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Rural land abandonment is too ephemeral to provide major benefits for biodiversity and climate

Hundreds of millions of hectares of cropland have been abandoned globally since 1950 due to demographic, economic, and environmental changes. This abandonment has been seen as an important opportunity for carbon sequestration and habitat restoration; yet those benefits depend on the persistence of a...

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Autores principales: Crawford, Christopher L., Yin, He, Radeloff, Volker C., Wilcove, David S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9132457/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35613262
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm8999
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author Crawford, Christopher L.
Yin, He
Radeloff, Volker C.
Wilcove, David S.
author_facet Crawford, Christopher L.
Yin, He
Radeloff, Volker C.
Wilcove, David S.
author_sort Crawford, Christopher L.
collection PubMed
description Hundreds of millions of hectares of cropland have been abandoned globally since 1950 due to demographic, economic, and environmental changes. This abandonment has been seen as an important opportunity for carbon sequestration and habitat restoration; yet those benefits depend on the persistence of abandonment, which is poorly known. Here, we track abandonment and recultivation at 11 sites across four continents using annual land-cover maps for 1987–2017. We find that abandonment is largely fleeting, lasting on average only 14.22 years (SD = 1.44). At most sites, we project that >50% of abandoned croplands will be recultivated within 30 years, precluding the accumulation of substantial amounts of carbon and biodiversity. Recultivation resulted in 30.84% less abandonment and 35.39% less carbon accumulated by 2017 than expected without recultivation. Unless policymakers take steps to reduce recultivation or provide incentives for regeneration, abandonment will remain a missed opportunity to reduce biodiversity loss and climate change.
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spelling pubmed-91324572022-06-01 Rural land abandonment is too ephemeral to provide major benefits for biodiversity and climate Crawford, Christopher L. Yin, He Radeloff, Volker C. Wilcove, David S. Sci Adv Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences Hundreds of millions of hectares of cropland have been abandoned globally since 1950 due to demographic, economic, and environmental changes. This abandonment has been seen as an important opportunity for carbon sequestration and habitat restoration; yet those benefits depend on the persistence of abandonment, which is poorly known. Here, we track abandonment and recultivation at 11 sites across four continents using annual land-cover maps for 1987–2017. We find that abandonment is largely fleeting, lasting on average only 14.22 years (SD = 1.44). At most sites, we project that >50% of abandoned croplands will be recultivated within 30 years, precluding the accumulation of substantial amounts of carbon and biodiversity. Recultivation resulted in 30.84% less abandonment and 35.39% less carbon accumulated by 2017 than expected without recultivation. Unless policymakers take steps to reduce recultivation or provide incentives for regeneration, abandonment will remain a missed opportunity to reduce biodiversity loss and climate change. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2022-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC9132457/ /pubmed/35613262 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm8999 Text en Copyright © 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences
Crawford, Christopher L.
Yin, He
Radeloff, Volker C.
Wilcove, David S.
Rural land abandonment is too ephemeral to provide major benefits for biodiversity and climate
title Rural land abandonment is too ephemeral to provide major benefits for biodiversity and climate
title_full Rural land abandonment is too ephemeral to provide major benefits for biodiversity and climate
title_fullStr Rural land abandonment is too ephemeral to provide major benefits for biodiversity and climate
title_full_unstemmed Rural land abandonment is too ephemeral to provide major benefits for biodiversity and climate
title_short Rural land abandonment is too ephemeral to provide major benefits for biodiversity and climate
title_sort rural land abandonment is too ephemeral to provide major benefits for biodiversity and climate
topic Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9132457/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35613262
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm8999
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