Modest recovery of biodiversity in a western European country: The Living Planet Index for the Netherlands

Abstract

a b s t r a c tWe calculated a Living Planet Index (LPI) for the Netherlands, based on 361 animal species from seven taxonomic groups occurring in terrestrial and freshwater habitats. Our assessment is basically similar to the global LPI, but the latter includes vertebrate species and trends in population abundance only. To achieve inferences on trends in biodiversity more generally, we added two insect groups (butterflies and dragonflies) and added occupancy trends for species for which we had no abundance trends available. According to the LPI, the state of biodiversity has slightly increased from 1990 to 2014. However, large differences exist between habitat types. We found a considerable increase in freshwater animal populations, probably because of improvement of chemical water quality and rehabilitation of marshland habitats. We found no trend in the LPI for woodland populations. In contrast, populations in farmland and open semi-natural habitats (coastal dunes, heathland and semi-natural grassland) declined, which we attribute to intensive agricultural practices and nitrogen deposition, respectively. The LPI shows that, even in a densely populated western European country, ongoing loss of animal biodiversity is not inevitable and may even be reversed if adequate measures are taken. Our approach enabled us to produce summary statistics beyond the level of species groups to monitor the state of biodiversity in a clear and consistent way.

Assessing species richness trends: Declines of bees and bumblebees in the Netherlands since 1945

“…These authors noted that their results for the most recent decades contradict Carvalheiro et al (), as extinctions might be increasing again. Van Strien et al () observed a modest recovery of biodiversity in the Netherlands, measured as the living planet index, from 1990 to 2014. It is concentrated, however, in the freshwater habitats and with diversity decreases in the habitats where wild bees typically occur.…”

“…Repeated observations within years are required at a fixed set of locations for estimating occupancy, which does not match with the structure of the bee data and the lack of data in some years. van Strien et al () constructed detection/nondetection records per square kilometer cell with observations and analyzed these per species separately. In this dataset, there is no guarantee that collectors sampled in a manner representative of the species locally present and I therefore refrain from such reconstructions.…”

Woodland ectomycorrhizal fungi benefit from large‐scale reduction in nitrogen deposition in the Netherlands

“…This procedure is widely adopted to create indicators for biodiversity change (e.g. global LPI, Loh et al., ; Van Strien et al., ). The geometric mean is stable when positive and negative trends, as well as their magnitude, are in balance.…”

“…We included the uncertainty due to sampling error of species indices into the confidence limits of our indicator, thereby ensuring error propagation. Finally, we applied LOESS (locally weighted polynomial regression) to produce smoothed indices and confidence intervals (Van Strien et al., ).…”

Towards 'nature-inclusive' agriculture

“…Species abundance on agricultural land has declined in recent decades, although for some species the decline has been stabilised (CBS et al, 2012;Van Strien et al, 2016) (Agrimatie, n.d.). For an analysis of financial results in dairy farming, see Alfa (2010; Brouwer et al, 2016).…”