Cold War spy satellite images reveal long-term declines of a philopatric keystone species in response to cropland expansion.

ABSTRACT: Agricultural expansion drives biodiversity loss globally, but impact assessments are biased towards recent time periods. This can lead to a gross underestimation of species declines in response to habitat loss, especially when species declines are gradual and occur over long time periods. Using Cold War spy satellite images (Corona), we show that a grassland keystone species, the bobak marmot (Marmota bobak), continues to respond to agricultural expansion that happened more than 50 years ago. Although burrow densities of the bobak marmot today are highest in croplands, densities declined most strongly in areas that were persistently used as croplands since the 1960s. This response to historical agricultural conversion spans roughly eight marmot generations and suggests the longest recorded

SUBMITTER: Munteanu C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7287353 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature