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PREDICTS Project: Global Analysis Reveals Massive Biodiversity Losses

By Claire Asher, on 21 May 2015

The changing climate is only one of a myriad of pressures faced by global biodiversity – we are also changing habitats and altering land-use on an unprecedented scale. The first global analysis published from the PREDICTS project reveals the striking global effect of land-use change on local biodiversity patterns, and highlights the importance of future climate-mitigation strategies in shaping the future of biodiversity and the vital ecosystem services it provides.

Human activities are causing widespread change to and degradation of habitats, which has been linked to serious biodiversity declines globally. Land-use change comes in many forms, from deforestation and agriculture to urban development and road-building, and previous work by the PREDICTS project has shown how different types of land-use influence different types of species differently. We are interested in biodiversity loss at a global scale, and many metrics aim to quantify this, but viewing global patterns can obscure local-scale changes that are likely to be more important for the resilience of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services include clean air and water, food, medicine and nutrient cycling, among others, and are vital both for biodiversity and for human survival and well-being. The PREDICTS project considers local-scale changes to biodiversity in response to land-use change, to produce a powerful model that can be used to project the impact of future land-use and climate change. In their latest paper, published in Nature last month, the PREDICTS team reveal their most comprehensive analysis to date, showing massive reductions in local biodiversity since 1500, and projecting further widespread losses under several future climate and land-use scenarios. There is still hope, however, and strategies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions without major land-use change could offer the opportunity for global biodiversity to recover.

Understanding the Past and Present

The PREDICTS team have assembled a database of over 1,130,000 records of species abundance and nearly 330,000 records of species richness across more than 11,000 sites worldwide. The database includes results from 284 scientific publications, and represents over 25,000 species. Using this incredible resource, the team compared species richness and abundance between sites with different land-use types and produced a statistical model to quantify local biodiversity responses to land-use change. This enabled them to infer changes in species assemblages since the year 1500.They found that species richness and total abundance were both strongly influenced by land-use type and intensity, with reductions in biodiversity outside of primary vegetation and the worst losses seen in intensively used areas. Local biodiversity was also negatively impacted by human population density and accessibility (measured by the distance to the nearest main road). In the worst-affected habitats, changing land-use away from primary vegetation reduced species richness and abundance by an average of about 40%, and globally, land-use change was responsible for an average reduction in species richness and abundance of around 9%. The value of secondary vegetation (forest recovering from past damage) for biodiversity depended strongly on how mature the habitat was, with species diversity increasing over time, and mature secondary vegetation most closely resembling primary habitats. Restoration projects do, therefore, have the power to return biodiversity to damaged habitats, but (unsurprisingly!) it will take time.

Previous estimates have suggested that local losses of species richness and diversity greater than 20% are likely to substantially impair ecosystem services contributed to by biodiversity and reduce overall ecosystem function. Some scientists believe biodiversity loses at this scale may push populations towards ‘tipping points’ where ecosystem function declines lead to further species loss. Thus, in the worst-affected habitats considered by the PREDICTS team, which experienced on average a 31% loss of local species richness, ecosystem function is likely to be substantially impaired.

Changes in species richness and abundance may underestimate the real impact of land-use change because the measure fails to capture the composition of a community. The team therefore compared the species composition between sites and found that communities tended to be similar under similar land-use. Communities living in primary and secondary vegetation were most alike, while more disturbed habitats such as plantation forest, pasture and cropland tended to support a different cluster of more human-tolerant species. Human-dominated landscapes lost far more natural local diversity than more pristine sites where natural vegetation remains.

Reconstructing past biodiversity loss indicated that the greatest reductions in species richness occurred in (unsurprisingly) the 19th and 20th centuries, and that by 2005 local species richness worldwide had reduced by 13.6% due to land-use change and related anthropogenic pressures. How will this trend continue into the future?

