Interacting effects of land use and biological invasions on local biodiversity: a global multi-taxon study
Duration: 2020 – 2022
Funding: FWF
Description
Human agency threatens global biodiversity. Among human activities, land use has so far had the most detrimental impact on plants and animals. However, land use effects often combine with additional human pressures such as the intentional or unintentional translocation of species beyond their native ranges. These pressures may combine and interact, for example because certain types of land use foster the establishment of alien species. As a consequence, negative effects of land use on biodiversity might even be more severe than assumed because exchange of native by alien species masks the full extent of native species loss. In the proposed project, we will combine the largest and geographically and taxonomically most comprehensive databases on the global distribution of alien species with a similarly large database documenting how land use has changed the species composition (ratio of alien to native species).
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