EDITOR'S CHOICE: REVIEW: Effects of land use on plant diversity – A global meta‐analysis

Abstract

Summary1. Plant diversity is globally threatened by anthropogenic land use including management and modification of the natural environment. At regional and local scales, numerous studies world-wide have examined land use and its effects on plant diversity, but evidence for declining species diversity is mixed. This is because, first, land use comes in many variations, hampering comparisons of studies. Second, land use directly affects the environment, but indirect effects extend beyond the boundaries of the land in use. Third, land-use effects greatly depend on the environmental, historical and socio-economic context. 2. To evaluate the generality and variation of studies' findings about land-use effects, we undertook a quantitative synthesis using meta-analytic techniques. 3. Using 572 effect sizes from 375 studies distributed globally relating to 11 classes of land use, we found that direct and indirect effects of land use on plant diversity (measured as species richness) are variable and can lead to both local decreases and increases. Further, we found evidence (best AIC model) that land-use-specific covariables mostly determine effectsize variation and that in general land-use effects differ between biomes. 4. Synthesis and applications. This extensive synthesis provides the most comprehensive and quantitative overview to date about the effects of the most widespread and relevant land-use options on plant diversity and their covariables. We found important covariables of specific land-use classes but little evidence that land-use effects can be generally explained by their environmental and socio-economic context. We also found a strong regional bias in the number of studies (i.e. more studies from Europe and North America) and highlight the need for an overarching and consistent land-use classification scheme. Thereby, our study provides a new vantage point for future research directions.

Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere

“…Further, it is useful, if possible, to make observations across landscapes at spatial scales large enough to represent regional to global patterns (Noss 1990) and to investigate ecological patterns, processes, and dynamics across the full spectrum of anthromes and anthropogenic landscapes (Martin et al 2012). Not to do this reduces the generalizability of ecological observations overall, and especially their relations with anthroecological processes and their dynamics, which are now unfolding globally through telecoupling (Kwan 2012, Martin et al 2012, Dornelas et al 2013, Liu et al 2013, Gerstner et al 2014, Murphy and Romanuk 2014, McGill et al 2015.…”

Land-use effects on local biodiversity in tropical forests vary between continents

“…First, variation among regions in the prevalence of different types or intensities of land use or in the sampling of different taxonomic groups, which-as described above-will lead to differences in observed responses of biodiversity to land use. Second, differences in the intrinsic sensitivity of the biota to land-use change or land-use intensity (Gibson et al 2011;Gerstner et al 2014;Chaudhary et al 2016;De Palma et al 2016;Newbold et al 2016a). Such differences in sensitivity could arise through regional differences in range size (Orme et al 2006;Schipper et al 2008), which probably correlates with ecological flexibility in the face of environmental changes (Bonier et al 2007;Cardillo et al 2008;Slatyer et al 2013), or regional differences in land-use (Achard et al 2002;Lambin et al 2003), with longer periods of land use possibly having already filtered out the most sensitive species-a phenomenon referred to as an 'extinction filter'-meaning that current land-use differences have less of an impact (Balmford 1996).…”

Influence of Forest Harvest on Nitrate Concentration in Temperate Streams—A Meta-Analysis

“…Egger's regression test detects publication bias, which is reflected in an asymmetric distribution of effect sizes [49]. As the distribution of effect sizes may be explained by covariates, a modified version of the Egger's regression test was used, testing the weighted normalized residuals from the additive mixed model against their standard error [45,50].…”