Sammanfattning

Habitat loss through land-use change is the most pressing threat to biodiversity worldwide. European semi-natural grasslands have suffered an ongoing decline since the early twentieth century, but we have limited knowledge of how grassland loss has affected biodiversity across large spatial scales. We quantify land-use change over 50-70 years across a 175,000 km(2) super-region in southern Sweden, identifying a widespread loss of open cover and a homogenisation of landscape structure, although these patterns vary considerably depending on the historical composition of the landscape. Analysing species inventories from 46,796 semi-natural grasslands, our results indicate that habitat loss and degradation have resulted in a decline in grassland specialist plant species. Local factors are the best predictors of specialist richness, but the historical landscape predicts present-day richness better than the contemporary landscape. This supports the widespread existence of time-lagged biodiversity responses, indicating that further species losses could occur in the future.

Nyckelord

habitat loss; biodiversity; semi-natural grasslands; landscape structure; Sweden

Publicerad i

Nature Communications
2018, Volym: 9, artikelnummer: 3464
Utgivare: NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

SLU författare

• Auffret, Alistair

  • Institutionen för ekologi, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    
  • Stockholms Universitet
  • University of York

Globala målen

Skydda, återställa och främja ett hållbart nyttjande av landbaserade ekosystem, hållbart bruka skogar, bekämpa ökenspridning, hejda och vrida tillbaka markförstöringen samt hejda förlusten av biologisk mångfald


UKÄ forskningsämne

Ekologi


More information

Correction: Auffret, A.G., Kimberley, A., Plue, J. et al. Author Correction: Super-regional land-use change and effects on the grassland specialist flora. Nat Commun 10, 4335 (2019) doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12091-y


Publikationens identifierare

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05991-y

Permanent länk till denna sida (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/96747