Modelling and projecting the response of local assemblage composition to land use change across Colombia

Abstract

Understanding the impact of land use change within assemblages is fundamental to mitigation policies at local and regional scale. Here, we aim to quantify how site-level terrestrial assemblages are responding to land use change in Colombia a mega-diverse country and to project future biodiversity under different scenarios of land use change associated with climate change policies. Location: Colombia (northern South America). Methods: We collated original biodiversity data from 17 publications (285 sites) that examined how human impact affects terrestrial biodiversity in Colombia. From each site we estimated compositional intactness (i.e. compositional similarity to undisturbed sites). We fitted generalized linear mixed-effects models to estimate how these measures of local biodiversity vary across land use habitats. Using space-for-time substitution, we applied our estimates to hindcast biodiversity changes since 1500 and project future changes under climate change policies of the four representative concentration pathways (RCPs). Results: Assemblages in urban, cropland and pasture sites were compositionally very different from those in primary vegetation. We infer that average compositional intactness has been reduced by 18% across Colombia to date, with strong regional variation. The best RCP scenario for future biodiversity is GCAM-RCP4.5, a path that favours the expansion of secondary forests under a strong carbon market; while the worst is MESSAGE-RCP8.5, ‘the business-as-usual’ scenario. Main conclusions: Land use change has driven an increasing change in the composition of ecological assemblages in Colombia. By 2095, the implementation of carbon markets policy of climate change from GCAM-RCP4.5 could mitigate these changes in community composition. In contrast, the business-as-usual scenario MESSAGE-RCP8.5 predicts a steep community change placing the quality of ecosystems at risk

Terrestrial mammal responses to oil palm dominated landscapes in Colombia

“…The lack of evidence found for any particular driver explaining richness within riparian forest (see also [ 69 ]), suggests that regardless of the forests’ structure, they are fundamental for maintaining mammal species richness in oil palm landscapes; which supports previous findings in secondary forests [ 70 ][ 71 ]. Nevertheless, the potential of secondary tropical forests to conserve old-growth species is well known to increase over time [ 72 ]. Similarly diversity is known to improve in less disturbed and wide riparian forest [ 73 ][ 74 ].…”

Assessing the effects of land use on biodiversity in the world’s drylands and Mediterranean environments

“…Pr = Primary Vegetation, Se = Secondary Vegetation, Pl = Plantation forest, Cr = Cropland, Pa = Pasture, Ur = Urban database have found significant results in similar models with smaller sample sizes (e.g. Echeverría-Londoño et al 2016). One previous study, in the shortgrass steppe of North America, found strong differences in responses among different groups of species, from abundance declines of over 50% to increases of over 40% (Milchunas et al 1998).…”

The magnitude and extent of edge effects on vascular epiphytes across the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

“…Changes in community integrity were measured as the difference in composition between each sampled plot in the human modified landscape and control forests. Hence, community integrity is an extension of beta diversity between two targeted habitat types 49 , 64 , 65 . Community composition was quantified using Bray–Curtis dissimilarity index with abundance data.…”