Rosin, Zuzanna and Rosin, Zuzanna M. and Pärt, Tomas and Low, Matthew and Kotowska, Dorota and Tobolka, Marcin and Szymanski, Pawel and Hiron, Matthew
(2021).
Village modernization may contribute more to farmland bird declines than agricultural intensification.
Conservation Letters. 14
, e12843
[Research article]
![]() |
PDF
4MB |
Abstract
The central tenet of European farmland ecology is that agricultural intensification during the 20th century was largely responsible for dramatic declines in species abundances. However, during this time, human rural settlements were also undergoing radical changes through modernization, with undocumented biodiversity impacts in this important wildlife habitat. We performed the first ever large-scale study to disentangle the impact of these simultaneous processes on farmland bird diversity in 104 Polish villages. We show that modernized villages and their surrounding agricultural fields had 50-60% fewer birds than those in and around comparable older villages. The relative contribution of modernization versus agricultural intensification to predicted bird declines was 88% versus 12% for bird communities in villages and 56% versus 44% in surrounding croplands, with considerable variation among ecological species subgroups. These results challenge our current understanding of agricultural ecosystem ecology and how best to implement conservation measures costing billions of euros annually.
Authors/Creators: | Rosin, Zuzanna and Rosin, Zuzanna M. and Pärt, Tomas and Low, Matthew and Kotowska, Dorota and Tobolka, Marcin and Szymanski, Pawel and Hiron, Matthew | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Title: | Village modernization may contribute more to farmland bird declines than agricultural intensification | ||||||
Series Name/Journal: | Conservation Letters | ||||||
Year of publishing : | 2021 | ||||||
Volume: | 14 | ||||||
Article number: | e12843 | ||||||
Number of Pages: | 10 | ||||||
Publisher: | WILEY | ||||||
ISSN: | 1755-263X | ||||||
Language: | English | ||||||
Publication Type: | Research article | ||||||
Article category: | Scientific peer reviewed | ||||||
Version: | Published version | ||||||
Copyright: | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 | ||||||
Full Text Status: | Public | ||||||
Subjects: | (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 1 Natural sciences > 106 Biological Sciences (Medical to be 3 and Agricultural to be 4) > Ecology | ||||||
Keywords: | biodiversity, farmland birds, housing renovation, modern architecture, rural landscape, sustainable development, urbanization, village ecological values | ||||||
URN:NBN: | urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-114253 | ||||||
Permanent URL: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-114253 | ||||||
Additional ID: |
| ||||||
ID Code: | 26659 | ||||||
Faculty: | NJ - Fakulteten för naturresurser och jordbruksvetenskap | ||||||
Department: | (NL, NJ) > Dept. of Ecology (S) > Dept. of Ecology | ||||||
Deposited By: | SLUpub Connector | ||||||
Deposited On: | 05 Jan 2022 11:25 | ||||||
Metadata Last Modified: | 09 Jun 2022 15:28 |
Repository Staff Only: item control page