Human activities, especially conversion and degradation of habitats, are causing global biodiversity declines. How local ecological assemblages are responding is less clear—a concern given their importance for many ecosystem functions and services. We analysed a terrestrial assemblage database of unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage to quantify local biodiversity responses to land use and related changes. Here we show that in the worst-affected habitats, these pressures reduce within-sample species richness by an average of 76.5%, total abundance by 39.5% and rarefaction-based richness by 40.3%. We estimate that, globally, these pressures have already slightly reduced average within-sample richness (by 13.6%), total abundance (10.7%) and rarefaction-based richness (8.1%), with changes showing marked spatial variation. Rapid further losses are predicted under a business-as-usual land-use scenario; within-sample richness is projected to fall by a further 3.4% globally by 2100, with losses concentrated in biodiverse but economically poor countries. Strong mitigation can deliver much more positive biodiversity changes (up to a 1.9% average increase) that are less strongly related to countries' socioeconomic status. | Fil: Newbold, Tim. United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre; Reino Unido | Fil: Hudson, Lawrence N.. Natural History Museum. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Hill, Samantha L. L.. United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre; Reino Unido | Fil: Contu, Sara. Natural History Museum. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Lysenko, Igor. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Diaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina | Fil: Harrison, Michelle L. K.. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Alhusseini, Tamera. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Ingram, Daniel J.. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Itescu, Yuval. Tel-Aviv University. Faculty of Life Sciences. Deptartment of Zoology; Israel | Fil: Kattge, Jens. Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry; Alemania. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research; Alemania | Fil: Kirkpatrick, Lucinda. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences,; Reino Unido | Fil: Kleyer, Michael. University of Oldenburg. Institute of Biology and Environmental Sciences. Landscape Ecology Group; Alemania | Fil: Pinto Correia, David Laginha. Natural History Museum. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Martin, Callum D.. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Meiri, Shai. Tel-Aviv University. Faculty of Life Sciences. Deptartment of Zoology; Israel | Fil: Novosolov, Maria. Tel-Aviv University. Faculty of Life Sciences. Deptartment of Zoology; Israel | Fil: Pan, Yuan. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Phillips, Helen R. P.. Natural History Museum. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Purves, Drew W.. Microsoft Research Cambridge. Computational Science Laboratory, ; Reino Unido | Fil: Robinson, Alexandra. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Simpson, Jake. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Tuck, Sean L.. University of Oxford, Department of Plant Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Weiher, Evan. University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. Biology Department; Estados Unidos | Fil: White, Hannah J.. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Ewers, Robert M.. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido | Fil: Mace, Georgina M.. University College London. Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research. Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment; Reino Unido | Fil: Scharlemann, Jörn P. W.. United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre; Reino Unido | Fil: Purvis, Andy. Natural History Museum. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido. Imperial College London. Department of Life Sciences; Reino Unido

Loss of biodiversity is one of the most severe threats to sustainability, and land use and land use changes are still the single most important factor. Still, there is no sign of any consensus on how to include impacts on biodiversity from land use and land use changes in LCIA. In this paper, different characteristics of biodiversity are discussed and related to proposals on how to include land use and land use changes in LCIA. We identify the question of why we should care about biodiversity as a key question, since different motivations will result in different choices for the indicators, and we call for more openness in the motivation for indicator selection. We find a promising trend in combining pressure indicators with geographic weighting and regard this as a promising way ahead. More knowledge on the consequences of different choices, such as the selection of a reference state, is still needed.

Global change, especially land‐use intensification, affects human well‐being by impacting the delivery of multiple ecosystem services (multifunctionality). However, whether biodiversity loss is a major component of global change effects on multifunctionality in real‐world ecosystems, as in experimental ones, remains unclear. Therefore, we assessed biodiversity, functional composition and 14 ecosystem services on 150 agricultural grasslands differing in land‐use intensity. We also introduce five multifunctionality measures in which ecosystem services were weighted according to realistic land‐use objectives. We found that indirect land‐use effects, i.e. those mediated by biodiversity loss and by changes to functional composition, were as strong as direct effects on average. Their strength varied with land‐use objectives and regional context. Biodiversity loss explained indirect effects in a region of intermediate productivity and was most damaging when land‐use objectives favoured supporting and cultural services. In contrast, functional composition shifts, towards fast‐growing plant species, strongly increased provisioning services in more inherently unproductive grasslands.

