research topics for biodiversity

Nature’s Secrets: Top 200 Ecology Research Topics

Welcome to the world of Ecology, where the study of nature evolves like an interesting story. Ecology helps us solve the complex relationships between living organisms and their environments. In this fascinating journey, we will see ecology research topics that reveal the secrets of ecosystems, biodiversity, and the delicate balance of nature.

From understanding how different species react to the impact of human activities on our planet, Ecology offers insights that go beyond the ordinary.

So, whether you’re fascinated by the web of life in a forest, the dynamics of a coral reef, or the challenges of conservation, these research topics will guide you into the heart of ecological wonders. Let’s start this adventure of knowledge, discovering the hidden secrets that shape the world around us.

What Is Ecology?

Table of Contents

Ecology is the study of how living things interact with each other and their environment. It explores relationships between plants, animals, and their surroundings, helping us understand how nature works and how different elements in ecosystems connect.

What Are The 6 Topics Studied In Ecology?

Ecology studies the relationships between living things and their environment. Here are six topics studied in ecology:

Ecosystems: Examining how living organisms, like plants and animals, interact with each other and their non living surroundings, such as soil, water, and air.
Biodiversity: Analyzing the variety of life in different ecosystems, including the number and types of species present.
Population Dynamics: Understanding how the numbers of individuals in a species change over time, including factors like birth rates, death rates, and migration.
Community Interactions: Exploring how different species in a specific area interact with each other, such as through competition or cooperation.
Ecological Succession: Studying the increasing changes in ecosystems over time, including how new communities of plants and animals replace older ones.
Conservation Biology: Focusing on protecting and preserving ecosystems and species, especially those facing threats or endangerment.

Step by Step Guide on The Best Way to Finance Car

The Best Way on How to Get Fund For Business to Grow it Efficiently

Research Topics

Conducting Research
Our Funding
Researcher Profiles
Site and Facilities
Current Research
Research Policies
Data Archive
GIS & Maps
Sample Archive
Remote Sensing
History of the Harvard Forest Archives
Research Publications
Annual Reports
Books for Sale
Science & Policy Integration Project
Program on Conservation Innovation
Wildlands & Woodlands
HF Land Management
Sustainable Working Landscapes
Bullard Fellowships
Graduate Students
Undergraduate Students
LTER Student Research Funding
Field Trips
K-12 & Schoolyard LTER
Volunteering
Featured Projects
Arts @ Harvard Forest
Past News & Highlights
Tours & Conferences
Fisher Museum
Trails & Recreation
Accessibility
Greater Harvard Forest Community
Mission & Values
Affiliations
Harvard Forest and the Petersham Community
Indigenous Community Partnerships
Diversity and Inclusion Statement
Harvard Forest Code of Conduct
Harvard Forest Strategic Plan (2020-2025)
Give to Harvard Forest

Search form

You are here.

International Research Projects
Large Experiments and Permanent Plot Studies
Regional Studies
Biodiversity Studies
Conservation and Management
Climate and Carbon Exchange
Ecological Informatics and Modelling
Environmental Justice
Historical and Retrospective Studies
Invasive Plants, Pests and Pathogens
Physiological Ecology, Population Dynamics, and Species Interactions
Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
Watershed Ecology

Since 1907, the Harvard Forest has served as a center for research and education in forest biology and conservation. The Forest's Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program , established in 1988 and funded by the National Science Foundation, provides a framework for much of this activity.

Browse the topics below for an overview of Harvard Forest research by category, or explore abstracts of current research .

Major Research Topics

Experimental Scale

The Harvard Forest is a department of Harvard University's Faculty of Arts & Sciences and a member of the U.S. LTER Network supported by the National Science Foundation . Learn More about Our funders .

