Axios:
Dave Merrill and Lauren Leatherby: How America Uses its Land→
/Bloomberg:
Interesting series of maps on land use.
Steven Elbow: Lake Conservation Can't Keep Up with Pollution Increases→
/Cap Times:
1. More information here and here!
2. In a world with increasing human population and exploitation demands, conservation will at best be a Red Queen Race. We know this to be true, but we don't dare say it because it is too unpleasant for most.
Scott K. Johnson: How Land Use is Reducing Species Richness→
/Ars Technica:
Global effects of land use on local terrestrial biodiversity
by Tim Newbold et al.
Abstract
Human activities, especially conversion and degradation of habitats, are causing global biodiversity declines. How local ecological assemblages are responding is less clear—a concern given their importance for many ecosystem functions and services. We analysed a terrestrial assemblage database of unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage to quantify local biodiversity responses to land use and related changes. Here we show that in the worst-affected habitats, these pressures reduce within-sample species richness by an average of 76.5%, total abundance by 39.5% and rarefaction-based richness by 40.3%. We estimate that, globally, these pressures have already slightly reduced average within-sample richness (by 13.6%), total abundance (10.7%) and rarefaction-based richness (8.1%), with changes showing marked spatial variation. Rapid further losses are predicted under a business-as-usual land-use scenario; within-sample richness is projected to fall by a further 3.4% globally by 2100, with losses concentrated in biodiverse but economically poor countries. Strong mitigation can deliver much more positive biodiversity changes (up to a 1.9% average increase) that are less strongly related to countries' socioeconomic status.