Biodiversity losses and conservation responses in the Anthropocene

Johnson, Christopher N.; Balmford, Andrew; Brook, Barry W.; Buettel, Jessie C.; Galetti, Mauro; Lei, Guangchun; Wilmshurst, Janet M.

doi:10.1126/science.aam9317

Cited by 690 publications

(460 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Human activities have caused the loss of thousands of vertebrate species, with hundreds of extinctions in the past 500 years alone (Ceballos, Ehrlich, & Dirzo, 2017;Johnson et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projecting impacts of global climate and land‐use scenarios on plant biodiversity using compositional‐turnover modelling

Marco

Harwood

Hoskins

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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Nations have committed to ambitious conservation targets in response to accelerating rates of global biodiversity loss. Anticipating future impacts is essential to inform policy decisions for achieving these targets, but predictions need to be of sufficiently high spatial resolution to forecast the local effects of global change. As part of the intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models of the Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, we present a fine‐resolution assessment of trends in the persistence of global plant biodiversity. We coupled generalized dissimilarity models, fitted to >52 million records of >254 thousand plant species, with the species–area relationship, to estimate the effect of land‐use and climate change on global biodiversity persistence. We estimated that the number of plant species committed to extinction over the long term has increased by 60% globally between 1900 and 2015 (from ~10,000 to ~16,000). This number is projected to decrease slightly by 2050 under the most optimistic scenario of land‐use change and to substantially increase (to ~18,000) under the most pessimistic scenario. This means that, in the absence of climate change, scenarios of sustainable socio‐economic development can potentially bring extinction risk back to pre‐2000 levels. Alarmingly, under all scenarios, the additional impact from climate change might largely surpass that of land‐use change. In this case, the estimated number of species committed to extinction increases by 3.7–4.5 times compared to land‐use‐only projections. African regions (especially central and southern) are expected to suffer some of the highest impacts into the future, while biodiversity decline in Southeast Asia (which has previously been among the highest globally) is projected to slow down. Our results suggest that environmentally sustainable land‐use planning alone might not be sufficient to prevent potentially dramatic biodiversity loss, unless a stabilization of climate to pre‐industrial times is observed.

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“…Human activities have caused the loss of thousands of vertebrate species, with hundreds of extinctions in the past 500 years alone (Ceballos, Ehrlich, & Dirzo, 2017;Johnson et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projecting impacts of global climate and land‐use scenarios on plant biodiversity using compositional‐turnover modelling

Marco

Harwood

Hoskins

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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“…CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, one of the greatest current challenges is producing sufficient food to meet the needs of an exponentially growing global population with greater longevity and purchasing power (Crist et al 2017, Gerland et al 2014), but human activities, including agriculture, must be carried out sustainably to ensure the preservation of biodiversity and the full functioning of ecosystem services (DeFries and Nagendra 2017, Johnson et al 2017, Steffen et al 2015. In an ideal scenario, agricultural production and environmental conservation should not be in opposition but be complementary and harmonious activities.…”

Section: Vmentioning

confidence: 99%

Removal of vegetation in the state of Mato Grosso: a perspective based on the actions of IBAMA between 1998 and 2016

Miranda¹,

Ávila²,

Vieira³

et al. 2018

IJAERS

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“…We are in a biodiversity crisis (Singh, ). The rate of biodiversity loss has been on the rise globally, and these rates are expected to increase substantially in the near future (Johnson et al., ). Currently, among the most pervasive threats to global biodiversity are overexploitation and land modification for agriculture, but many species are impacted by multiple stressors (Maxwell, Fuller, Brooks, & Watson, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emerging threat of the 21st century lightscape to global biodiversity

Koen

Minnaar

Roever

et al. 2018

Global Change Biology

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Over the last century the temporal and spatial distribution of light on Earth has been drastically altered by human activity. Despite mounting evidence of detrimental effects of light pollution on organisms and their trophic interactions, the extent to which light pollution threatens biodiversity on a global scale remains unclear. We assessed the spatial extent and magnitude of light encroachment by measuring change in the extent of light using satellite imagery from 1992 to 2012 relative to species richness for terrestrial and freshwater mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. The encroachment of light into previously dark areas was consistently high, often doubling, in areas of high species richness for all four groups. This pattern persisted for nocturnal groups (e.g., bats, owls, and geckos) and species considered vulnerable to extinction. Areas with high species richness and large increases in light extent were clustered within newly industrialized regions where expansion of light is likely to continue unabated unless we act to conserve remaining darkness. Implementing change at a global scale requires global public, and therefore scientific, support. Here, we offer substantial evidence that light extent is increasing where biodiversity is high, representing an emerging threat to global biodiversity requiring immediate attention.

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Biodiversity losses and conservation responses in the Anthropocene

Cited by 690 publications

References 62 publications

Projecting impacts of global climate and land‐use scenarios on plant biodiversity using compositional‐turnover modelling

Projecting impacts of global climate and land‐use scenarios on plant biodiversity using compositional‐turnover modelling

Removal of vegetation in the state of Mato Grosso: a perspective based on the actions of IBAMA between 1998 and 2016

Emerging threat of the 21st century lightscape to global biodiversity

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