Harvard Forest 324 North Main Street Petersham, MA 01366-9504 Tel (978) 724-3302

Fax (978) 724-3595

Harvard Forest Weather

Current Conditions & Data

Google Maps & Directions

Stay Connected

f Follow us on Facebook
t Follow @HarvardForest on Twitter
i Follow @harvard.forest on Instagram
f Subscribe via RSS
e Sign up for our quarterly e-news

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List
v.4(F1000 Faculty Rev); 2015

Hot topics in biodiversity and climate change research

Barry w. brook.

1 School of Biological Sciences, Private Bag 55, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 7001, Australia

Damien A. Fordham

2 The Environment Institute and School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, 5005, Australia

Peer Review Summary

With scientific and societal interest in biodiversity impacts of climate change growing enormously over the last decade, we analysed directions and biases in the recent most highly cited data papers in this field of research (from 2012 to 2014). The majority of this work relied on leveraging large databases of already collected historical information (but not paleo- or genetic data), and coupled these to new methodologies for making forward projections of shifts in species’ geographical ranges, with a focus on temperate and montane plants. A consistent finding was that the pace of climate-driven habitat change, along with increased frequency of extreme events, is outpacing the capacity of species or ecological communities to respond and adapt.

Introduction

It is now halfway through the second decade of the 21 st century, and climate change impact has emerged as a “hot topic” in biodiversity research. In the early decades of the discipline of conservation biology (1970s and 1980s), effort was focused on studying and mitigating the four principal drivers of extinction risk since the turn of the 16 th century, colourfully framed by Diamond 1 as the “evil quartet”: habitat destruction, overhunting (or overexploitation of resources), introduced species, and chains of extinctions (including trophic cascades and co-extinctions). Recent work has also emphasised the importance of synergies among drivers of endangerment 2 . But the momentum to understand how other aspects of global change (such as a disrupted climate system and pollution) add to, and reinforce, these threats has built since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports 3 of 2001 and 2007 and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 4 in 2005.

Scientific studies on the effects of climate change on biodiversity have proliferated in recent decades. A Web of Science ( webofscience.com ) query on the term “biodiversity AND (climate change)”, covering the 14 complete years of the 21 st century, shows the peer-reviewed literature matching this search term has grown from just 87 papers in 2001 to 1,377 in 2014. Figure 1 illustrates that recent scientific interest in climate change-related aspects of biodiversity research has outpaced—in relative terms—the baseline trend of interest in other areas of biodiversity research (i.e., matching the query “biodiversity NOT (climate change)”), with climate-related research rising from 5.5% of biodiversity papers in 2001 to 16.8% in 2014.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is f1000research-4-6984-g0000.jpg

Number of refereed papers listed in the Web of Science database that were published between 2001 and 2014 on the specific topic “biodiversity AND (climate change)” (blue line, secondary y-axis) compared to the more general search term “biodiversity NOT (climate change)”.

Interest in this field of research seems to have been driven by a number of concerns. First, there is an increasing societal and scientific consensus on the need to measure, predict (and, ultimately, mitigate) the impact of anthropogenic climate change 5 , linked to the rise of industrial fossil-fuel combustion and land-use change 6 . Biodiversity loss and ecosystem transformations, in particular, have been highlighted as possibly being amongst the most sensitive of Earth’s systems to global change 7 , 8 . Second, there is increasing attention given to quantifying the reinforcing (or occasionally stabilising) feedbacks between climate change and other impacts of human development, such as agricultural activities and land clearing, invasive species, exploitation of natural resources, and biotic interactions 2 , 9 . Third, there has been a trend towards increased accessibility of climate change data and predictions at finer spatio-temporal resolutions, making it more feasible to do biodiversity climate research 10 , 11 .

What are the major directions being taken by the field of climate change and biodiversity research in recent years? Are there particular focal topics, or methods, that have drawn most attention? Here we summarise major trends in the recent highly cited literature of this field.

