Assessing the effects of agricultural intensification on natural habitats and biodiversity in Southern Amazonia

Abstract

The ongoing trend toward agricultural intensification in Latin America makes it essential to explore intensification measures in combination with assumptions regarding future socio-economic development and policies to protect biodiversity and natural habitats. Information on the future development of land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) under the combination of various driving factors operating at different spatial scale-levels, e.g., local land-use policy and global demands for agricultural commodities is required. The spatially explicit land-use change model LandSHIFT was applied to calculate a set of high-resolution land-use change scenarios for Southern Amazonia. The time frame of the analysis is 2010 - 2030. The resulting maps were analyzed in combination with spatially explicit maps depicting vertebrate species diversity in order to examine the effect of a loss of natural habitats on species ranges as well as the overall LULCC-induced effect on vertebrate diversity as expressed by the Biodiversity Intactness Index in this region. The results of this study indicate a general decrease in Biodiversity Intactness in all investigated scenarios. However, agricultural intensification combined with diversified environmental protection policies show least impact of LULCC on vertebrate species richness and conservation of natural habitats compared to scenarios with low agricultural intensification or scenarios with less effective conservation policies.