期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2022
卷号：119
期号：27
DOI：10.1073/pnas.2202310119
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Significance
Tropical forests are threatened by human activities, which result in deforestation and degradation. However, multiple land-use and land-cover transitions are occurring in tropical landscapes, and we do not know how these transitions differ in terms of their rates and impacts on the ecosystem. We show that deforestation for pasture was the most prevalent and high-impact transition in the Brazilian Amazon, although other less prevalent transitions also caused a reduction in biodiversity and carbon stocks and altered soil properties. Of all the ecosystem properties we studied, biodiversity was the most affected by all land-use and land-cover transitions. We show the importance of considering the multiple transitions and ecosystem properties to understand the current state and future of tropical forest landscapes.
Human activities pose a major threat to tropical forest biodiversity and ecosystem services. Although the impacts of deforestation are well studied, multiple land-use and land-cover transitions (LULCTs) occur in tropical landscapes, and we do not know how LULCTs differ in their rates or impacts on key ecosystem components. Here, we quantified the impacts of 18 LULCTs on three ecosystem components (biodiversity, carbon, and soil), based on 18 variables collected from 310 sites in the Brazilian Amazon. Across all LULCTs, biodiversity was the most affected ecosystem component, followed by carbon stocks, but the magnitude of change differed widely among LULCTs and individual variables. Forest clearance for pasture was the most prevalent and high-impact transition, but we also identified other LULCTs with high impact but lower prevalence (e.g., forest to agriculture). Our study demonstrates the importance of considering multiple ecosystem components and LULCTs to understand the consequences of human activities in tropical landscapes.
