Global land use study reveals substantial biodiversity loss

1. April 2015
Intensive agriculture and expanding land use have come at the expense of local ecosystems worldwide with high species loss, but some of the damage can be reversed.

The study on global effects of land use on biodiversity has been published on April 2, 2015 in the renowned scientific journal nature. Please find the English press release of the National History Museum as pdf file below.

Jens Kattge from Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena contributed to the study, showing that the average vegetation height decreases with increasing land use. This is an important indicator for changes in ecosystem functions, in particular restrictions of the water cycle.

The international study is a result of the PREDICTS Project which has been prolonged under the involvement of our institute. The focus will then be on the effects of the species loss on relevant ecosystem functions.

Original publication
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 Börger, Dominic Bennett, Argyrios Choimes, Ben Collen, Julie Day, Adriana De Palma, Sandra Díaz, Susy Echeverria-Londoño, Melanie Edgar, Anat Feldman8, 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 Martin, Shai Meiri, Maria Novosolov, Yuan Pan, Helen R.P. Phillips, Drew W. Purves, Alexandra Robinson, Jake Simpson, Sean Tuck, Evan Weiher, Hannah J. White, Robert M. Ewers, Georgina M. Mace, Jörn P.W. Scharlemann, Andy Purvis. (2015). Nature, doi: 10.1038/nature14324.

Contact
Dr. Jens Kattge
Interdepartmental Max Planck Fellow Group Functional Biogeography
Phone: +49 (0)3641 57 6226
jkattge(at)bgc-jena.mpg.de

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