The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures. We describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database, containing more than 3.2 million records sampled at over 26,000 locations and representing over 47,000 species. We outline how the database can help in answering a range of questions in ecology and conservation biology. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically representative database of spatial comparisons of biodiversity that has been collated to date; it will be useful to researchers and international efforts wishing to model and understand the global status of biodiversity.

a b s t r a c tThe West African savannas are subject to changes in fire regimes related to land use intensification, which may infer significant biological modifications. We investigated the efficiency of MODIS fire products to account for the variability of fire regimes in relation to changes in land cover and savanna vegetation. The specificity and complementarities of both MODIS active fire (MOD14A2 and MYD14A2) and burnt area (MCD45A1) products were assessed in order to characterize fire regimes and to relate them with land cover. In addition the distribution of plant species among landscape units characterised by specific fire regimes was assessed. The calculation of the mutual information made it possible to set apart species more frequent in landscapes little or not at all subject to fire and species more frequent in burnt areas. The first group is the expression of the nature of the unburnt land-cover units, made up mainly of the agricultural areas dominated by fields and fallows. It consists of more potential threats (weeds, encroachers, invasive species etc.) than the second group, which is more typical of sudanian savannas, where fire provides the long-term stability needed to preserve the ecosystem.

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