Tools for exploring habitat suitability for biodiversity under scenarios of rapid land use change.

A new article published in Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment used scenario development based on changes in key socioeconomic drivers together with resource-based habitat suitability models to develop plausible visions of future pathways of agricultural land use and evaluate their potential consequences on conservation of target species. Analyses focused on three steppe bird species in a protected Natura 2000 area, located in the Iberian Peninsula. Our results showed that changes in land use composition under different scenarios can have important effects on habitat suitability, but that the size of those effects would vary depending on species-specific requirements and spatial distribution of land use changes.

Laura Cardador, Miquel De Cáceres, David Giralt, Gerard Bota, Núria Aquilué, Beatriz Arroyo, François Mougeot, Carlos Cantero-Martínez, Lourdes Viladomiu, Jordi Rosell, Fabián Casas, Alba Estrada, Jorge Álvaro-Fuentes, Lluís Brotons (2015).  Tools for exploring habitat suitability for steppe birds under land use change scenarios. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 200: 119-125.