Prairie management practices influence biodiversity, productivity and surface-atmosphere feedbacks

Summary Restoration efforts aim to reestablish grassland cover and maintain ecosystem services. However, there is a lack of systematic evaluation of the effects of grassland restoration options on integrated biodiversity, carbon, ecosystem function, and climate feedbacks. Through a multi-year grassland restoration experiment in a tallgrass prairie site in Nebraska, USA, we investigated how different management practices affected biodiversity, productivity and the surface-atmosphere feedbacks using a combination of in situ measurements and airborne hyperspectral and thermal remote sensing. Our findings suggested that certain management treatments altered species diversity, productivity and energy balance. Higher diversity plots had higher vegetation cover, albedo, canopy water content and lower surface temperature, indicating clear effects of management treatments on grassland ecosystem processes influencing surface-atmosphere feedbacks of mass and energy. The coherent responses of multiple airborne remote sensing indices illustrate clear co-benefits of grassland restoration practices that enhance ecosystem productivity and biodiversity and mitigate climate change through surface atmosphere feedbacks, offering a new strategy to address the global challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change in prairie ecosystems.