AI Article Synopsis
- Global biodiversity assessments identify land-use change, particularly forest loss, as a major factor impacting biodiversity.
- A study analyzed 6090 time series data and found that forest loss significantly increases species abundance and richness changes, by up to 48%.
- Notably, shifts in populations and ecosystems can take up to 50 years to manifest, with longer lags seen in species with longer generation times.
Article Abstract
Global biodiversity assessments have highlighted land-use change as a key driver of biodiversity change. However, there is little empirical evidence of how habitat transformations such as forest loss and gain are reshaping biodiversity over time. We quantified how change in forest cover has influenced temporal shifts in populations and ecological assemblages from 6090 globally distributed time series across six taxonomic groups. We found that local-scale increases and decreases in abundance, species richness, and temporal species replacement (turnover) were intensified by as much as 48% after forest loss. Temporal lags in population- and assemblage-level shifts after forest loss extended up to 50 years and increased with species' generation time. Our findings that forest loss catalyzes population and biodiversity change emphasize the complex biotic consequences of land-use change.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aba1289 | DOI Listing |
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