Journal
NATURE
Volume 520, Issue 7545, Pages 45-+Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/nature14324
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) [NE/J011193/1]
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/F017324/1]
- TRY initiative on plant traits, whose database is maintained at Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany
- DIVERSITAS
- IGBP
- Global Land Project
- NERC
- French Foundation for Biodiversity Research
- GIS 'Climat, Environnement et Societe' France
- NERC [NE/J011193/2, NE/J011193/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [982737] Funding Source: researchfish
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/J011193/2, NE/J011193/1, 1282072] Funding Source: researchfish
Ask authors/readers for more resources
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 reducewithin-sample species richness by anaverage of 76.5%, total abundance by 39.5% andrarefaction-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. Strongmitigationcan delivermuchmore positive biodiversity changes (up to a 1.9% average increase) that are less strongly related to countries' socioeconomic status.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available