Ceausu, Silvia;
David, Leclere;
Tim, Newbold;
(2025)
Geography and availability of natural habitat determine whether cropland intensification or expansion is more detrimental to biodiversity.
Nature Ecology and Evolution
10.1038/s41559-025-02691-x.
Preview |
PDF
Ceausu et al 2025.pdf - Published Version Download (4MB) | Preview |
Abstract
To mitigate biodiversity loss from agriculture, intensification is often promoted as an alternative to farmland expansion. However, its local impacts remain debated. We assess globally the responses of three biodiversity metrics—species richness, total abundance and relative community abundance-weighted average range size (RCAR), a proxy for biotic homogenization—to land conversion and yield increases. Our models predict a median species loss of 11% in primary vegetation in modified landscapes, and of 25% and 40% in cropland within natural and modified landscapes, respectively. Land conversion also reduces abundance and increases biotic homogenization, with impacts varying by geographic region and history of human modification. However, increasing yields changes biodiversity as well, including in adjacent primary vegetation, with effects dependent on crop, region, biodiversity metric and natural habitat cover. Ultimately, neither expansion nor intensification consistently benefits biodiversity. Intensification has better species richness outcomes in 29%, 83%, 64% and 57% of maize, soybean, wheat and rice landscapes, respectively, whereas expansion performs better in the remaining areas. In terms of abundance and RCAR, both expansion and intensification can outperform the other depending on landscape. Therefore, minimizing local biodiversity loss requires a context-dependent balance between expansion and intensification, while avoiding expansion in unmodified landscapes.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Geography and availability of natural habitat determine whether cropland intensification or expansion is more detrimental to biodiversity |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41559-025-02691-x |
| Publisher version: | https:// doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02691-x |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208025 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
