Journal of Ecology and Rural Environment ›› 2021, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (10): 1271-1280.doi: 10.19741/j.issn.1673-4831.2021.0150

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Effects of Land Use Intensity Change on Biodiversity in Agricultural Areas

FENG Si-jie1, CHEN Bao-xiong2, LIU Yun-hui1,3   

  1. 1. College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China;
    2. Rural Energy and Environment Agency, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Beijing 100125, China;
    3. Beijing Key Laboratory of Biodiversity and Organic Farming, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China
  • Received:2021-03-15 Online:2021-10-25 Published:2021-10-27

Abstract: Landscape change resulted from agricultural intensification is an importantdriver for the loss of biodiversity in agricultural landscape. In order to assess the impacts of agricultural landscape structure change on species diversity and explore future trends in the change of biodiversity, a biodiversity database with dataset from 298 farmland plots with different landuse intensity across the country has been established and a total of 15 042 species records were collected.Then, based on Meta-Analysis, a farmland landuse intensities-biodiversity relationship model using linear mixed effect model was built; Taking Zhejiang Province as a case, the spatial distribution of land-use was simulated by using Dyna-CLUE model under different scenarios combining with land-use policies and plannings of Zhejiang Province, such as returning farmland to forest, and converting conventional farming to ecological farming, etc.; Finally, the simulated land use spatial distribution and the land use intensity-biodiversity relationship model were combined as inputs of the Flus-Biodiversity model to predict the spatial distribution pattern of biodiversity in typical agricultural areas, and an optimized planning for the farm land biodiversity conservation in Zhejiang Province was proposed. The results of meta-analysis show that biodiversity decreased significantly with the increase of landuse intensity at both landscape and local management scales. Biodiversity decreased in all scenarios with the lowest decrease in the ecological conservation scenario, while biodiversity increased when conventional farmland was converted to ecological farmland. In conclusion, in order to improve the biodiversity conservation, enhance the ecosystem services, and restore the ecological environment, firstly, the natural and semi-natural habitats surrounding farmland should be protected as much as possible to reduce the impact of landuse changes on agricultural biodiversity. Secondly, it is also essential to increase semi-natural habitats such as plantations in agricultural landscapes to optimize the agricultural landscape pattern. Thirdly, to develop organic farming or ecological farming, which calls for reducing the application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, is also critical to the improvement of regional conservation of biodiversity; Finally, under the premise of ensuring the red line of cultivated land, the policy of returning farmland to forests should be further promoted and land development in ecological function reserves should be more strictly restricted. Meanwhile, attention should be paid to protect the areas suffering from serious loss of biodiversity intacness.

Key words: farmland land use intensity, species diversity, biodiversity, scenario simulation

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