A Remotely-Sensed Biodiversity Proxy Captures the Global Multifunctionality of Ecosystem Functioning

Our understanding of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is still limited by the difficulty in simultaneously retrieving biodiversity and ecosystem functions at scales beyond small measurement plots and repeatedly in time. ere, we leveraged fine-scale remote sensing data from Sentinel 2 to estimate biodiversity at 147 sites across the globe, where eddy covariance fluxes of carbon, water, and energy are measured. From eddy covariance measurements we derived several ecosystem functions and metrics of multifunctionality (that is, the simultaneous provision of multiple ecosystem functions) and related all derived metrics to a remotely-sensed heterogeneity metric as proxy of plant diversity (Rao Q index). We found that Rao Q is an important predictor of single ecosystem functions and multifunctionality, hinting at a positive effect of biodiversity on the functioning of ecosystems. Surprisingly, Rao Q was generally more important than mean site climate and comparable to the structural components of the ecosystem in predicting ecosystem functions and multifunctionality. We provide strong evidence for significant positive effects of a remotely-sensed biodiversity proxy on single ecosystem functions and ecosystem multifunctionality. Contrary to common belief, the positive biodiversity effects are on par with structural effects and significantly more important than mean climatic effects. Capitalizing on recent and future advances in the remote sensing of both diversity and ecosystem functional properties, our study paves the way to the spatially and temporally continuous characterization of the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship at the landscape, regional, and global scale.