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Biodiversity

Land use matters

Nature volume 520, pages 38–39 (2015)Cite this article

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A meta-analysis at a local scale reveals that land-use change has caused species richness to decline by approximately 8.1% on average globally, mainly as a result of large increases in croplands and pastures. See Article p.45

The main effects humans have on our planet seem to manifest in factors of two: we have doubled the rate at which nitrogen enters the biosphere by using fertilizer; we have diverted half of the fresh water and half of all plant productivity for our own purposes; and we have modified about half of the planet's land1,2. It is widely speculated that the last of these — modifying roughly 50% of all land — is the biggest human-caused threat to biodiversity, but this theory has never been comprehensively assessed. On page 45 of this issue, Newbold et al.3 describe an ambitious attempt to evaluate the global impact of land-use change on terrestrial biodiversity.

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Figure 1: Land conversions reduce species richness.

Frans Lanting/Robert Harding Picture Library

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References

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  1. Brian McGill is in the School of Biology and Ecology, and the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, University of Maine, Orono, Maine 04469, USA.,

    Brian McGill

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Correspondence to Brian McGill.

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McGill, B. Land use matters. Nature 520, 38–39 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/520038a

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