Projecting the Future

The PREDICTS team then went on to combine their analysis of current species’ responses to land-use change with four climate scenarios produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to project future changes in biodiversity under different socioeconomic scenarios of land-use change. Projecting as far as 2095, the PREDICTS model projects rapid biodiversity losses under a ‘business-as-usual’ land-use scenario, with species richness projected to drop a further 3.5%. These loses are not likely to be uniformly distributed, however, with the largest loses predicted to occur in economically poor but highly biodiverse regions, such as Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Buisness-as-usual results in rapid human population growth and agricultural expansion, and most closely matches recent trends, and yields the most severe losses in biodiversity of any scenario considered by the PREDICTS team. Continuing on as we have been does not bode well for biodiversity or the vital ecosystem services it provides us.

Projected net change in local richness from 1500 to 2095. Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7545/abs/nature14324.html.

Projected net change in local richness from 1500 to 2095. Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7545/abs/nature14324.html.

Perhaps surprisingly, the second-worst scenario for biodiversity is in fact the scenario with the least climate change (IMAGE2.6). This is because this scenario achieved reduced emmisions and climatic change by rapidly converting the world’s forests (primary vegetation) to crops and biofuel. In contrast, the IPCC scenario MiniCAM 4.5, which mitigates climate change through the use of carbon markets, crop improvements and diet shifts, however, is projected to increase average species richness. Not all our possible solutions to curb greenhouse gas emissions and reduce climate change will necessarily spell good news for biodiversity.

It isn’t all bad news, though. The right strategies can promote biodiversity globally, even producing increases in species richness by 2095 of up to 2%, and the PREDICTS team say widespread biodiversity loss is not inevitable. Concerted efforts and the right socioeconomic choices can make long-term global sustainability of biodiversity an achievable goal.

Original Article:

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This research was made possible by funding from the Natural Environment Research Councik (NERC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

PREDICTS Project: Land-Use Change Doesn’t Impact All Biodiversity Equally

By Claire Asher, on 13 October 2014

Humans are destroying, degrading and depleting our tropical forests at an alarming rate. Every minute, an area of Amazonian rainforest equivalent to 50 football pitches is cleared of its trees, vegetation and wildlife. Across the globe, tropical and sub-tropical forests are being cut down to make way for expanding towns and cities, for agricultural land and pasture and to obtain precious fossil fuels. Even where forests remain standing, hunting and poaching are stripping them of their fauna, degrading the forest in the process. Habitat loss and degradation are the greatest threats to the World’s biodiversity. New research from the PREDICTS project investigates the patterns of species’ responses to changing land-use in tropical and sub-tropical forests worldwide. In the most comprehensive analysis of the responses of individual species to anthropogenic pressures to date, the PREDICTS team reveal strong effects of human disturbance on the geographical distribution and abundance of species. Although some species thrive in human-altered habitats, species that rely on a specific habitat or diet, and that tend to have small geographical ranges, are particularly vulnerable to habitat disturbance. Understanding the intricacies of how different species respond to different types of human land-use is crucial if we are to implement conservation policies and initiatives that will enable us to live more harmoniously with wildlife.

Red Panda (Ailurus fulgens)

Habitat loss and degradation causes immediate species losses, but also alters the structure of ecological communities, potentially destabilising ecosystems and causing further knock-on extinctions down the line. As ecosystems start to fall apart, the valuable ecosystem services we rely on may also dry up. There is now ample evidence that altering habitats, particularly degrading primary rainforest, has disastrous consequences for many species, however not all species respond equally to land-use change. The functional traits of species, such as body size, generation time, mobility, diet and habitat specificity can have a profound impact on how well a species copes with human activities. The traits that make species particularly vulnerable to human encroachment (slow reproduction, large body size, small geographical range, highly specific dietary and habitat requirements) are not evenly distributed geographically. Species possessing these traits are more common in tropical and sub-tropical forests, areas that are under the greatest threat from human habitat destruction and loss of vegetation over the coming decades. The challenge in recent years, therefore, has been developing statistical models that allow us to investigate this relationship more precisely, and collecting sufficient data to test hypotheses.