Filtering and categorising the publications

To select papers, we used the Web of Science indexing service maintained by Thomson Reuters, using the term “biodiversity AND (climate change)” to search within article titles, abstracts, and keywords. This revealed 3,691 matching papers spanning the 3-year period 2012 to 2014. Of these, 116 were categorised by Essential Science Indicators ( esi.incites.thomsonreuters.com ) as being “Highly Cited Papers” (definition: “As of November/December 2014, this highly cited paper received enough citations to place it in the top 1% of [its] academic field based on a highly cited threshold for the field and publication year”), with five also being classed as “Hot Papers” (definition: “Published in the past two years and received enough citations in November/December 2014 to place it in the top 0.1% of papers in [its] academic field”). The two academic fields most commonly associated with these selected papers were “Plant & Animal Science” and “Environment/Ecology”.

Next we ranked each highly cited paper by year, according to its total accumulated citations through to April 1 2015, and then selected the top ten papers from each year (2012, 2013 and 2014) for detailed assessment. We wished to focus on data-oriented research papers, so only those labelled “Article” (Document Type) were considered, with “Review”, “Editorial”, or other non-research papers being excluded from our final list. Systematic reviews that included a formal meta-analysis were, however, included. We then further vetted each potential paper based on a detailed examination of its content, and rejected those articles for which the topics of biodiversity or climate change constituted only a minor component, or where these were only mentioned in passing (despite appearing in the abstract or key words).

The final list of 30 qualifying highly cited papers is shown in Table 1 , ordered by year and first author. The full bibliographic details are given, along with a short description of the key message of the research (a subjective summary, based on our interpretation of the paper). Each paper was categorised by methodological type, the aspect of climate change that was the principal focus, the spatial and biodiversity scale of the study units, the realm, biome and taxa under study, the main ecological focus, and the research type and application (the first row of Table 1 lists possible choices that might be allocated within a given categorisation). Note that our choice of categories for the selected papers was unavoidably idiosyncratic, in this case being dictated largely by the most common topics that appeared in the reviewed papers. Other emphases, such as non-temperature-related drivers of global change, evolutionary responses, and so on, might have been more suitable for other bodies of literature. We also did not attempt to undertake any rigorous quantification of effect sizes in reported responses of biodiversity to climate change; such an approach would have required a systematic review and meta-analysis, which was beyond the scope of this overview of highly cited papers.

Summary of the ten most highly cited research papers based on the search term: “biodiversity AND (climate change)”, for each of 2012 9 , 13 , 14 , 23 , 26 , 32 , 34 , 36 , 40 , 45 , 2013 15 – 17 , 21 , 27 , 30 , 31 , 33 , 37 , 39 and 2014 18 – 20 , 22 , 24 , 25 , 28 , 29 , 35 , 38 , as determined in the ISI Web of Science database. Filters : Reviews, commentaries, and opinion pieces were excluded, as were papers for which climate change was not among the focal topics of the research. The first row of the Table is a key that shows the possible categorisations that were open to selection (more than one description might be selected for a given paper); n is the number of times a category term was allocated.

Analysis of trends, biases and gaps

Based on the categorisation frequencies in Table 1 (counts are given in the n columns adjacent to each category), the “archetypal” highly cited paper in biodiversity and climate change research relies on a database of previously collated information, makes an assessment based on future forecasts of shifts in geographical distributions, is regional in scope, emphasises applied-management outcomes, and uses terrestrial plant species in temperate zones as the study unit.

Many papers also introduced new methodological developments, studied montane communities, took a theoretical-fundamental perspective, and considered physiological, population dynamics, and migration-dispersal aspects of ecological change. Plants were by far the dominant taxonomic group under investigation. By contrast, relatively few of the highly cited paper studies used experimental manipulations or network analysis; lake, river, island and marine systems were rarely treated; nor did they focus on behavioural or biotic interactions. Crucially, none of the highly cited papers relied on paleoclimate reconstructions or genetic information, despite the potential value of such data for model validation and contextualisation 12 . Such data are crucial in providing evidence for species responses to past environmental changes, specifying possible limits of adaptation (rate and extent) and fundamental niches, and testing theories of biogeography and macroecology.

