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. 2025 Jul 25;11(30):eadt9564.
doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adt9564. Epub 2025 Jul 23.

Biodiversity-friendly landscapes: A paradox for conservation?

Eliane Seraina Meier  1 , Alexander Indermaur  1 , Eva Knop  1   2
Affiliations

Biodiversity-friendly landscapes: A paradox for conservation?

Eliane Seraina Meier et al. Sci Adv. .

Abstract

Human-induced global change may cause the sixth mass extinction of species. The moderate success of patch-scale biodiversity conservation measures has led to the concept of creating biodiversity-friendly landscapes. However, these landscapes potentially present a paradox: They may increase local biodiversity and thereby strengthen biotic resistance of native communities to global change winners, i.e., species that thrive under global change, such as invasive alien species or temperature- or nutrient-tolerant species. However, they may also improve landscape-scale habitat conditions, such as habitat connectivity, which facilitates the dispersal of global change winners, thereby accelerating biodiversity loss. Despite increasing investment in biodiversity-friendly landscapes, this paradox and underlying processes remain largely unquantified. We analyzed 2050 repeated, systematic vegetation surveys across the Swiss farmland and found the hypothesized facilitating and inhibitory effects on global change winners, but, overall, the inhibitory effects were stronger. This supports the call for a shift from patch-scale conservation to landscape-wide strategies to stop the ongoing decline of farmland biodiversity.

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Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.. Paradox of biodiversity conservation measures with regard to their expected effects on the increase in global change winners.
(A) Depending on the spatial scale at which biodiversity conservation measures are implemented, two counteracting processes may occur: On one hand, biodiversity-friendly landscapes may increase local-scale biodiversity and thus strengthen the biotic resistance to the establishment of global change winners. On the other hand, biodiversity-friendly landscapes may also improve habitat conditions at the landscape scale, which, in turn, may facilitate the dispersal of global change winners within the landscape. (B) Conceptual model depicting the expected effects of biodiversity conservation measures on the increase in global change winners, while controlling for climate, land-use intensity, and the preexisting pool of global change winners. CREDIT: G. BRÄNDLE/ AGROSCOPE.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.. Overview of study area and survey.
(A) The study area within Europe, (B) the 125 surveyed landscapes (squares of 1 km2) within the study area, and (C) the vegetation-type surveys in 10-m2 plots on a 50 m–by–50 m grid within an exemplary landscape (i.e., a maximum of 361 plots per landscape) and the ~20 plots selected from these for vegetation surveys (total: 2050).
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.. SEM for the increase in cover of global change winners.
Results of the SEM to test for direct and indirect effects of biodiversity conservation measures on the increase in cover of global change winners (left, invasive neophytes; middle, thermophytes; right, nutriophytes) while controlling for land-use intensity and climate. The magnitude of the standardized coefficients is indicated beside the respective arrows, and the thickness of the paths is proportional to the magnitude of the standardized coefficient. Rc2 represents the conditional coefficient of determination, and Rm2 represents the marginal coefficient of determination. See table S1 for more details on the results and fig. S1 for bivariate plots of direct effects.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.. SEM for the increase in occurrences of global change winners.
Results of the SEM to test for direct and indirect effects of biodiversity conservation measures on the increase in occurrences of global change winners (left. invasive neophytes; middle, thermophytes; right, nutriophytes) while controlling for land-use intensity and climate. The magnitude of the standardized coefficients is indicated beside the respective arrows, and the thickness of the paths is proportional to the magnitude of the standardized coefficient. See table S1 for more details on the results and fig. S1 for bivariate plots of direct effects.
Fig. 5.
Fig. 5.. Overall effects of biodiversity conservation measures.
Overall effects of biodiversity conservation measures (BCMs) on the increase in global change winners (left, invasive neophytes; middle, thermophytes; right, nutriophytes), while controlling for effects of climate, land-use intensity, and the preexisting pool of the global change winners. The increase in global change winners was measured by the increase in cover of global change winners and their additional occurrence. The total increase represents the mean of the effects on the increase in cover of global change winners and the effects on the additional occurrence of all global change winners. The overall effects of conservation measures on the increase in global change winners were calculated by multiplying the standardized coefficients of the paths influenced by biodiversity conservation measures from table S4 and adding all resulting products. This estimation was performed separately for biotic resistance effects to establishment (i.e., biodiversity conservation effects through local-scale biodiversity), for dispersal effects from biodiversity-friendly habitat conditions (i.e., biodiversity conservation effects through habitat richness and connectivity), and for other biodiversity conservation measure effects.
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