David Tilman

Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems

Global diets link environmental sustainability and human health

Future threats to biodiversity and pathways to their prevention

Comparative analysis of environmental impacts of agricultural production systems, agricultural input efficiency, and food choice

Global agricultural feeds over 7 billion people, but is also a leading cause of environmental degradation. Understanding how alternative agricultural production systems, agricul...

The Influence of Functional Diversity and Composition on Ecosystem Processes

Humans are modifying both the identities and numbers of species in ecosystems, but the impacts of such changes on ecosystem processes are controversial. Plant species diversity,...

Biotic Control over the Functioning of Ecosystems

Changes in the abundance of species — especially those that influence water and nutrient dynamics, trophic interactions, or disturbance regime — affect the structure and functio...

Species Richness of Experimental Productivity Gradients: How Important is Colonization Limitation?

The biodiversity of a site should depend on the interplay of local colonization (gain) and extinction (loss) rates, but few theoretical explanations of diversity patterns on pro...

Habitat destruction and the extinction debt

Secondary Succession and the Pattern of Plant Dominance Along Experimental Nitrogen Gradients

In 1982, experimental nitrogen gradients were established on both existing and disturbed (disked) vegetation in three fields (abandoned 14, 25, and 48 yr) and on existing vegeta...

Solutions for a cultivated planet

Agricultural sustainability and intensive production practices

Forecasting Agriculturally Driven Global Environmental Change

During the next 50 years, which is likely to be the final period of rapid agricultural expansion, demand for food by a wealthier and 50% larger global population will be a major...

Community assembly and invasion: An experimental test of neutral versus niche processes

A species-addition experiment showed that prairie grasslands have a structured, nonneutral assembly process in which resident species inhibit, via resource consumption, the esta...