At the time of writing, 5 of the 30 highly cited papers listed in Table 1 (16%) also received article recommendations from Faculty of 1000 experts ( f1000.com/prime/recommendations ) 9 , 13 – 16 with none of the most recent (2014) highly cited papers having yet received an F1000 Prime endorsement.

Key findings of the highly cited paper collection for 2012–2014

A broad conclusion of the highly cited papers for 2012–2014 (drawn from the “main message” summaries described in Table 1 ) is that the pace of climate change-forced habitat change, coupled with the increased frequency of extreme events 15 , 17 and synergisms that arise with other threat drivers 9 , 18 and physical barriers 19 , is typically outpacing or constraining the capacity of species, communities, and ecosystems to respond and adapt 20 , 21 . The combination of these factors leads to accumulated physiological stresses 13 , 15 , 22 , might have already induced an “extinction debt” in many apparently viable resident populations 14 , 23 – 25 , and is leading to changing community compositions as thermophilic species displace their more climate-sensitive competitors 13 , 26 . In addition to atmospheric problems caused by anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions, there is mounting interest in the resilience of marine organisms to ocean acidification 27 , 28 and altered nutrient flows 16 .

Although models used to underpin the forecasts of climate-driven changes to biotic populations and communities have seen major advances in recent years, as a whole the field still draws from a limited suite of methods, such as ecological niche models, matrix population projections and simple measures of change in metrics of ecological diversity 7 , 12 , 29 . However, new work is pushing the field in innovative directions, including a focus on advancements in dynamic habitat-vegetation models 30 – 32 , improved frameworks for projecting shifts in species distributions 29 , 33 , 34 and how this might be influenced by competition or predation 35 , 36 , and analyses that seek to identify ecological traits that can better predict the relative vulnerability of different taxa to climate change 37 , 38 .

In terms of application of the research to conservation and policy, some offer local or region-specific advice on ecosystem management and its integration with other human activities (e.g., agriculture, fisheries) under a changing climate 18 , 24 , 35 , 39 . However, the majority of the highly cited papers used some form of forecasting to predict the consequences of different climate-mitigation scenarios (or business-as-usual) on biodiversity responses and extinctions 20 – 22 , 33 , 40 , so as to illustrate the potentially dire consequences of inaction.

Future directions

The current emphasis on leveraging large databases for evidence of species responses to observed (recent) climate change is likely to wane as existing datasets are scrutinised repeatedly. This suggests to us that future research will be forced to move increasingly towards the logistically more challenging experimental manipulations (laboratory, mesocosm, and field-based). The likelihood of this shift in emphasis is reinforced by the recent trend towards mechanistic models in preference to correlative approaches 41 . Such approaches arguably offer the greatest potential to yield highly novel insights, especially for predicting and managing the outcomes of future climate-ecosystem interactions that have no contemporary or historical analogue. Along with this work would come an increasing need for systematic reviews and associated meta-analysis, to summarise these individual studies quantitatively and use the body of experiments to test hypotheses.

Technological advances will also drive this field forward. This includes the development of open-source software and function libraries that facilitate and standardise routine tasks like validation and sensitivity analysis of projection or statistical models 42 , 43 , as well as improved access to data layers from large spatio-temporal datasets like ensemble climate forecasts 10 and palaeoclimatic hindcasts 44 . An increasing emphasis on cloud-based storage and use of off-site high-performance parallel computing infrastructure will make it realistic for researchers to undertake computationally intensive tasks 31 from their desktop.

These approaches are beginning to emerge, and a few papers on these topics already appear in the highly cited paper list ( Table 1 ). This includes the innovative exposure of coral populations to varying carbon dioxide concentrations, and the meta-analyses of tundra plant response to experimental warming 45 and marine organisms to ocean chemistry 27 . Such work must also be underpinned by improved models of the underlying mechanisms and dynamic processes, ideally using multi-species frameworks that make use of ensemble forecasting methods for improved incorporation of scenario and climate model uncertainty 10 . Such an approach can account better for biotic interactions 41 via individual-based and physiologically explicit “bottom-up” models of adaptive responses 31 . Lastly, there must be a greater emphasis on using genetic information to integrate eco-evolutionary processes into biodiversity models 46 , and on improving methods for making the best use of retrospective knowledge from palaeoecological data 12 .

