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Grasslands cover more of the planet than any other ecosystem and support the world’s most widespread land use: grazing. Yet grasslands are not all the same, and their biodiversity responds very differently to human pressures. This project tackles that complexity by creating a new, more realistic classification of grassland systems within the global PREDICTS database, making it fully compatible with future biodiversity and land-use scenarios.
Using a globally rescored database and new data from managed pastures and rangelands, the project quantifies how species richness responds to grazing, land use, climate, human pressure, taxa, and geography. The results reveal strong biodiversity losses in managed pastures, while rangelands remain surprisingly similar to natural ecosystems. Aridity emerged as a key driver in rangelands, and plants and vertebrates often showed resilience or even gains under grazing.
Overall, biodiversity responses varied widely across systems, taxa, and regions, with the Americas showing the strongest losses and Europe and Oceania remaining relatively stable. Crucially, the new classification consistently outperformed previous approaches, providing clearer signals and stronger explanations. The fully rescored PREDICTS database now offers a robust foundation for projecting the future of grassland biodiversity worldwide.
Related publications - A protocol for an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized land-use and climate scenarios (2018), Worldwide impacts of past and projected future land-use change on local species richness and the Biodiversity Intactness Index (Pre-print, 2018)
Team - Andy Purvis (PI), Tim Newbold, Adriana De Palma, Samantha Hill, Katia Sanchez-Ortiz, Emma Caton, Felipe Espinoza
Dissemination - I Simposio Internacional de Biodiversidad, Manejo y Gestión Ambiental
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