Abstract
Perturbed ecosystems may undergo rapid and non-linear changes, resulting in ‘regime shifts’ to an entirely different ecological state. The need to understand the extent, nature, magnitude and reversibility of these changes is urgent given the profound effects that humans are having on the natural world. General ecosystem models, which simulate the dynamics of ecosystems based on a mechanistic representation of ecological processes, provide one novel way to project ecosystem changes across all scales and trophic levels, and to forecast impact thresholds beyond which irreversible changes may occur. We model ecosystem changes in four terrestrial biomes subjected to human removal of plant biomass, such as occurs through agricultural land-use change. We find that irreversible, non-linear responses commonly occur where removal of vegetation exceeds 80% (a level that occurs across nearly 10% of the Earth’s land surface), especially for organisms at higher trophic levels and in less productive ecosystems. Very large, irreversible changes to ecosystem structure are expected at levels of vegetation removal akin to those in the most intensively used real-world ecosystems. Our results suggest that the projected twenty-first century rapid increases in agricultural land conversion may lead to widespread trophic cascades and in some cases irreversible changes to ecosystem structure.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 14051 |
Journal | Scientific Reports |
Volume | 10 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Dec 1 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Microsoft Research, a Leverhulme Trust Research Project grant to TN (Grant number: RPG-2015-073), and funding from the Kanne Rassmussen Foundation, Denmark to DPT and MBJH. We thank Matthew J. Smith for valuable discussions about this work, and Neil D. Burgess for comments on the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).
ASJC Scopus Subject Areas
- General
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't