There are three key ways we might chose to investigate how species respond to land-use change. Many studies have investigated species-area relationships, which model the occurrence or abundance of species in relation to the size of available habitat. These studies have revealed important insights into the damage caused by habitat fragmentation, however they rarely consider how different species respond differently. Another common approach uses species distribution models to predict the loss of species in relation to habitat and climate suitability. These models can be extremely powerful, but require large and detailed datasets that are not available for many species, particularly understudied creatures such as invertebrates. The PREDICTS team therefore opted for a third option to investigate human impacts on species. The PREDICTS project has collated data from over 500 studies investigating the response of individual species to land-use change, and their database now includes over 2 million records for 34,000 species. Using this extensive dataset, the authors were able to model the relationship between land-use type and both the occurrence and abundance of species. One of the huge benefits of this approach is that their dataset enabled them to investigate these relationships in a wide range of different taxa, including birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and the often neglected invertebrates.

Modelling Biodiversity

Sunbear (Helarctos malayanus)
image used with permission from
Claire Asher (Curiosity Photographic)

The resulting model included the responses of nearly 4000 different species across four measures of human disturbance; lang-use type, forest cover, vegetation loss and human population density. The vast dataset, the PREDICTS team were able to compare the responses of species in different groups (birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, invertebrates, between habitat specialists and generalists and between wide- and narrow-raging species. Their results revealed a complex interaction between these factors, which influenced the occurrence and the abundance of species in different ways.

In general human-dominated habitats, such as urban and cropland environments, tended to harbour fewer species than more natural, pristine habitats. Community abundance in disturbed habitats was between 8% and 62% of the abundance found in primary forest, and urban environments were consistently the worst for overall species richness. In these environments, human population density and a lack of forest cover were key factors reducing the number of species. Human population density could impact species directly through hunting, or more indirectly through expanding infrastructure. However, these factors impact different species in different ways, so the authors next investigated different taxa separately.

Birds appear to be particularly poor at living in urban environments, most likely because they respond poorly to increases in human population. Forest specialists and narrow-ranged birds fare especially badly in urban environments; only 10% of forest specialists found in primary forest are able to survive in urban environments. Although the effect was less extreme, mammals were also less likely to occur in secondary forest and forest plantations than primary forest, and forest specialists were particularly badly affected.

Urban Pests
Although many species were unable to exist in disturbed habitats, those species that persisted were often more abundant in human-modified habitats than pristine environments. This isn’t particularly surprising – some species happen to possess characteristics that make them well suited to urban and disturbed landscapes; these are often the species that we eventually start to consider a pest because they are so successful at living alongside us (think pigeons, rats, foxes). These species tend to be wide-ranging generalists, although sometimes habitat specialists do well in human-altered habitats if we happen to alter the habitat in just the right. Pigeons, for example, are adapted to nesting on cliffs, which our skyscrapers and buildings inadvertently mimic extremely well. The apparent success of some species in more open habitats such as cropland and urban environments might also be partly caused by increased visibility – it’s far easier to see a bird or reptile in an urban environment than dense primary forest! This doesn’t explain the entire pattern, however, and clearly some species are simply more successful in human-altered habitats. They are in the minority, though.

Do Reptiles Prefer Altered Habitats?
One interesting finding was that for herptiles (reptiles and amphibians), more species were found in habitats with a higher human population density. This rather unexpected relationship might reflect a general preference in herptiles for more open habitats. Consistent with this, the authors found fewer species in pristine forest than secondary forest. However, upon closer inspection the authors found that herptiles do not all respond in the same way. Reptiles showed a U-shaped relationship with human population density – the occurrence of species was highest when there were either lots of people or no people at all. By contrast, amphibians showed a straight relationship, with increases in human population density being mirrored by increases in the number of species present. This highlights the importance of investigating fine-scale differences between species in their responses to human activities.

Filbert Weevil (Curculio occidentis)

Consistent with previous studies, the traits of species were very important in determining whether a species was found in human-altered habitats. Narrow-ranging species were much less likely to occur in any habitat than wide-ranging ones, but this difference was particularly clear for croplands, plantation forests and urban habitats. The extent of human impact was also a key factor determining the occurrence of species in different habitats. Forest cover, human population density and NDVI (a measure of vegetation loss taken from remote sensing) all reduced the number of species present. Measures of disturbance and species characteristics do not act in isolation – the best models produced by the PREDICTS team included interactions between these variables. Invertebrate numbers were lowest in areas of high human population density and high rates of vegetation loss.

