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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 · 1,105 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 · 833 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 · 295 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. 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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  10. 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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  11. The Main Drivers of Biodiversity Loss: A Brief Overview

    Christian Hald-Mortensen · 2023 · Journal of Ecology & Natural Resources · 59 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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  15. Land Use and Water Stress as Determinants of Ecosystem Resilience: A Panel Data Analysis of Biodiversity Loss Drivers in European Countries

    Irina Alexandra Georgescu, Mioara Băncescu · 2025 · Land · 5 citations

    This study evaluates the influence of land use and water stress on ecosystem resilience, using panel data for thirty-three European countries from 2007 to 2024, following the identification of a research gap in the literature on this topic. The dependent variable is the bioclimatic ecosystem resilience index (BER), and the explanatory variables are Agricultural Land Share (ALS), Forest Land Share (FLS), and the Level of Water Stress (WS). The estimated models are a fixed-effects panel regression with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors, robust to autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity, and spatial dependence, and a kernel-based regularized least squares model, which offers a new, nonlinear, heteroge

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  18. Land Tenure, Socio-Economic Drivers, and Multi-Decadal Land Use and Land Cover Change in the Taita Hills, Kenya

    Hamisi Tsama Mkuzi, Maarifa Ali Mwakumanya, Tobias Bendzko, et al. · 2025 · Wild

    Understanding how land tenure and socio-economic pressures shape landscape transformation is critical for sustainable management in biodiversity-rich regions. This study examines three decades (1987–2017) of land use and land cover (LU&LC) change in the Ngerenyi area of the Taita Hills, Kenya, by integrating multispectral Landsat analysis with household survey data. Harmonized pre-processing and supervised classification of four LU&LC classes, agriculture, built-up areas, high-canopy vegetation, and low-canopy vegetation, achieved overall accuracies above 80% and Kappa values exceeding 0.75. Transition modeling using the Minimum Information Loss Transition Estimation (MILTE) approach, combin

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  19. Plant Diversity and Carbon Storage Potential Across Different Land Use Types in Infrastructure Development Landscapes in Cameroon: Implications for no Net Loss of Biodiversity

    Nforbelie LN, Sonke B, Fongod AG · 2025 · Journal of Energy and Environmental Science

    This study investigated biodiversity change and carbon storage potential of different land use types in infrastructure development landscapes in Cameroon, focusing on the Dibombe Hydropower Project area in the Littoral Region of the Country. Line transects were used to collect flora inventory data in seven different land use types. We assessed flora diversity, aboveground biomass (AGB), and the presence of threatened species across various land use types, including riparian forests, cocoa plantations, fallow land, and croplands. Our findings reveal rich biodiversity across the study area, with forests harbouring the highest species diversity (159 species, Simpson Diversity Index of 0.92). Co

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