| Titre : | On the relationship between farmland biodiversity and land-use intensity in Europe (2009) |
| Auteurs : | D. Kleijn, Auteur ; F. Kohler, Auteur ; A. Báldi, Auteur ; P. Batáry, Auteur ; E. D. Concepción, Auteur ; Y. Clough, Auteur ; M. Díaz, Auteur ; D. Gabriel, Auteur ; A. Holzschuh, Auteur ; E. Knop, Auteur ; A. Kovács, Auteur ; E. J. P. Marshall, Auteur ; T. Tscharntke, Auteur ; J. Verhulst, Auteur |
| Type de document : | Article |
| Dans : | Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences (276(1658) 2009/03/07) |
| Article en page(s) : | 903-909 |
| Langues: | Anglais |
| Résumé : | Worldwide agriculture is one of the main drivers of biodiversity decline. Effective conservation strategies depend on the type of relationship between biodiversity and land-use intensity, but to date the shape of this relationship is unknown. We linked plant species richness with nitrogen (N) input as an indicator of land-use intensity on 130 grasslands and 141 arable fields in six European countries. Using Poisson regression, we found that plant species richness was significantly negatively related to N input on both field types after the effects of confounding environmental factors had been accounted for. Subsequent analyses showed that exponentially declining relationships provided a better fit than linear or unimodal relationships and that this was largely the result of the response of rare species (relative cover less than 1%). Our results indicate that conservation benefits are disproportionally more costly on high-intensity than on low-intensity farmland. For example, reducing N inputs from 75 to 0 and 400 to 60 kg ha−1 yr−1 resulted in about the same estimated species gain for arable plants. Conservation initiatives are most (cost-)effective if they are preferentially implemented in extensively farmed areas that still support high levels of biodiversity. |
| En ligne : | http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1658/903 |