Ecosystems are under increasing pressure from human activities, with land use and land‐use change at the forefront of the drivers that provoke global and regional biodiversity loss. The first step in addressing the challenge of how to reverse the negative outlook for the coming years starts with measuring environmental loss rates and assigning responsibilities. Pinpointing the global pressures on biodiversity is a task best addressed using holistic models such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is the leading method for calculating cradle‐to‐grave environmental impacts of products and services; it is actively promoted by many public policies, and integrated as part of environmental information systems within private companies. LCA already deals with the potential biodiversity impacts of land use, but there are significant obstacles to overcome before its models grasp the full reach of the phenomena involved. In this review, we discuss some pressing issues that need to be addressed. LCA mainly introduces biodiversity as an endpoint category modeled as a loss in species richness due to the conversion and use of land over time and space. The functional and population effects on biodiversity are mostly absent due to the emphasis on species accumulation with limited geographic and taxonomical reach. Current land‐use modeling activities that use biodiversity indicators tend to oversimplify the real dynamics and complexity of the interactions of species among each other and with their habitats. To identify the main areas for improvement, we systematically reviewed LCA studies on land use that had findings related to global change and conservation ecology. We provide suggestion as to how to address some of the issues raised. Our overall objective was to encourage companies to monitor and take concrete steps to address the impacts of land use on biodiversity on a broader geographical scale and along increasingly globalized supply chains.

Soil biodiversity plays a key role in regulating the processes that underpin the delivery of ecosystem goods and services in terrestrial ecosystems. Agricultural intensification is known to change the diversity of individual groups of soil biota, but less is known about how intensification affects biodiversity of the soil food web as a whole, and whether or not these effects may be generalized across regions. We examined biodiversity in soil food webs from grasslands, extensive, and intensive rotations in four agricultural regions across Europe: in Sweden, the UK, the Czech Republic and Greece. Effects of land-use intensity were quantified based on structure and diversity among functional groups in the soil food web, as well as on community-weighted mean body mass of soil fauna. We also elucidate land-use intensity effects on diversity of taxonomic units within taxonomic groups of soil fauna. We found that between regions soil food web diversity measures were variable, but that increasing land-use intensity caused highly consistent responses. In particular, land-use intensification reduced the complexity in the soil food webs, as well as the community-weighted mean body mass of soil fauna. In all regions across Europe, species richness of earthworms, Collembolans, and oribatid mites was negatively affected by increased land-use intensity. The taxonomic distinctness, which is a measure of taxonomic relatedness of species in a community that is independent of species richness, was also reduced by land-use intensification. We conclude that intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity, making soil food webs less diverse and composed of smaller bodied organisms. Land-use intensification results in fewer functional groups of soil biota with fewer and taxonomically more closely related species. We discuss how these changes in soil biodiversity due to land-use intensification may threaten the functioning of soil in agricultural production systems.

In recent years, the term biocultural diversity has been promoted to raise awareness for the interrelationship between culture and biodiversity. Whereas the term is hard to conceptualize in general, specific links between culture and biodiversity can be explored. In this paper, we focus on land use, which is on one hand culturally coined, and has on the other hand far-reaching impacts on biodiversity. The specific effects of land use on biodiversity depend on its intensity, which can be parameterized in different way, not the least depending on the scale of observation. Based on a short review of different approaches on how to assess land use intensity (LUI), we propose a new conceptual framework reflecting the scaled nature of the linkages between land management and biodiversity. From the plot to the landscape level, different aspects of LUI are becoming relevant, some of which we illustrate with case studies from China, Greece and Switzerland. We conclude on how the framework proposed can further our understanding on the interconnectedness of humans and their environment.