This study is the first step in more detailed, comprehensive analyses of the responses of species to human activities. The power of this study comes not only from it’s large dataset and broad spectrum of taxonomic groups, but also from it’s ability to directly couple land-use changes with species’ traits such as range-size and habitat specialism. The authors say that the next major step would be to incorporate interactions between species in these models – the community structure of an ecosystem can have profound effects on the species living in it, and changes in the abundance of any individual species does not happen in isolation from the rest of the community.

Check out the PREDICTS Project for more information!

Original Article:

() Proc. R. Soc. B

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This research was made possible by funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

GEE Science Uncovered

By Claire Asher, on 7 October 2013

On Friday 27th September, scientists in 300 cities across Europe got together with the public for a variety of activities and events to celebrate European Researcher’s Night 2013. In London, the Natural History Museum kept their doors open late for ‘Science Uncovered’ – an evening of special exhibitions, stalls and activities, engaging the public with researchers from universities and academic organisations across the capital.

Together with researchers from the Natural History Museum and UCL’s Department of Geography, academics from GEE displayed some of their work and chatted to the public about environmental change. GEE staff and students including Professor Georgina Mace, Dr Sarah Whitmee, Claire Asher and Stuart Nattrass, along with Sara Contu from the PREDICTS Project and Robin Freeman from ZSL, chatted to members of the public about their thoughts on environmental change and biodiversity loss.

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We are now becoming increasingly aware of the rapid climatic changes that are taking place globally, and with the release last week of the latest IPCC report, the climate has been a major talking point. Environmental change, including climate and land-use, will influence both us and the biodiversity with which we share our planet. Some animals may be able to adapt to climatic changes, but these will act in combination with human activities and land-use to influence which species persist and which perish.

PREDICTS Game NHMAs part of the GEE Environmental Change Stall, in collaboration with the PREDICTS Project, and ZSL, Claire Asher and Robin Freeman developed a game to test the public’s perceptions of present and future environmental change and biodiversity loss. Participants were asked to make a guess about future environmental change under two scenarios – a low-emissions scenario in which land-use decisions are based primarily on the agricultural value of the land, and a high-emissions scenario in which emissions pricing influenced land-use decisions. Predicted levels of global biodiversity were estimated up to 2100 using the PREDICTS model and well recognised scenarios of climatic warming and land-use change. The game proved very popular, with nearly 50 players during the night, competing to achieve the best score.

DSC06144 copyThe answer was not as simple as many of our players might have expected. Because climate does not act alone to influence species extinctions, land-use and other aspects of each scenario also played a major role. In the high-emissions scenario, emissions pricing (an attempt to minimise further warming) encouraged the preservation of primary forest, mitigating some of the negative effects of climate change on biodiversity. Meanwhile, in the low-emissions scenario, continued loss of primary forest in favour of agricultural land, particularly for the production of biofuels, meant that biodiversity suffered more than we might have thought from climate warming alone. Our decisions about emissions, land-use and conservation policies will have a far-reaching effect on global biodiversity.

The Future of Biodiversity game will be available to play online soon!

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Predicting the Future of Biodiversity

By Claire Asher, on 14 August 2013

As human populations expand and use the land differently, they are having an impact on the plants and animals that share that land with them. Conservation biologists have been working for decades to try and document the ways in which these changes are affecting species, and to try and develop indicators that can be used to monitor these changes over time. However, previous work has tended to focus on certain species (e.g. bats, birds), neglecting other important groups such as insects, and have been biased towards certain habitats (e.g. tropical rainforest).

A new project in partnership between University College London, Imperial College London, the University of Sussex, UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Center and Microsoft Research, aims to improve on previous studies and develop a model for understanding how whole biological communities respond to human pressures across the globe. Collating high-quality data from hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, in addition to unpublished data direct from field researchers, the PREDICTS team hope to investigate local patterns of biodiversity at a global scale, and improve our understanding of how whole ecosystems respond to human pressures such as land-use change.

