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Cumulative impacts of land use and climate change on
biodiversity
For wildlife and ecosystems, however, it is the cumu-
lative impacts of numerous pressures that determine
actual effect on the abundance of species, including, but
not limited to, infrastructure development and associ-
ated land use, forestry, agricultural practices, nitrogen
pollution and climate change.
In this section biodiversity has been defined as the aver-
age abundance of the original species compared with
their original abundance when ecosystems were hardly
impacted by people. The abundance of a species means
the population size of number of individuals of spe-
cies. This indicator is in accordance with the indicators
agreed upon under the Convention of Biological Diver-
sity (UNEP, 2004).
Ecosystem function most generally is closely related to
its original species and their abundance. Given dose-
0 - 20 %
20 - 40
40 - 60
60 - 80
80 - 100
Abundances of species
(% original)
2000
SRES A1 2030
SRES A2 2030
SRES B1 2030
SRES B2 2030
Figure 16:
Current and projected reduction in abundance of biodiversity, expressed as percent of original abundance
of biodiversity given no human disturbance. The four scenarios depict the cumulative impacts of climate change,
infrastructure development, land use, forestry and N-pollution. Notice that the projections are model outputs on very
general datasets and should be used with caution for other than depicting trends.