Effects of habitat and landscape fragmentation on humans and biodiversity in densely populated landscapes

The representation of landscapes in global scale assessments of environmental change

“…A wide range of studies have investigated the interactions between landscape structure and levels of species richness or biodiversity. Although no generic relations between landscape structure indices and species richness are found that hold across different contexts and scales, many studies have confirmed the importance of spatial structure as a determinant of species richness (Atauri and de Lucio 2001;Fahrig 2003;Di Giulio et al 2009;Gimona et al 2009). Others have investigated the role of spatial structure of landscapes in relation to resilience to disturbance (Peterson et al 1998).…”

Measuring fragmentation of open space in urbanised Flanders: an evaluation of four methods

“…This landscape fragmentation, due to scattered urban development and transportation infrastructure, threatens human and environmental well-being by noise and pollution from traffic, disturbs heritage landscapes and impairs the scenic and recreational qualities of the countryside (Jongman, 2002;Jaeger et al, 2008). For example, ribbon residential development along roads generates visual barriers in the landscape (Di Giulio, Holderegger & Tobias, 2009). From an agricultural perspective, fragmentation also affects production capacity (Brabec & Smith, 2002;Gulinck & Wagendorp, 2002;Jongman, 2002).…”

Impacts of agricultural land-use changes on biodiversity in Taihu Lake Basin, China: a multi-scale cause–effect approach considering multiple land-use functions

“…For instance, Billeter et al (2008) analysed the share of natural elements (% area) in 25 agricultural landscapes distributed across seven European countries (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic and Estonia), and concluded that the largest contribution to total species richness of vascular plants, birds and five arthropod groups comes from natural and semi-natural habitats and is directly influenced by their area in most agricultural landscapes. Further, looking at landscape structure in a broader sense, landscape fragmentation has negative impacts on habitat suitability and biodiversity (Noss 1990;Di Giulio et al 2009). Changes in landscape structure were assessed based on the observations of fine-scale (<30 m) agricultural landscape transformation processes in northwest Taihu Lake Basin: Xiejia Village of Xueyan Township, Wujing County during 1930-1994(Ellis et al 2000 and a single field research site in Yixing County during 1989-2002).…”