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Research papers on Drivers of biodiversity loss

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  1. The direct drivers of recent global anthropogenic biodiversity loss

    Pedro Jaureguiberry, Nicolas Titeux, Martin Wiemers, et al. · 2022 · Science Advances · 1,100 citations

    Effective policies to halt biodiversity loss require knowing which anthropogenic drivers are the most important direct causes. Whereas previous knowledge has been limited in scope and rigor, here we statistically synthesize empirical comparisons of recent driver impacts found through a wide-ranging review. We show that land/sea use change has been the dominant direct driver of recent biodiversity loss worldwide. Direct exploitation of natural resources ranks second and pollution third; climate change and invasive alien species have been significantly less important than the top two drivers. The oceans, where direct exploitation and climate change dominate, have a different driver hierarchy f

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  2. Biodiversity impacts and conservation implications of urban land expansion projected to 2050

    Rohan D. Simkin, Karen C. Seto, Robert Ian McDonald, et al. · 2022 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 829 citations

    As the global urban population is poised to grow by 2.5 billion over the next 30 y, urban land conversions are expected to be an increasingly prominent driver of habitat and biodiversity loss. Mitigating these impacts urgently requires an improved understanding of where and how these biodiversity losses might occur. Here, we use a recently developed suite of land-use projections to provide an assessment of projected habitat that will be lost to urban land expansion for 30,393 species of terrestrial vertebrates from 2015 to 2050 across three shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) scenarios. We find that urban land expansion is a contributing driver of habitat loss (≥5% of total loss) for around o

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  6. Expert perspectives on global biodiversity loss and its drivers and impacts on people

    Forest Isaac Isbell, Patricia Balvanera, Akira S. Mori, et al. · 2022 · Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment · 293 citations

    Despite substantial progress in understanding global biodiversity loss, major taxonomic and geographic knowledge gaps remain. Decision makers often rely on expert judgement to fill knowledge gaps, but are rarely able to engage with sufficiently large and diverse groups of specialists. To improve understanding of the perspectives of thousands of biodiversity experts worldwide, we conducted a survey and asked experts to focus on the taxa and freshwater, terrestrial, or marine ecosystem with which they are most familiar. We found several points of overwhelming consensus (for instance, multiple drivers of biodiversity loss interact synergistically) and important demographic and geographic differ

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  8. Assessing biodiversity loss due to land use with Life Cycle Assessment: are we there yet?

    Danielle Maia de Souza, Ricardo F. M. Teixeira, Ole Ostermann · 2014 · Global Change Biology · 174 citations

    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 informat

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  9. The Main Drivers of Biodiversity Loss: A Brief Overview

    Christian Hald-Mortensen · 2023 · Journal of Ecology & Natural Resources · 76 citations

    This paper provides a comprehensive exploration of the primary drivers leading to global biodiversity loss based on recent scientific research. These drivers are agricultural expansion, climate change, marine exploitation, urbanization and the spread of invasive species. The paper examines the significant role of land use change, responsible for endangering 85% of species at risk, largely through habitat transformation. The impacts of climate change on ecosystems are discussed, including ocean warming, acidification, and altered ocean currents; factors that pose challenges for various species. Marine exploitation contributes to the decline of marine species and habitats. The paper also discu

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  10. Land-Use/Land-Cover Change from Socio-Economic Drivers and Their Impact on Biodiversity in Nan Province, Thailand

    Yongyut Trisurat, Hiroaki Shirakawa, John M. Johnston · 2019 · Sustainability · 72 citations

    The rate of deforestation declined steadily in Thailand since the year 2000 due to economic transformation away from forestry. However, these changes did not occur in Nan Province located in northern Thailand. Deforestation is expected to continue due to high demand for forest products and increased agribusiness. The objectives of this paper are (1) to predict land-use change in the province based on trends, market-based and conservation scenarios, (2) to quantify biodiversity, and (3) to identify biodiversity hotspots at greatest risk for future deforestation. This study used a dynamic land-use change model (Dyna-CLUE) to allocate aggregated land demand for three scenarios and employed FRAG

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  11. Trends in national biodiversity footprints of land use

    Eivind Lekve Bjelle, Koen Kuipers, Francesca Verones, et al. · 2021 · Ecological Economics · 67 citations

    Rising incomes (and associated expenditures) have been shown to be a major driver of environmental problems. Lately, several studies have pointed to a break between the income driver and biodiversity loss on a per-capita level. The increase in land-use efficiency is pointed to as a key factor in this decoupling. However, a lot of the previous work on biodiversity footprints has been cross-sectional and there is limited analysis with a temporal perspective. In this work, we couple a database that links land use to potential biodiversity impacts for ecoregions, with a multiregional environmentally-extended input-output database available in a time series, with high regional detail. We perform

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  12. Dimensions of biodiversity loss: Spatial mismatch in land‐use impacts on species, functional and phylogenetic diversity of European bees

    A. De Palma, M. Kuhlmann, R. Bugter, et al. · 2017 · Diversity & Distributions · 49 citations

    Agricultural intensification and urbanization are important drivers of biodiversity change in Europe. Different aspects of bee community diversity vary in their sensitivity to these pressures, as well as independently influencing ecosystem service provision (pollination). To obtain a more comprehensive understanding of human impacts on bee diversity across Europe, we assess multiple, complementary indices of diversity.

