Plant diversity and biomass production

In the next class I'll briefly mention some of Brad Cardinale's work on the relationship between diversity and ecosystem function. Brad is a Professor in EEMB here at UCSB and has had a series of interesting papers on this topic. He recently received the 2009-10 Harold J. Plous Award. One of the university's most prestigious faculty honors, the award is given annually to an assistant professor from the humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences who has shown exceptional achievement in research, teaching, and service to the university.

On his webpage you can see a couple of his recent papers on this topic and how the media reported them eg:

Paper: Impacts of plant diversity on biomass production increase through time because of species complementarity.

CBC news: Extinctions could cut plant productivity in half