TY - JOUR
T1 - Trade-offs between economic development and biodiversity conservation on a tropical island
AU - Pagani-Núñez, Emilio
AU - Xu, Yang
AU - Yan, Mingxiao
AU - He, Jiekun
AU - Jiang, Zifei
AU - Jiang, Haisheng
N1 - Funding Information:
We are very grateful to H. Yang, H Wang, and Y Pan for their help curating the trait database and to Y Zou, L Li, and L Xiao for their constructive comments on an earlier draft. We are also very grateful to 2 anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. Y.X. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 32001164) and Foundation Project of President of Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences (grant 201917).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Society for Conservation Biology.
PY - 2022/5/19
Y1 - 2022/5/19
N2 - Resolving trade-offs between economic development and biodiversity conservation needs is crucial in currently developing countries and in particularly sensitive systems harboring high biodiversity. Yet, such a task is challenging because human activities have complex effects on biodiversity. We assessed the effects of intense economic development on Hainan Island (southern China) on different components of biodiversity. This highly biodiverse tropical island has undergone extensive economic development and conversion of forest to agriculture and urban area. We identified 3 main transformation areas (low, medium, and high transformation) based on land-use, local-climate, and economic changes across 145 grids (10 × 10 km), and estimated changes in avian biodive6rsity from 1998 to 2013. We recorded ongoing taxonomic biotic homogenization throughout the island. Differences between traditional and directional alpha diversity decreased by 5%. Phylogenetically clustering increased by 0.5 points (W = 7928, p < 0.01), and functional overdispersion increased by 1 point (W = 16,411, p < 0.01). Initial taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional scores correlated negatively with changes in these scores across all transformation areas (all ps < 0.01). At the local scale, economic and environmental indicators showed complex and divergent effects across transformation areas and biodiversity components. These effects were only partially ameliorated in an ecological function conservation area in the mountainous central part of the island. We found complex effects of economic development on different biodiversity dimensions in different areas with different land uses and protection regimes and between local and regional spatial scales. Profound ecosystem damage associated with economic development was partially averted, probably due to enhanced biodiversity conservation policies and law enforcement, but not without regional-scale biotic homogenization and local-scale biodiversity loss.
AB - Resolving trade-offs between economic development and biodiversity conservation needs is crucial in currently developing countries and in particularly sensitive systems harboring high biodiversity. Yet, such a task is challenging because human activities have complex effects on biodiversity. We assessed the effects of intense economic development on Hainan Island (southern China) on different components of biodiversity. This highly biodiverse tropical island has undergone extensive economic development and conversion of forest to agriculture and urban area. We identified 3 main transformation areas (low, medium, and high transformation) based on land-use, local-climate, and economic changes across 145 grids (10 × 10 km), and estimated changes in avian biodive6rsity from 1998 to 2013. We recorded ongoing taxonomic biotic homogenization throughout the island. Differences between traditional and directional alpha diversity decreased by 5%. Phylogenetically clustering increased by 0.5 points (W = 7928, p < 0.01), and functional overdispersion increased by 1 point (W = 16,411, p < 0.01). Initial taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional scores correlated negatively with changes in these scores across all transformation areas (all ps < 0.01). At the local scale, economic and environmental indicators showed complex and divergent effects across transformation areas and biodiversity components. These effects were only partially ameliorated in an ecological function conservation area in the mountainous central part of the island. We found complex effects of economic development on different biodiversity dimensions in different areas with different land uses and protection regimes and between local and regional spatial scales. Profound ecosystem damage associated with economic development was partially averted, probably due to enhanced biodiversity conservation policies and law enforcement, but not without regional-scale biotic homogenization and local-scale biodiversity loss.
KW - biodiversity loss
KW - forest conversion
KW - functional diversity
KW - phylogenetic diversity
KW - species richness
KW - tropical islands
KW - urbanization
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85130486062&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/cobi.13912
DO - 10.1111/cobi.13912
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85130486062
SN - 0888-8892
VL - 36
JO - Conservation Biology
JF - Conservation Biology
IS - 5
M1 - e139121
ER -