Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday March 11 2018, @06:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the planning-for-the-future dept.

Smart land-use planning could ease the conflict between agricultural production and nature conservation. A team of researchers from the University of Göttingen, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the University of Münster integrated global datasets on the geographical distributions and ecological requirements of thousands of animal species with detailed information on the production of the world’s major agricultural crops. The results were published in Global Change Biology.

Increasing agricultural production usually leads to various negative side effects in agricultural landscapes, such as local decline in wildlife and loss of ecosystem functions. But what would happen if agricultural growth would be focused on areas of the world where only a few animal species would be affected?

The researchers evaluated how far global biodiversity loss could be minimized by such planning. They found that 88 percent of the biodiversity that is expected to be lost under future agricultural intensification could be avoided if global land use was spatially optimized.

“However, global optimization implies that species-rich countries, mainly in the tropics, would be more responsible for safeguarding the world’s natural resources – at the expense of their own production opportunities and economic development,” says lead author Lukas Egli of Göttingen University and UFZ.

This applies mainly to countries that are highly dependent on agriculture. “Unless such conflicting national interests can be somehow accommodated in international sustainability policies, global cooperation seems unlikely and might generate new socioeconomic dependencies.”

Lukas Egli et al. Winners and losers of national and global efforts to reconcile agricultural intensification and biodiversity conservation. Global Change Biology 2018. Doi: 10.1111/gcb.14076.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday March 11 2018, @09:34PM (1 child)

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 11 2018, @09:34PM (#651087)

    You can browser at +1 if that stuff bothers you. I usually don't see it because someone downmods it within a few minutes. I admit that i don't expand -1's anymore when i use to look and see if decent AC stuff was unfairly downmodded.

    --
    SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @04:16AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2018, @04:16AM (#651195)

    Don't reply to the trolls while your posts get set to level 2. It just ensures that they troll's post does not get folded under. There are several people that have done that lately and it just elevates the spam.