Is it possible to maintain a biodiversity of natural habitats under global change and increasing landscape exploitation?

Abstract

In a period of global change, we consider biodiversity as a feature that is crucial for nature resistance and resilience, which are prerequisites of an ecosystem’s ability to mitigate the negative impacts of global change on human populations. However, biodiversity is also highly jeopardized by the climate and land use changes. Its decline is alarming and further deterioration is expected. The goal of this chapter was to detect these changes in the Czech Republic. An analysis of Corine land cover data time sequences was performed to quantify the changes at the landscape level, while data of the Habitat layer of the Czech Republic from two time periods based on Natura 2000 mapping were compared to define changes in natural habitats. The Habitat Valuation Method was used to quantify the loss of biodiversity value on both levels. The results of land cover development showed increased biodiversity value for the whole Czech Republic, mainly due to significantly increased areas of meadows and pastures at the expense of arable land and a smaller increase of forest area on abandoned soil. On the other hand, the biodiversity values of natural and near natural habitats decreased in favour of ruderalized habitats, mostly due to increasing pressure from landscape exploitation and climate change.