Check out our new paper here from our NASA funded working group: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/geb.13061.

We found that geodiversity variables predict biodiversity more consistently than climate variables, which is interesting because climate is generally thought to be the most important driver of biodiversity. Variability in topography and elevation was the most important aspect of geodiversity for predicting both bird and tree biodiversity. However, the relationships are really most consistent within individual ecoregions of North America. (Ecoregions are areas dominated by a single well-defined ecosystem type; the Nature Conservancy has identified about 70 of them in the contiguous United States.) But the relationships vary a lot across regions to the point where it’s hard to apply geodiversity relationships from one region to another one. What we can say is that trees have a closer relationship to the topography. Places with variable elevations tend to have higher tree diversity but actually lower bird biodiversity. Birds, especially migratory birds, can seek out the highest productivity locations to breed so they are less tied to the topography.