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How the relationship between vegetation cover and land-cover variance constrains biodiversity in a human dominated world

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Abstract

Context

Alteration of natural vegetation cover across the landscape drives biodiversity changes. Although several studies have explored the relationships between vegetation cover and species richness, as well as between land-cover variance and species richness, few have considered the non-independence of these two biodiversity drivers.

Objectives

The goal of this perspective paper is to present theoretical and empirical relationships linking vegetation cover to land-cover variance at the landscape scale, and the implication of these relationships for species richness change along a gradient of increasing anthropization.

Methods and results

We used simulated and empirical Normalized Difference Vegetation Index data to examine the generality of the relationship between vegetation cover and land-cover variance. Using the province of Québec (Canada) as a case study, our results show that decreasing vegetation cover captures the transition from landscapes with low land-cover variance (non-anthropized landscapes), to intermediate variance (agricultural landscapes), to high variance (urban landscapes).

Conclusion

Based on this relationship between vegetation cover and land-cover variance, and assuming independent positive monotonic relationships between biodiversity and both of these drivers, we predict a unimodal relationship between species richness and anthropization. This suggests a threshold of anthropization beyond which the positive effects of land-cover variance no longer compensate for the negative effects of vegetation cover loss. Identifying these thresholds could be key to setting conservation targets at a landscape scale.

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Data availability

The data are available on Figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12937241.

Code availability

The code is available on Figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12937241.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partly funded from a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Canada Research Chair Program and Discovery Grant to RP (RGPIN-2016-04519). CM was supported by a graduate NSERC fellowship for doctoral studies. We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and editor who provided thoughtful comments on a previous version of the paper.

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chair Program to R. Proulx.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chaire de Recherche du Canada en Intégrité Écologique, Centre de Recherche sur les Interactions Bassins Versants-Écosystèmes Aquatiques (RIVE), Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, C.P. 500, Trois-Rivières, QC, G9A 5H7, Canada

    Charles A. Martin & Raphaël Proulx

  2. Département de Biologie, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500 Boulevard de l’Université, Sherbrooke, QC, J1K 2R1, Canada

    Mark Vellend

  3. Department of Biology, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada

    Lenore Fahrig

Authors
  1. Charles A. Martin
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  2. Raphaël Proulx
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  3. Mark Vellend
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  4. Lenore Fahrig
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the writing and conceptual framing of the paper. CM and RP conceived and managed the study. CM compiled the data, conducted analyses and made the figures.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Raphaël Proulx.

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Martin, C.A., Proulx, R., Vellend, M. et al. How the relationship between vegetation cover and land-cover variance constrains biodiversity in a human dominated world. Landscape Ecol 36, 3097–3104 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-021-01312-9

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