Abstract
ContextWhile land use change is the main driver of biodiversity loss, most biodiversity assessments either ignore it or use a simple land cover representation. Land cover representations lack the representation of land use and landscape characteristics relevant to biodiversity modeling.ObjectivesWe developed a comprehensive and high-resolution representation of European land systems on a 1-km2 grid integrating important land use and landscape characteristics.MethodsCombining the recent data on land cover and land use intensities, we applied an expert-based hierarchical classification approach and identified land systems that are common in Europe and meaningful for studying biodiversity. We tested the benefits of using this map as compared to land cover information to predict the distribution of bird species having different vulnerability to landscape and land use change.ResultsNext to landscapes dominated by one land cover, mosaic landscapes cover 14.5% of European terrestrial surface. When using the land system map, species distribution models demonstrate substantially higher predictive ability (up to 19% higher) as compared to models based on land cover maps. Our map consistently contributes more to the spatial distribution of the tested species than the use of land cover data (3.9 to 39.1% higher).ConclusionsA land systems classification including essential aspects of landscape and land management into a consistent classification can improve upon traditional land cover maps in large-scale biodiversity assessment. The classification balances data availability at continental scale with vital information needs for various ecological studies.
Highlights
Landscape ecology envisions the landscape as the outcome of the complex relationship between humans and nature (Opdam et al 2018)
These land systems are selected based on common land uses in Europe, are represented by major groups in the continent’s land use and land cover datasets (ESA and UCLouvain 2010; European Environment Agency 2018) and by expert opinions towards their importance to study the impacts of land use on biodiversity
The threshold of land cover extent for each land system was determined based on two criteria: it indicates the composition of land cover of the system, and it captures small habitat area requirements
Summary
Landscape ecology envisions the landscape as the outcome of the complex relationship between humans and nature (Opdam et al 2018). Land system science and landscape ecology share a lot of concepts of interest: the acknowledgement of human activities as a main actor of land use and landscape change (Lambin et al 2001; Turner II et al 2007; Roy Chowdhury and Turner 2019); the importance of addressing multiple spatial and temporal scales (Veldkamp and Lambin 2001; Dearing et al 2010); the attention for human benefits of nature through the concepts of ecosystem services and Nature’s contributions to People (Wu 2013) and the attention for sustainability solutions (Nielsen et al 2019). Landscape ecologists have been putting a strong emphasis on characterizing landscape pattern across spatial and temporal scales (O’Neill et al 1988; Li and Wu 2004; Wu 2004), and understanding how landscape structure and composition emerge from socio-ecological processes and impact the functioning and performance of ecosystems (Nagendra et al 2004). These different foci can lead to different representations of the landscape and its dynamics, having repercussions for interpretation and assessment of drivers and impacts of land use and landscape changes
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