Speaker
Description
Land-use change has transformed nearly three-quarters of terrestrial ecosystems and remains a major driver of biodiversity change. In China, recent policies aimed at balancing food security and ecological conservation have substantially reshaped land-use patterns, yet their consequences for bird biodiversity remain insufficiently quantified. We applied the countryside species-area relationship model, combined with land-use change data and bird species records, to assess bird biodiversity loss under current land-use patterns and identify key transition pathways responsible for biodiversity change. We found a clear scale-dependent decoupling between local and regional biodiversity responses. Local α-diversity increased slightly for forest, open-terrestrial, and wetland birds, with species richness increasing by 0.61%, 0.63%, and 0.81%, respectively. However, mean γ-diversity losses remained substantial, reaching 16.72%, 16.36%, and 15.92% for the three groups. These contrasting patterns indicate that local richness gains do not necessarily translate into regional biodiversity maintenance. In Northeast China, forest and wetland birds showed opposing spatial responses, suggesting functional replacement and community reassembly rather than uniform biodiversity recovery. Pathway-based responsibility analysis further revealed that biodiversity loss was highly concentrated in a limited number of land-use transitions. Approximately 35% of transition pathways contributed about 85% of forest bird loss, with high-risk pathways mainly involving forest conversion to wetland, grassland, and annual cropland. For open-terrestrial birds, annual cropland to urban land and wetland were dominant high-responsibility pathways. Spatial responsibility zoning identified North China as a major high-loss and high-responsibility region for forest and open-terrestrial birds, whereas parts of Southwest China represented potential risk areas. Wetland bird loss was mainly associated with low-responsibility pathways in Northwest and Northeast China. Overall, our results show that land-use change not only drives bird biodiversity loss but also reshapes functional community composition, highlighting the need for pathway-specific and functional-group-sensitive conservation strategies.
| Status Group | Doctoral Researcher |
|---|---|
| FOR TALKS: Poster Presentation Option | No, I prefer to present only as a talk. |