Human Impact on Biodiversity Underestimated
Environmental monitoring programs underestimate human impact on biodiversity.
Whether orchids or mammals, insects or slugs and snails: nowadays there are a large number of animals and plants under observation. Researchers and dedicated activists work meticulously to record their distribution, count their numbers, and document every increase or decrease. Unfortunately, the collection of this data began only very recently.
For that reason, it is very difficult for ecologists to assess how much biological diversity has actually been lost due to modern civilisation. The fact that the human impact on biodiversity is likely to be greatly underestimated is the warning sent out by an international research team headed by the UFZ in a recent study published in Scientific Reports
State-of-the-art methods enable ecologists to use such information to obtain a fairly accurate picture of biological diversity and how it is changing. To this end, they observe various facets of biodiversity, such as the size of populations, the characteristics of species or the functioning of ecosystems and analyse how they change. To be able to obtain meaningful results, however, they need adequate data harvested over long periods of time. After all, they are only able to put a realistic figure on the loss of diversity and the role of humans by comparing different epochs: What was the world like before Homo sapiens transformed it completely? And what has changed since then?
The work by Dirk Schmeller and his British, French and Spanish colleagues now poses the question as to whether the monitoring programmes, which were launched only recently in most cases, can provide sufficient information. After all, humans started exerting pressure on modern fauna and flora and permanently altering them centuries ago.
Photo: Dirk Schmeller
In order to get a better assessment, Dirk Schmeller and his colleagues scrutinised for the first time the timeframe of European monitoring programmes. For this purpose, they consulted primarily the DaEuMon online database, which contains detailed information on the various monitoring programmes throughout Europe. It reveals, for instance, which methods are (or were) used to record data on which species in which countries. They additionally analysed information from other publicly accessible databases.
Even centuries ago, hunters, amateur naturalists and other enthusiasts began keeping records on the diversity of life. In this way, Dirk Schmeller and his colleagues came across studies on birds and plants dating from 1634, while the information on mammals even goes back just under a hundred years more than that.
It is not until the second half of the 20th century that better information becomes available. Around 88 percent of European monitoring programmes were not kicked off until sometime after 1950. Just under half did not become operational until the beginning of the 1990s when the EU’s Habitats Directive placed obligations on its member states to collect such data. But by that time Europe’s ecosystems had already been under massive pressure for a long time. This is revealed by the history of human impact that the research team analysed and compared to the timeframe of the monitoring programmes as part of its study. Whether population growth or the emission of greenhouse gases, overfertilisation or pollution: all these issues have their origins long before the boom in monitoring.
Dirk Schmeller summarises: “As a consequence, we lack the correct baseline for all comparisons.” People who are interested in the decline in the diversity of insects, for example, can indeed look back a few decades into the past. But they might then see only a fraction of the actual loss. They will find out little or nothing of all those species that were already unable to cope with the industrial revolution or the rapid changes in agriculture in the 18th century.
Dirk Schmeller and his colleagues therefore argue that other sources of information should also be tapped in order to be able to look further back into the past. Firstly, they identify possibilities from a systematic evaluation of the extensive collections brought together by museums worldwide. “Secondly, palaeobiology can also supply very useful information,” states Dirk Schmeller. This discipline attempts to reconstruct landscapes and ecosystems that have long disappeared. As an example, by drilling deep down into lake beds, researchers obtain sediment cores that can be examined for ancient pollen, seeds and microorganisms.
Contacts and sources:
Dr. Dirk S. Schmeller
UFZ-Department Conservation Biology
Susanne Hufe
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ),
Jean-Baptiste Mihoub, Klaus Henle, Nicolas Titeux, Lluís Brotons, Neil A. Brummitt, Dirk S. Schmeller (2017): Setting temporal baselines for biodiversity: the limits of available monitoring data for capturing the full impact of anthropogenic pressures. Scientific Reports http://www.nature.com/articles/srep41591?WT.feed_name=subjects_ecology
Neil Brummitt, Eugenie C. Regan, Lauren V. Weatherdon, Corinne S. Martin, Ilse R. Geijzendorffer, Duccio Rocchini, Yoni Gavish, Peter Haase, Charles J. Marsh, Dirk S. Schmeller, (in press): Taking Stock of Nature: Essential Biodiversity Variables Explained. Biological Conservation .http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320716303652
Further links: https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=36336&webc_pm=50/2016
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2017/03/human-impact-on-biodiversity.html
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