Soil biodiversity plays a key role in regulating the processes that underpin the delivery of ecosystem goods and services in terrestrial ecosystems. Agricultural intensification is known to change the diversity of individual groups of soil biota, but less is known about how intensification affects biodiversity of the soil food web as a whole, and whether or not these effects may be generalized across regions. We examined biodiversity in soil food webs from grasslands, extensive, and intensive rotations in four agricultural regions across Europe: in Sweden, the UK, the Czech Republic and Greece. Effects of land-use intensity were quantified based on structure and diversity among functional groups in the soil food web, as well as on community-weighted mean body mass of soil fauna. We also elucidate land-use intensity effects on diversity of taxonomic units within taxonomic groups of soil fauna. We found that between regions soil food web diversity measures were variable, but that increasing land-use intensity caused highly consistent responses. In particular, land-use intensification reduced the complexity in the soil food webs, as well as the community-weighted mean body mass of soil fauna. In all regions across Europe, species richness of earthworms, Collembolans, and oribatid mites was negatively affected by increased land-use intensity. The taxonomic distinctness, which is a measure of taxonomic relatedness of species in a community that is independent of species richness, was also reduced by land-use intensification. We conclude that intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity, making soil food webs less diverse and composed of smaller bodied organisms. Land-use intensification results in fewer functional groups of soil biota with fewer and taxonomically more closely related species. We discuss how these changes in soil biodiversity due to land-use intensification may threaten the functioning of soil in agricultural production systems.

Traditional farming landscapes have evolved as tightly coupled socioecological systems that support high biodiversity. However, land‐use change severely threatens the high biodiversity of these landscapes. Navigating nature conservation in such landscapes requires a thorough understanding of the key drivers underpinning biodiversity. Through empirical research on mammals, birds, butterflies, and plants in a traditional cultural landscape in Romania, we revealed seven hypothesized drivers facilitating biodiversity conservation. Similar proportions of three main land‐use types support the landscape species pool, most likely through habitat connectivity and frequent spillover between land‐use types. Landscape complementation and supplementation provide additional habitat for species outside their core habitats. Gradients of woody vegetation cover and gradients in land‐cover heterogeneity provide mosaic landscapes with wide ranges of resources. Traditional land‐use practices underpin landscape heterogeneity, traditional land‐use elements such as wood pastures, and human–carnivore coexistence. Top‐down predator control may limit herbivore populations. Lastly, cultural ties between humans and nature have a central influence on people’s values and sustainable use of natural resources. Conservation approaches should aim to maintain or restore these socioecological drivers by targeting the heterogeneous character of the forest–farmland mosaic at large scales through “broad and shallow” conservation measures. These large‐scale measures should be complemented with “deep and narrow” conservation measures addressing specific land‐use types, threats, or species. In both cases, conservation measures should integrate the entire socioecological system, by recognizing and strengthening important links between people and the environment.

Models that estimate land-use impacts on biodiversity at multiple spatial scales in human modified landscapes are the backbone of conservation planning. In this study, the suitability of two contemporary species–area methods–the power model and the logarithmic model–for assessing land-use impacts on biodiversity over a landscape is explored. The models are redefined using the Hill family of diversities, and a procedure for estimating the models parameters’ is given. Results from the application of the methodology to data on ant diversity in eight land-use systems in Oumé (Côte d’Ivoire) indicate that the logarithmic model has superior performance over the power model in landscape biodiversity assessments. Secondly, the exponential Shannon diversity (diversity of order 1) has the best performance among the individual Hill diversities. The results also suggest that the average of a sufficiently large number of Hill diversities provides a natural means of ordering land-use systems in terms of their suitability to conserve target species. Although several parts of this method have been implemented in different ways in other studies, the methodology as whole is new.

CONTEXT: Land use changes and intensification have been amongst the major causes of the on-going biodiversity decline in Europe. A better understanding and description of how different levels of land use intensity affect biodiversity can support the planning and evaluation of policy measures. OBJECTIVES: Our study investigates how land use-related landscape characteristics affect bird diversity, considering different spatial scales and species groups with characteristic habitat use. METHODS: We used breeding bird census data from 2693 observation points along 206 transects and applied a random effects hurdle model to describe the influence of the landscape characteristics altitude, forest proportion, patch density, land cover diversity, and land use intensity on avian species richness. RESULTS: Land use intensity and related landscape characteristics formed an important explanatory variable for bird richness. Increasing land use intensity was accompanied by a decrease in bird species richness. While forest bird richness decreased with a decreasing amount of forest cover, farmland species richness increased. This led to a bird diversity peak in extensively used semi-open landscapes. The influence of land cover diversity on species richness was small. Increasing patch density had positive effects on forest birds, but affected farm birds negatively. The strongest correlation between land use-based indicators and bird diversity was determined using spatial indicators at a close range around observation points (100–500 m radius). CONCLUSIONS: Our results assist interpretation of the Pan-European Common Bird Indices and emphasize the importance of using multifaceted and thoroughly selected indicators in the context of biodiversity monitoring and decision-making support.