Global habitat loss and extinction risk of terrestrial vertebrates under future land-use-change scenarios

• Published in: Nature climate change Vol. 9; no. 4; pp. 323 - 329
• Main Authors: Powers, Ryan P., Jetz, Walter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01-04-2019; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 704/158/672; 704/158/852; Amphibians; Aquatic reptiles; Biodiversity; Biodiversity loss; Birds; Climate action; Climate Change; Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts; Conservation; Earth and Environmental Science; Endangered & extinct species; Environment; Environmental Law/Policy/Ecojustice; Environmental policy; Extinction; Future; Habitat loss; Habitats; Informatics; Land; Land use; Letter; Socioeconomic factors; Socioeconomics; Species extinction; Stewardship; Vertebrates
• ISSN: 1758-678X; 1758-6798
• DOI: 10.1038/s41558-019-0406-z

Habitat transformations caused by human land-use change are considered major drivers of ongoing biodiversity loss
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, and their impact on biodiversity is expected to increase further this century
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. Here, we used global decadal land-use projections to year 2070 for a range of shared socioeconomic pathways, which are linked to particular representative concentration pathways, to evaluate potential losses in range-wide suitable habitat and extinction risks for approximately 19,400 species of amphibians, birds and mammals. Substantial declines in suitable habitat are identified for species worldwide, with approximately 1,700 species expected to become imperilled due to land-use change alone. National stewardship for species highlights certain South American, Southeast Asian and African countries that are in particular need of proactive conservation planning. These geographically explicit projections and model workflows embedded in the Map of Life infrastructure are provided to facilitate the scrutiny, improvements and future updates needed for an ongoing and readily updated assessment of changing biodiversity. These forward-looking assessments and informatics tools are intended to support national conservation action and policies for addressing climate change and land-use change impacts on biodiversity.
This paper uses a range of shared socioeconomic pathways scenarios to estimate the future terrestrial vertebrate habitat loss and extinction risk that could result from projected global land-use change.