Ana Liu
Research Mentor: Chang Wang
Mentor Department: Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, Business
Author(s): Not Available
Session: Session 4 (1:00 PM – 1:50 PM)
Presentation Type: Poster 42
Abstract
This study examines whether and why plant biodiversity reduces environmental hazard damages. While ecological research documents many ecosystem services of biodiversity, less is known about its role in mitigating multiple environmental hazards simultaneously. Understanding this relationship is important because communities face diverse risks, such as pollution, wildfire, and storms, and must decide whether to prioritize specific protective traits or broader ecosystem diversity. Using plant occurrence data from the Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN), we construct spatial measures of plant species richness across the United States. We combine these measures with data on environmental hazards to test whether areas with higher biodiversity experience lower downstream damage. Our empirical analysis shows that greater plant biodiversity significantly reduces harm in three domains: water pollution levels, wildfire damage and spread, and hurricane intensity. To understand the mechanism, we examine plant functional traits and find that more biodiverse ecosystems are more likely to include species with hazard-mitigating characteristics. Regression analyses further confirm that species with traits known from ecology to reduce each specific hazard drive the observed effects. Motivated by these findings, this study aims to develop a theoretical framework explaining when biodiversity is socially optimal. The model considers a setting with multiple geographically dispersed hazards and species that possess limited functional traits and are costly to conserve. Under uncertainty about which hazards will occur or where they will occur, maximizing overall biodiversity can be optimal because it increases the likelihood that protective traits are present. These results suggest that biodiversity provides a form of ecological protection. Thereby maintaining diverse ecosystems, policymakers may reduce vulnerability to a range of environmental hazards, even when future risks are uncertain.
