Biodiversity loss along a gradient of deforestation in Amazonian agricultural landscapes

Autor: Raphaël Marichal, Xavier Arnaud de Sartre, Solen Le Clec'h, Luz Elena M. Zararte, Danielle Mitja, Ivaneide S. Furtado, Thibaud Decaëns, Florence Dubs, Diego Andrés Bonilla, Patrick Lavelle, Sylvain Dolédec, Rodolphe Rougerie, Izildinha Miranda de Souza, Alex Velasquez, Marlucia Bonifacio Martins, Catarina Praxedes, George G. Brown, Johan Oszwald, Valérie Gond, Yeimmy Andrea Cuellar Criollo, Erika Gordillo, Alexander Feijoo, D. Ruiz, Jérôme Mathieu, Catalina Sanabria, Joel Tupac Otero
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: Conservation Biology. 32:1380-1391
ISSN: 0888-8892
DOI: 10.1111/cobi.13206
Popis: Assessing how much management of agricultural landscapes, in addition to protected areas, can offset biodiversity erosion in the tropics is a central issue for conservation that still requires cross-taxonomic and landscape-scale studies. We measured the effects of Amazonia deforestation and subsequent land-use intensification in 6 agricultural areas (landscape scale), where we sampled plants and 4 animal groups (birds, earthworms, fruit flies, and moths). We assessed land-use intensification with a synthetic index based on landscape metrics (total area and relative percentages of land uses, edge density, mean patch density and diversity, and fractal structures at 5 dates from 1990 to 2007). Species richness decreased consistently as agricultural intensification increased despite slight differences in the responses of sampled groups. Globally, in moderately deforested landscapes species richness was relatively stable, and there was a clear threshold in biodiversity loss midway along the intensification gradient, mainly linked to a drop in forest cover and quality. Our results suggest anthropogenic landscapes with high-quality forest covering >40 % of the surface area may prevent biodiversity loss in Amazonia.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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