During project LUCCA, we reviewed the past literature dealing with the land use and biodiversity literature. This work included the manual review of 100 papers and the application of text-mining tools to analyze over 4,000 published abstracts. We unveiled strong taxonomic and spatial biases in the literature, particularly towards temperate forest regions. These biases mean we are basing our knowledge on land use change impacts on biodiversity on a skewed basis that only represents part of the world’s biodiversity, biomes, land use history, and climates. A better representation of e.g. tropical, and more arid regions, as well as more taxonomic groups will be key for better predicting the combined effects of climate and land use change on biodiversity and ecosystem feedbacks into the future.
LUCCA has also contributed to a systematic review of the role of land use and land cover changes (LULCC) on climate change impacts on biodiversity. Here, the main results are that, within the still very limited literature addressing land use and climate change simultaneously, the majority of studies (62%) found equal importance of the two drivers. Of the remaining studies, half showed larger effects of climate change than LULCC, and the other half showed the opposite trend. The implication is that vulnerability assessments need to account for both drivers to better identify which aspects to focus on in on-the-ground management interventions.
In LUCCA, we have also performed analyses of the potential for remote sensing data products to improve measures of land use change and predictions of bird diversity changes across space and time. These analyses were based on fieldwork, available LiDAR data, and citizen science data provided by Birdlife Denmark and will be disseminated in forthcoming publications.
Finally, at larger spatial scales, LUCCA has contributed to 1) showing the importance of mountains globally to maintain biodiversity in the face of climate and land use changes, 2) showing that mitigating climate change and changing land use towards protecting 30% of land in the tropics could lead to a halving of the extinction risk of tropical species, 3) identifying areas of global importance for simultaneously conserving biodiversity, climate, and water resources, and 4) showcasing the need for accounting for non-equilibrium processes in studies of biodiversity change.
The main results so far as well as contributions derived from LUCCA have been published in the peer reviewed scientific literature, in the journals Global Change Biology (as an invited review), Landscape Ecology, Ecography, Nature Ecology and Evolution, Science, and Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Further, results from the work performed during LUCCA were presented at several international conferences, including four keynote presentations. Finally, outreach activities included a number of public talks in Denmark and abroad, media interviews, and a presentation at the MSCA Green Deal 2020 event for researchers and policy makers.
