Agricultural intensification exacerbates spillover effects on soil biogeochemistry in adjacent forest remnants.

ABSTRACT: Land-use intensification is a central element in proposed strategies to address global food security. One rationale for accepting the negative consequences of land-use intensification for farmland biodiversity is that it could 'spare' further expansion of agriculture into remaining natural habitats. However, in many regions of the world the only natural habitats that can be spared are fragments within landscapes dominated by agriculture. Therefore, land-sparing arguments hinge on land-use intensification having low spillover effects into adjacent protected areas, otherwise net conservation gains will diminish with increasing intensification. We test, for the first time, whether the degree of spillover from farmland into adjacent natural habitats scales in magnitude with increasing land-use

SUBMITTER: Didham RK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4289067 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature