The global human impact on biodiversity

François Keck (), Tianna Peller, Roman Alther, Cécilia Barouillet, Rosetta Blackman, Eric Capo, Teofana Chonova, Marjorie Couton, Lena Fehlinger, Dominik Kirschner, Mara Knüsel, Lucile Muneret, Rebecca Oester, Kálmán Tapolczai, Heng Zhang and Florian Altermatt ()
Additional contact information
François Keck: University of Zurich
Tianna Peller: University of Zurich
Roman Alther: University of Zurich
Cécilia Barouillet: CARRTEL
Rosetta Blackman: University of Zurich
Eric Capo: Umeå University
Teofana Chonova: Department of Environmental Chemistry
Marjorie Couton: University of Zurich
Lena Fehlinger: University of Vic—Central University of Catalonia
Dominik Kirschner: Department of Aquatic Ecology
Mara Knüsel: University of Zurich
Lucile Muneret: UMR Agronomie
Rebecca Oester: University of Zurich
Kálmán Tapolczai: HUN-REN Balaton Limnological Research Institute
Heng Zhang: University of Zurich
Florian Altermatt: University of Zurich

Nature, 2025, vol. 641, issue 8062, 395-400

Abstract: Abstract Human activities drive a wide range of environmental pressures, including habitat change, pollution and climate change, resulting in unprecedented effects on biodiversity1,2. However, despite decades of research, generalizations on the dimensions and extent of human impacts on biodiversity remain ambiguous. Mixed views persist on the trajectory of biodiversity at the local scale3 and even more so on the biotic homogenization of biodiversity across space4,5. We compiled 2,133 publications covering 97,783 impacted and reference sites, creating an unparallelled dataset of 3,667 independent comparisons of biodiversity impacts across all main organismal groups, habitats and the five most predominant human pressures1,6. For all comparisons, we quantified three key measures of biodiversity to assess how these human pressures drive homogenization and shifts in composition of biological communities across space and changes in local diversity, respectively. We show that human pressures distinctly shift community composition and decrease local diversity across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems. Yet, contrary to long-standing expectations, there is no clear general homogenization of communities. Critically, the direction and magnitude of biodiversity changes vary across pressures, organisms and scales at which they are studied. Our exhaustive global analysis reveals the general impact and key mediating factors of human pressures on biodiversity and can benchmark conservation strategies.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08752-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:641:y:2025:i:8062:d:10.1038_s41586-025-08752-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08752-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().