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  13. Modeling the Brazilian Cerrado land use change highlights the need to account for private property sizes for biodiversity conservation

    C. Colman, A. Guerra, André Almagro, et al. · 2024 · Scientific Reports · 39 citations

    Simulating future land use changes can be an important tool to support decision-making, especially in areas that are experiencing rapid anthropogenic pressure, such as the Cerrado–Brazilian savanna. Here we used a spatially-explicit model to identify the main drivers of native vegetation loss in the Cerrado and then extrapolate this loss for 2050 and 2070. We also analyzed the role of property size in complex Brazilian environmental laws in determining different outcomes of these projections. Our results show that distance to rivers, roads, and cities, agricultural potential, permanent and annual crop agriculture, and cattle led to observed/historical loss of vegetation, while protected area

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  15. Long-term wetland biomonitoring highlights the differential impact of land use on macroinvertebrate diversity in Dongting Lake in China

    Yan Zhang, Dai-Zhong Huang, Xiao-Wei Jin, et al. · 2024 · Communications Earth & Environment · 24 citations

    Freshwater wetlands have experienced disproportionate biodiversity loss due to environmental change. The lack of long-term biological data limits our understanding of wetland biodiversity dynamics and principal drivers. Here, we combine aquatic biomonitoring with satellite-derived imagery and spatial-explicit analysis to assess the changes in macroinvertebrate diversity and driving factors from 1988 to 2017 in Dongting Lake, China. The results revealed declining macroinvertebrate alpha diversity (species richness and functional redundancy) but increased beta diversity (taxonomic and functional dissimilarity). An increase in nutrients due to changes in land-use intensity in the surrounding te

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  17. Land-use spillovers from environmental policy interventions

    D. Ramírez-Mejía, Y. Zinngrebe, E. Ellis, et al. · 2025 · Global Environmental Change · 19 citations

    Environmental policy interventions are crucial for addressing biodiversity loss and climate change, yet their effectiveness can be compromised by land-use spillovers, where efforts to reduce impacts in one place displace them elsewhere. Despite growing recognition of spillovers, they remain unevenly defined, inconsistently measured, and poorly integrated into policy evaluation and accountability frameworks. This systematic review synthesizes current research on land-use spillovers triggered by environmental policies, including carbon pricing, protected areas, supply chain interventions, and payments for ecosystem services. We identify three dominant pathways: leakage, indirect land use chang

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  18. Biodiversity finance: Sovereign biodiversity loss drivers and financial stability

    M. Mies · 2025 · Journal of Industrial Ecology · 15 citations

    This study analyzed the impact of sovereign biodiversity risk drivers on financial stability. Using a global dataset covering 2004–2021, I found empirical evidence that the biodiversity risks land use, drought, and freshwater stocks significantly affect the systemic risk measures SRISK and systemic expected shortfall (SES). This study also found empirical evidence that including non‐financial risks in banks' risk assessments is beneficial for financial stability because lending makes borrowers more aware of sustainability. By providing empirical findings on the influence of country‐specific biodiversity risk drivers on market‐based systemic risk measures, this study provides suggestions for

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  21. US Imperiled species and the five drivers of biodiversity loss

    Talia E. Niederman, J. Aronson, Alison M. Gainsbury, et al. · 2025 · Bioscience · 14 citations

    Abstract We synthesized reported threats to US imperiled species to identify which of the five predominant drivers of biodiversity loss—climate change, invasive species, land and sea use change, pollution, and overexploitation—negatively influence species persistence across taxa. Using threats identified at listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) assessments, and novel climate sensitivity assessments, we document which drivers affect the 2766 imperiled species analyzed. Our results are the first in which climate change has been identified as the leading threat to species listed under the ESA. We found that updated climate sensitiv

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  23. Dietary change and land use change: assessing preventable climate and biodiversity damage due to meat consumption in Germany

    Moritz Hentschl, A. Michalke, Maximilian Pieper, et al. · 2023 · Sustainability Science · 10 citations

    Land use change (LUC) is responsible for a large share of the emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) and is a major driver of global biodiversity loss. Although much of the global LUC-related CO_2 emissions and biodiversity loss occur in tropical countries, the actual drivers of this LUC can be located in the global North, particularly through the import of large quantities of agricultural commodities. The aim of this study is to quantify and monetize the LUC-related impacts of the consumption of animal-based food products in Germany and subsequently explore the potential benefits of transitioning to diets with lower dependence on animal-based products. We calculate the LUC-relat

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  24. Reviewing and benchmarking ecological modelling practices in the context of land use

    E. Gaget, M. Jung, Matthew Lewis, et al. · 2025 · Ecography · 7 citations

    Despite habitat loss and degradation are the primary drivers of biodiversity loss, different conclusions have been drawn about the importance of land‐use or land‐cover (LULC) change for biodiversity. Differences may be due to the difficulty of framing a coherent model design to assess LULC effects. Recommendations have previously been identified for the design of statistical models and failing to follow them can risk misidentification of drivers, misinterpretation of predictions, overconfidence, high uncertainty, and incorrect management recommendations. We review modelling practices in statistical models assessing biodiversity responses to LULC, and investigated relationships between modell

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