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- Lehsten, Veiko, et al.
(author)
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Disentangling the effects of land-use change, climate and CO2 on projected future European habitat types
- 2015
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In: Global Ecology and Biogeography. - : Wiley. - 1466-8238 .- 1466-822X. ; 24:6, s. 653-663
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- AimTo project the potential European distribution of seven broad habitat categories (needle-leaved, broad-leaved, mixed and mediterranean forest, urban, grassland and cropland) in order to assess effects of land use, climate change and increase in CO2 on predicted habitat changes up to the year 2050. LocationEurope. MethodWe modelled the response of European vegetation to changes in land use, climate and CO2 by combining the land-use model Dyna-CLUE (based on the CORINE land-cover data) and the dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS. Two reforestation options were explored: maintaining the current range of tree species (EFI) or promoting naturally occurring tree species (NAT). Climate data from two general circulation models and two SRES scenarios (A2 and B1) were used. The broad habitat types were classified according to a combination of land use and the dominant plant species. ResultsOur models predicted that croplands and grasslands are expected to decrease due to land-use change. Although climate change has a negative effect on needle-leaved forest, it is expected to maintain its area or even increase in the EFI reforestation option while mediterranean, broad-leaved and mixed forests are expected to increase markedly. All investigated drivers have shown some effect, but land use is the dominant contributor to broad habitat change except for needle-leaved and mixed which are mainly influenced by climate change. Main conclusionsLand use is predicted to have the greatest effect on broad habitat distribution according to our simulations. Hence in most parts of Europe mitigating actions should focus on land-use change rather than climate change. According to our simulation, the effects of the different drivers are not in general additive. In some cases they act synergistically and in some cases antagonistically. The projected habitat changes are a valuable tool for species distribution modelling and are available online.
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- Tsiafouli, Maria A., et al.
(author)
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Intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity across Europe
- 2015
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In: Global Change Biology. - West Sussex : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 21:2, s. 973-985
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- 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.
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