the evaluation of flux-related NCP supply, especially when working at macroecological scales.This flux-related NCP evaluation could greatly benefit from advances in food web theory and statistical biodiversity modeling, which could simultaneously improve our understanding of the trophic interactions in ecological networks and the prediction of biodiversity across time ad space while accounting for abiotic drivers (climate and land use).We propose a macroecological framework that integrates biodiversity models and energy flux theory to upscale ecosystem functions and predicts the associated supply of flux-related NCP. At macroecological scales, the provision of Nature’s contributions to people (NCP) is mostly estimated with biophysical information, ignoring the ecological processes underlying them. This hinders our ability to properly quantify the impact of declining biodiversity and the provision of NCP. Here, we propose a framework that combines local-scale food web energy flux approaches and large-scale biodiversity models to evaluate ecosystem functions and flux-related NCP at extensive spatiotemporal scales. Importantly, this approach has the potential to upscale ecosystem functions, assess the vulnerability of flux-related NCP to the climate crisis, and support the development of multiscale mitigation policies. At macroecological scales, the provision of Nature’s contributions to people (NCP) is mostly estimated with biophysical information, ignoring the ecological processes underlying them. This hinders our ability to properly quantify the impact of declining biodiversity and the provision of NCP. Here, we propose a framework that combines local-scale food web energy flux approaches and large-scale biodiversity models to evaluate ecosystem functions and flux-related NCP at extensive spatiotemporal scales. Importantly, this approach has the potential to upscale ecosystem functions, assess the vulnerability of flux-related NCP to the climate crisis, and support the development of multiscale mitigation policies.