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Biology subjects

Strassburg, B.

Publications and source records attributed to Strassburg, B..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

Global trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services from 1900 to 2050

Despite the scientific consensus on the extinction crisis and its anthropogenic origin, the quantification of historical trends and of future scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services has been limited, due to the lack of inter-model comparisons and harmonized scenarios. Here, we present a multi-model analysis to assess the impacts of land-use and climate change from 1900 to 2050. During the 20th century provisioning services increased, but biodiversity and regulating services decreased. Similar trade-offs are projected for the coming decades, but they may be attenuated in a sustainability scenario. Future biodiversity loss from land-use change is projected to keep up with historical rates or reduce slightly, whereas losses due to climate change are projected to increase greatly. Renewed efforts are needed by governments to meet the 2050 vision of the Convention on Biological Diversity. One Sentence SummaryDevelopment pathways exist that allow for a reduction of the rates of biodiversity loss from land-use change and improvement in regulating services but climate change poses an increasing challenge.

ecology↗

Only 40% of the world's forests are in good health

Many global environmental agendas, including halting biodiversity loss, reversing land degradation, and limiting climate change, depend upon retaining forests with high ecological integrity, yet the scale and degree of forest modification remains poorly quantified and mapped. By integrating data on observed and inferred human pressures and an index of lost connectivity, we generate the first globally-consistent, continuous index of forest condition as determined by degree of anthropogenic modification. Globally, only 17.4 million km2 of forest (40.5%) have high landscape level integrity (mostly found in Canada, Russia, the Amazon, Central Africa and New Guinea) and only 27% of this area is found in nationally-designated protected areas. Of the forest in protected areas, only 56% has high landscape level integrity. Ambitious policies that prioritize the retention of forest integrity, especially in the most intact areas, are now urgently needed alongside current efforts aimed at halting deforestation and restoring the integrity of forests globally.

ecology↗