52:


Agriculture as a source of pollution


Agriculture continues to be a large source of diffuse environmental pollution, from causing nutrient enrichment through fertilizer run-off, to pesticides with long-term residues in surface and groundwater bodies affecting freshwater biota. Amphibians, the most threatened and rapidly declining vertebrate group in the EU, are particularly vulnerable to pesticide and other micro-pollutant toxicity. The increasing diversity and amounts of new agro-chemicals impose unknown pressures and challenges, especially for long-term and cascading effects through food chains. For example, neonicotinoid pesticides (Nieto et al. 2014) have recently emerged as a significant new threat to many insect pollinator species, including honeybees (EASAC 2015: van der Sluijs et al. 2015). As another emerging pollutant issue, the effects of nano-materials and particles on most organisms and ecosystems are still largely unknown.


53:


Land-use change and land management are pressures on biodiversity


Land-use change and land management have been identified as the main pressures leading to biodiversity loss globally (MA 2005a), including projections up to 2050 (OECD 2012). The OECD 2012 study analyzed the main pressures on biodiversity by looking at mean species abundance, an indicator that measures the abundance of original species relative to their assumed population size in an undisturbed pristine or primary habitat (Alkemade et al. 2009). The study shows that global decline has mainly been caused by land-use change and management, including conversion for food crops, which caused a 10.4 per cent decrease in mean species abundance; pasture, which caused a 5.9 per cent decrease; and to a much lesser extend bioenergy. But other drivers of change are also relevant, for example forestry, which is responsible for 2.8 per cent of loss. Other pressures include the development of infrastructure, habitat encroachment and fragmentation (all three drivers 9.6 per cent), pollution (for example, nitrogen deposition 0.6 per cent) and climate change (2.5 per cent). For the future, around 20 per cent of additional loss in mean species abundance projected for 2010–2030 will be caused by crop production and livestock farming. However, other drivers will become more dominant in the coming decades (OECD


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2012). Globally, the impact of forestry and climate change will increase in the future (OECD 2012).


The mechanisms and consequences of reductions in suitable habitat through fragmentation and direct loss are well understood or documented for many organism groups, but habitat fragmentation, degradation and loss are among the most pervasive threats to biological diversity (Wilson 1992). Habitat fragmentation, in the broad sense of the term, has two different aspects: direct habitat loss, and loss of habitat quality through edge effects (Selva et al. 2011; Didham 2010; Fahrig 2003). A synthesis of fragmentation experiments spanning multiple biomes and scales, five continents, and 35 years demonstrates that habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity by 13–75 per cent and impairs key ecosystem functions by decreasing biomass and altering nutrient cycles (Haddad et al. 2015).


In spite of the planning concept of preserving large non- fragmented areas consisting of large patches of at least semi-natural habitats, fragmentation has continued in Europe over the last 20 years and its rate is projected to increase in the future (Jaeger et al. 2011).


For improving landscape connectivity and reducing fragmentation, the ecological network concept was raised in North America and Europe in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. An ecological network is a system of representative core areas, corridors and buffer zones designed and managed in such a way as to preserve biodiversity, avoid fragmentation, maintain or restore ecosystem services and allow the sustainable use of natural resources through interconnectivity of its physical elements within the landscape and existing social/institutional structures (UNEP 2003). The number of projects of ecological networks and green infrastructures in Europe is increasing at all levels – local, regional, national and transnational: currently, there are ecological networks in various stages of implementation in 35 European countries (Jongman 2015; Plesník 2014; ECNC 2012). Another approach is that of high-nature-value farmland landscapes (Lomba et al. 2015), which is particularly relevant for rural policies.


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