title: On the relationship between farmland biodiversity and land-use intensity in Europe.
abstract: 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 60kgha-1yr-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.
authors.affiliation: Alterra, Centre for Ecosystem Studies, Droevendaalsesteeg 3, Wageningen, The Netherlands. david.kleijn@wur.nl
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kleijn
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Kohler
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Báldi
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Batáry
authors.forename: E D
authors.initials: ED
authors.lastname: Concepción
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Clough
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Díaz
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gabriel
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Holzschuh
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Knop
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kovács
authors.forename: E J P
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Marshall
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tscharntke
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Verhulst
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D005060:Europe; D009584:Nitrogen
chemical_list: D009584:Nitrogen