Response of soil fauna to land use intensification in a global meta-analysis

Abstract

Land use intensification, particularly a shift from extensively to intensively managed agroecosystems is often seen as one of the main drivers of global biodiversity decline and is considered the main factor applying pressure on soil biodiversity. When confronted with future land use change, understanding the responses of soil biodiversity to different land use regimes is decisive for adequate land management. However, there is still substantial uncertainty about how consistently different taxonomic groups respond to land use intensification. Oftentimes, different taxa show divergent responses to more intense land use regimes, and the community composition is rarely correlated with land use intensity, which may suggest that the drivers of community composition may not be the same as drivers of diversity. The mechanisms that determine the response of different taxa to land use intensification may be regulated by changes in the plant community and abiotic environmental drivers. We systematically assessed and quantified through meta-analysis the effects of land use intensification on soil organisms in global agroecosystems and analyzed the dependence of these effects on abiotic factors such as soil properties (organic matter, pH, nutrient and water availability, texture) and climatic zone.