On the relationship between farmland biodiversity and land-use intensity in Europe
- Kleijn, D Department of Aquatic Ecology and Environmental Biology, Nijmegen UniversityToernooiveld 1, 6525 ED, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
- Kohler, F Nature Conservation and Plant Ecology Group, Wageningen UniversityBornsesteeg 69, 6708 PD, Wageningen, The Netherlands
- Báldi, A Animal Ecology Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungarian Natural History Museum1083 Budapest, Hungary
- Batáry, P Hungarian Natural History Museum 1083 Budapest, Hungary
- Concepción, E.D Instituto de Recursos NaturalesIRN-CCMA-CSIC, c/Serrano 115 bis, 28006 Madrid, Spain
- Clough, Y Department of Agroecology, University of GöttingenWaldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
- Díaz, M Instituto de Recursos NaturalesIRN-CCMA-CSIC, c/Serrano 115 bis, 28006 Madrid, Spain
- Gabriel, D Department of Agroecology, University of GöttingenWaldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
- Holzschuh, A Department of Agroecology, University of GöttingenWaldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
- Knop, E Agroscope FAL Reckenholz, Swiss Federal Research Station for Agroecology and AgricultureReckenholzstrasse 191, CH-8046 Zürich, Switzerland
- Kovács, A PhD School of Environmental Sciences, Szent István UniversityGödöllő, Hungary
- Marshall, E.J.P Marshall Agroecology Limited2 Nut Tree Cottages, Barton, Winscombe, Somerset BS25 1DU, UK
- Tscharntke, T Department of Agroecology, University of GöttingenWaldweg 26, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
- Verhulst, J Nature Conservation and Plant Ecology Group, Wageningen UniversityBornsesteeg 69, 6708 PD, Wageningen, The Netherlands
- 2008-11-18
Published in:
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. - The Royal Society. - 2008, vol. 276, no. 1658, p. 903-909
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
General Immunology and Microbiology
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
General Environmental Science
General Medicine
English
Worldwide agriculture is one of the main drivers of biodiversity decline. Effective conservation strategies depend on the type of relationship between biodiversity and land-use intensity, but to date the shape of this relationship is unknown. We linked plant species richness with nitrogen (N) input as an indicator of land-use intensity on 130 grasslands and 141 arable fields in six European countries. Using Poisson regression, we found that plant species richness was significantly negatively related to N input on both field types after the effects of confounding environmental factors had been accounted for. Subsequent analyses showed that exponentially declining relationships provided a better fit than linear or unimodal relationships and that this was largely the result of the response of rare species (relative cover less than 1%). Our results indicate that conservation benefits are disproportionally more costly on high-intensity than on low-intensity farmland. For example, reducing N inputs from 75 to 0 and 400 to 60 kg ha
−1
yr
−1
resulted in about the same estimated species gain for arable plants. Conservation initiatives are most (cost-)effective if they are preferentially implemented in extensively farmed areas that still support high levels of biodiversity.
Worldwide agriculture is one of the main drivers of biodiversity decline. Effective conservation strategies depend on the type of relationship between biodiversity and land-use intensity, but to date the shape of this relationship is unknown. We linked plant species richness with nitrogen (N) input as an indicator of land-use intensity on 130 grasslands and 141 arable fields in six European countries. Using Poisson regression, we found that plant species richness was significantly negatively related to N input on both field types after the effects of confounding environmental factors had been accounted for. Subsequent analyses showed that exponentially declining relationships provided a better fit than linear or unimodal relationships and that this was largely the result of the response of rare species (relative cover less than 1%). Our results indicate that conservation benefits are disproportionally more costly on high-intensity than on low-intensity farmland. For example, reducing N inputs from 75 to 0 and 400 to 60 kg ha
yr
resulted in about the same estimated species gain for arable plants. Conservation initiatives are most (cost-)effective if they are preferentially implemented in extensively farmed areas that still support high levels of biodiversity.
- Language
-
- English
- Open access status
- green
- Identifiers
-
- DOI 10.1098/rspb.2008.1509
- ISSN 0962-8452
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/23734
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