Global effects of land use on local terrestrial biodiversity

NEWBOLD, T; HUDSON, L; HILL, SLL; CONTU, S; LYSENKO, I; SENIOR, RA,; BÖRGER, L; BENNET, D ; COLLEN, B; CHOIMES, A; DAY, J. ; DE PALMA, A; DÍAZ, S

NATURE

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2015 vol. 520 p. 45 - 50

0028-0836

Human activities, especially conversion and degradation of habitats, are causing global biodiversity declines. How localecological assemblages are responding is less clear?a concern given their importance for many ecosystem functions andservices. We analysed a terrestrial assemblage database of unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage to quantifylocal biodiversity responses to land use and related changes. Here we show that in the worst-affected habitats, thesepressures reduce within-sample species richness by an average of 76.5%, total abundance by 39.5% and rarefaction-basedrichness by 40.3%. We estimate that, globally, these pressures have already slightly reduced average within-samplerichness (by 13.6%), total abundance (10.7%) and rarefaction-based richness (8.1%), with changes showing markedspatial variation. Rapid further losses are predicted under a business-as-usual land-use scenario; within-samplerichness is projected to fall by a further 3.4% globally by 2100, with losses concentrated in biodiverse but economicallypoor countries. Strong mitigation can delivermuchmore positive biodiversity changes (up to a 1.9% average increase) thatare less strongly related to countries? socioeconomic status.