A method for assessing land-use impacts on biodiversity in a landscape

Abstract

Models that estimate land-use impacts on biodiversity at multiple spatial scales in human modified landscapes are the backbone of conservation planning. In this study, the suitability of two contemporary species–area methods–the power model and the logarithmic model–for assessing land-use impacts on biodiversity over a landscape is explored. The models are redefined using the Hill family of diversities, and a procedure for estimating the models parameters’ is given. Results from the application of the methodology to data on ant diversity in eight land-use systems in Oumé (Côte d’Ivoire) indicate that the logarithmic model has superior performance over the power model in landscape biodiversity assessments. Secondly, the exponential Shannon diversity (diversity of order 1) has the best performance among the individual Hill diversities. The results also suggest that the average of a sufficiently large number of Hill diversities provides a natural means of ordering land-use systems in terms of their suitability to conserve target species. Although several parts of this method have been implemented in different ways in other studies, the methodology as whole is new.

Keywords

• Land-use
• Landscape
• Biodiversity
• Conservation