Quantifying Land Use Impacts on Biodiversity: Combining Species–Area Models and Vulnerability Indicators

Habitat
degradation and subsequent biodiversity damage often take
place far from the place of consumption because of globalization and
the increasing level of international trade. Informing consumers and
policy makers about the biodiversity impacts “hidden”
in the life cycle of imported products is an important step toward
achieving sustainable consumption patterns. Spatially explicit methods
are needed in life cycle assessment to accurately quantify biodiversity
impacts of products and processes. We use the Countryside species–area
relationship (SAR) to quantify regional species loss due to land occupation
and transformation for five taxa and six land use types in 804 terrestrial
ecoregions. Further, we calculate vulnerability scores for each ecoregion
based on the fraction of each species’ geographic range (endemic
richness) hosted by the ecoregion and the IUCN assigned threat level
of each species. Vulnerability scores are multiplied with SAR-predicted
regional species loss to estimate potential global extinctions per
unit of land use. As a case study, we assess the land use biodiversity
impacts of 1 kg of bioethanol produced using six different feed stocks
in different parts of the world. Results show that the regions with
highest biodiversity impacts differed markedly when the vulnerability
of species was included.

受全球化与国际贸易规模持续扩张的影响，栖息地退化及继而引发的生物多样性损害往往发生在远离消费地的区域。向消费者与政策制定者披露进口产品生命周期中潜藏的生物多样性影响，是迈向可持续消费模式的重要一环。生命周期评估（Life Cycle Assessment, LCA）领域亟需空间显式方法，以精准量化产品与生产流程对生物多样性造成的影响。本研究借助乡村物种-面积关系（Countryside species–area relationship, SAR），针对804个陆地生态区内的5类生物类群与6种土地利用类型，量化土地占用与改造引发的区域物种丧失量。此外，本研究基于各生态区承载的物种地理分布范围占比（特有物种丰富度），以及世界自然保护联盟（International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN）为各物种划定的受威胁等级，为每个生态区计算脆弱性评分。将脆弱性评分与SAR模型预测的区域物种丧失量相乘，即可估算单位土地利用类型可能引发的全球物种灭绝数量。作为案例研究，本研究评估了全球不同地区以6种不同原料生产1千克生物乙醇所引发的土地利用生物多样性影响。研究结果表明，若将物种脆弱性纳入考量，生物多样性影响程度最高的区域会出现显著差异。