Biodiversity Holds the Key to Sustainable Biofuel Production

It has been reported that global biodiversity has decreased during the last centuries due to human activity. As the global population has increased, so forests and prairies have been cleared to meet the increasing demand for land for farmland planted with monocultures, buildings and roads. For more than 50 years, scientists have hypothesized that greater ecological diversity (diversity of plant and animal species) leads to a greater stability of the ecosystem that sustains it. To date, the only study to test such a theory lasted only 8 weeks and obtained mixed results.

A recent, well-designed study by American researchers, the longest of its type to date, has confirmed the diversity-stability theory. This study, resulting from 12 years of experiments, eventually suggests that biodiversity can be used to produce a sustainable supply of biomass for biofuels.
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