A millennium of increasing diversity of ecosystems until the mid‐20th century
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Land-use change is widely regarded as a simplifying and homogenising force in nature. In contrast, analysing global land-use reconstructions from the 10th to 20th centuries, we found progressive increases in the number, evenness, and diversity of ecosystems (including human-modified land-use types) present across most of the Earth’s land surface. Ecosystem diversity increased more rapidly after ~1700CE, then slowed or slightly declined (depending on the metric) following the mid-20th century acceleration of human impacts. The results also reveal increasing spatial differentiation, rather than homogenisation, in both the presence-absence and area-coverage of different ecosystem types at sub-global scales - at least, prior to the mid-20th century. Nonetheless, geographic homogenization was revealed for a subset of analyses at a global scale, reflecting the now-global presence of certain human-modified ecosystem types. Our results suggest that, while human land-use changes have caused declines in relatively undisturbed or ‘primary’ ecosystem types, they have also driven increases in ecosystem diversity over the last millennium.
Santos Martins , I , Dornelas , M , Vellend , M & Thomas , C D 2022 , ' A millennium of increasing diversity of ecosystems until the mid‐20th century ' , Global Change Biology , vol. Early View . https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16335
Global Change Biology
Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
DescriptionFunding: Horizon Europe Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (Grant Number(s): 894644); Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity (Grant Number(s): RC-2018-021).
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