Biodiversity Declines
IMG_5921Major global loss of biodiversity is underway, and we have good reason to believe humans are responsible. The current extinction rate of species is estimated to be 1000 times higher than long-term historical averages, although large fluctuations in this in the past were also common. Humans have altered the world enormously, converting forests and savannas into farmland and housing. Virtually all ecosystems have been changed substantially – most biomes have lost between 20 and 50% of land to human uses. Humans have also exploited natural resources for wood, food, medicine and social reasons, and in many cases overexploitation has lead to major species declines and extinctions. Globally, it is estimated that 12% of bird species, 23% of mammals and 32% of amphibians are threatened with extinction, with many of these species suffering population declines and a reduction in genetic diversity, which may exacerbate the effect of human impacts. Even optimistic projections indicate continued human pressure on biodiversity from a range of different sources including hunting and habitat destruction. Many of the pressures currently placed on global biodiversity, such as land-use change, pollution and the introduction of invasive species, are set to continue or intensify over coming decades.

Ecosystem Services
Biodiversity is a valuable asset to humans for many reasons, not least its considerable economic value. Biodiversity contributes to human well-being by providing ecosystem services such as food (crops and livestock), fresh water, timber, natural hazard protection, air quality, climate regulation, prevention of erosion, as well as cultural benefits such as the aesthetic and recreational use of biodiversity. The exact relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services is still relatively poorly understood, as it represents a complex interaction of many factors, which may vary from habitat to habitat. Many researchers suspect there may be threshold effects, with a sudden collapse of ecosystems, and a consequent loss of the services they provide, once a threshold number of species is lost. Others suggest certain ‘keystone’ species may be more important for ecosystem function. What is clear, however, is that healthy, functioning ecosystems are key to human health and well being. A greater understanding both of how biodiversity contributes to ecosystem function and ecosystem services, and of how biodiversity is likely to respond to continued anthropogenic pressures is sorely needed.

Improving Indicators
DSC_1216_watermarkOne central issue to studying and increasing our understanding of how ecosystems respond to human pressures is selecting species, populations or ecosystems to act as indicators of overall trends. It is simply not possible to monitor all populations of all species, and conservationists have traditionally relied upon indicator species and ecosystems as a measure of the overall health of biodiversity. In many cases these indicators were initially selected out of convenience meaning that well-studied species, communities and biomes are hugely overrepresented in the data available. However, species’ traits are likely to influence how they respond to human pressures, and a broader geographical and taxonomic view is needed to take the next step in our understanding.

Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity in Changing Terrestrial Systems
The PREDICTS project aims to address some of these issues by performing a meta-analysis of species responses to different human pressures, covering as broad a taxonomic and geographical data set as is available. The PREDICTS team are collecting data from published papers; however, they also hope to draw on rich datasets held by ecologists which are simply too large to have been published in full. If you are an ecologist and believe you may have data that could be used for this project, please visit the PREDICTS website to find out more. They have already collated over 800,000 biodiversity records covering more than 15,000 species. These data are being combined to form a database that will be used to answer a number of key questions about biodiversity and anthropogenic change. In particular, the PREDICTS project is interested in investigating how different taxonomic groups respond, how responses differ in different biomes and with different intensities of human pressure. They also plan to investigate how different measures of biodiversity (e.g. species richness, evenness, abundance etc) may respond differently in different species, regions and for different human pressures.

_DSC3418_watermarkBy combining data from many species and sites, across a variety of different intensities of human pressure, PREDICTS hopes to develop a deeper understanding of how different factors interact to determine species responses. From this they hope to make predictions about how biodiversity may respond to different projected future scenarios, and thus provide insights for science policy.

Turning Science into Policy
We are faced with an increasingly difficult global situation, as human populations expand, the climate changes and biodiversity declines. What makes this situation more difficult still is that we need to make decisions now and over the next few years that will impact a generation, but for which we still have insufficient data to know for sure what’s best. Making projections for climate change, human population expansions and changes in the exploitation of biodiversity is difficult. Making projections for how biodiversity will respond to those changes is even more difficult still, but it is a task we must attempt if we are to make informed decisions about the future of our planet. PREDICTS hopes to utilise what data we do have to make synthesise a more in depth and holistic understanding of how ecological communities respond to human impacts, which can be used to make predictions that will help inform science policy makers globally.

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Images copyright Lawrence Hudson and Tim Newbold, used with permission.

Partner Organisations and Funding
University College London
Imperial College London
University of Sussex
United Nations Environment Programme: World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC)
Microsoft Research

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