DataCode.zip

Freshwater wetlands, as sentinels of global changes in the Anthropocene, have experienced disproportionate biodiversity loss. However, a lack of long-term biological indicator data limited our understanding of wetland biodiversity dynamics and principal drivers. Here, we combined the longest aquatic biomonitoring dataset in China with satellite-derived imagery and spatial-explicit analysis during the most recent portion of the Anthropocene, from 1988 to 2017. Three possible paths were hypothesized, including "land-water connection," "climate change," and "river-lake connection". The results revealed declining macroinvertebrate alpha diversity but increased beta diversity. An increase in nutrients due to changes in human land-use intensity in the surrounding terrestrial ecosystem was the primary mechanism for the losses of macroinvertebrate species and functional groups. Alpha diversity changes were most influenced by land-use changes in land buffers 1.5 km from the sampling sites, while beta diversity was significantly affected within 50 m. Our results suggest the need to attenuate local land-use effects by establishing protected buffer areas to protect biodiversity in the future.