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Global effects of land use on local terrestrial biodiversity

Tim Newbold, Lawrence N. Hudson, Samantha L. L. Hill, Sara Contu, Igor Lysenko, Rebecca A. Senior, Luca Borger Orcid Logo, Dominic J. Bennett, Argyrios Choimes, Ben Collen, Julie Day, Adriana De Palma, Sandra Díaz, Susy Echeverria-Londoño, Melanie J. Edgar, Anat Feldman, Morgan Garon, Michelle L. K. Harrison, Tamera Alhusseini, Daniel J. Ingram, Yuval Itescu, Jens Kattge, Victoria Kemp, Lucinda Kirkpatrick, Michael Kleyer, David Laginha Pinto Correia, Callum D. Martin, Shai Meiri, Maria Novosolov, Yuan Pan, Helen R. P. Phillips, Drew W. Purves, Alexandra Robinson, Jake Simpson, Sean L. Tuck, Evan Weiher, Hannah J. White, Robert M. Ewers, Georgina M. Mace, Jörn P. W. Scharlemann, Andy Purvis

Nature, Volume: 520, Issue: 7545, Pages: 45 - 50

Swansea University Author: Luca Borger Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1038/nature14324

Abstract

Human activities, especially conversion and degradation of habitats, are causing global biodiversity declines. How local ecological assemblages are responding is less clear—a concern given their importance for many ecosystem functions and services. We analysed a terrestrial assemblage database of un...

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Published in: Nature
ISSN: 0028-0836 1476-4687
Published: Springer Science and Business Media LLC 2015
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa20627
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Abstract: Human activities, especially conversion and degradation of habitats, are causing global biodiversity declines. How local ecological assemblages are responding is less clear—a concern given their importance for many ecosystem functions and services. We analysed a terrestrial assemblage database of unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage to quantify local biodiversity responses to land use and related changes. Here we show that in the worst-affected habitats, these pressures reduce within-sample species richness by an average of 76.5%, total abundance by 39.5% and rarefaction-based richness by 40.3%. We estimate that, globally, these pressures have already slightly reduced average within-sample richness (by 13.6%), total abundance (10.7%) and rarefaction-based richness (8.1%), with changes showing marked spatial variation. Rapid further losses are predicted under a business-as-usual land-use scenario; within-sample richness is projected to fall by a further 3.4% globally by 2100, with losses concentrated in biodiverse but economically poor countries. Strong mitigation can deliver much more positive biodiversity changes (up to a 1.9% average increase) that are less strongly related to countries' socioeconomic status.
Keywords: Conservation biology, Biodiversity, Community ecology, Species Distribution Models, Natural Resources Management, Ecology, Human land use, Global change, Environmental change
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering
Issue: 7545
Start Page: 45
End Page: 50

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