Island biodiversity best conserved in inaccessible landscapes
Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - 09:30
in Earth & Climate
Islands contribute enormously to global biodiversity, but are threatened by human activities. To understand why some islands have been more impacted since first human settlement than others, a new study compared environmental and societal variables of 30 islands in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean. The study by an international team of scientists, including ecologists from the University of Amsterdam, is now published in the scientific journal Anthropocene. The research shows that terrain accessibility explains most of the differences in native vegetation cover between islands, while modern human population density had a negligible correlation, suggesting that topography constrains human impacts on biodiversity.