Building on 13 years of field research in the tropical lowlands of Costa Rica, this project relates biological diversity to ecosystem functioning. Field studies involved experimental ecosystems that were complex enough to reveal the role of diversity, yet simple enough so that scientists could understand the processes responsible for observations. The objective of this research is to gain further, more synthetic, insights and understanding of the relationships among individual plant species and combinations of plant species, and factors that influence an ecosystem's capacity to be sustained. This will be accomplished by integrating results reported in the project's publications together with new analyses of data on soils and vegetation.
The research will result in wide dissemination of findings through publications that target relatively broad audiences. Those publications will describe the implications of the research for land use and restoration of ecosystem processes and will couple whole-system nutrient status to productivity, leaching, and resource partitioning. The findings are applicable to ecological issues of importance to society, including the design of sustainable systems of land use and ecosystem restoration. By understanding the mechanisms and processes involved resource managers will have improved ability to generalize and avoid having to treat each situation as unique.
