Land Use Change and Biodiversity

Abstract

The expansion and intensification of human land use in recent decades is resulting in major changes in biodiversity. Biodiversity, a term that has entered into common usage only in the last twenty years, refers to the diversity of life at all levels of organization, from genetic to species to ecosystem (Levin 2000). Although we refer throughout this chapter most commonly to species diversity, land use change alters biodiversity at all of these levels. For example, reduced habitat from land use change decreases population sizes and reduces genetic diversity within a species.