[version 1; referees: 2 approved]

Funding Statement

This work was supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP120101019 (Brook) and Future Fellowship FT140101192 (Fordham).

Referee response for version 1

Bernhard schmid.

1 Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, CH-8057, Switzerland

I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Jonathan Rhodes

1 Landscape Ecology and Conversation Group, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld, Australia

Book series

Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation

About this book series.

Springer’s book series, Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation, brings together some of the most exciting and topical papers in biodiversity and conservation research. The result is a series of useful themed collections covering issues such as the diversity and conservation of specific habitats or groups of organisms, and the key dilemma of resource use versus conservation.

Based on Springer’s popular journal, Biodiversity and Conservation, the series provides access to selected peer-reviewed papers which represent the cutting edge of current research to provide a valuable overview of progress in each topic addressed. With their diversity of case studies and depth of investigation, these collections will be of particular interest for courses including biodiversity and/or conservation issues, and to advanced students and researchers working in related fields.

Professor David L. Hawksworth CBE,
Dr. Anurag Chaurasia

Book titles in this series

Biodiversity islands: strategies for conservation in human-dominated environments.

Florencia Montagnini
Copyright: 2022

Available Renditions

Implications for Biodiversity Conservation and Ecological Processes

Anurag Chaurasia
David L. Hawksworth
Manoela Pessoa de Miranda
Copyright: 2020

Biodiversity of the Himalaya: Jammu and Kashmir State

Ghulam Hassan Dar
Anzar A. Khuroo

Naturalists, Explorers and Field Scientists in South-East Asia and Australasia

Indraneil Das
Andrew Alek Tuen
Copyright: 2016

Bioprospecting

Success, Potential and Constraints

Russell Paterson
Nelson Lima
Copyright: 2017

Publish with us

Abstracted and indexed in.

Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

133 Biodiversity Topics & Examples

🔝 top-10 biodiversity topics for presentation, 🏆 best biodiversity project topics, 💡 most interesting biodiversity assignment topics, 📌 simple & easy biodiversity related topics, 👍 good biodiversity title ideas, ❓ biodiversity research topics.

Biodiversity loss.
Global biodiversity conservation.
The Amazon rainforest.
Animal ecology research.
Sub Saharan Africa.
Marine biodiversity.
Threats to ecosystems.
Plant ecology.
Importance of environmental conservation.
Evolution of animal species.
Biodiversity Hotspots: The Philippines The International Conservation has classified the Philippines as one of the biodiversity hotspots in the world. Additionally, the country is said to be one of the areas that are endangered in the world.
Aspects, Importance and Issues of Biodiversity Genetic diversity is a term used to refer to the dissimilitude of organisms of the same species. Species diversity is used to refer to dissimilitude of organisms in a given region.
Biodiversity Benefits for Ecology This variation of species in the ecosystem is a very important concept and factor that indeed is the basis for sustaining life on our planet. Moreover, the most important supporter of life, which is soil […]
Biodiversity Conservation: Tropical Rainforest The forest is not a threat to many species and that, therefore, helps in showing that conserving this forest will be of great benefit to many species. The disadvantage of conserving the Mangrove Forest is […]
Loss of Biodiversity and Extinctions It is estimated that the number of species that have become extinct is greater than the number of species that are currently found on earth.
Habitat Destruction and Biodiversity Extinctions The instance of extinction is by and large regarded as the demise of the very last character of the genus. Habitat obliteration has played a major part in wiping out of species, and it is […]
Biology Lab Report: Biodiversity Study of Lichens As a consequence of these results, the variety of foods found in forest flora that include lichens may be linked to varying optimum conditions for establishment and development.
Climate Change’s Negative Impact on Biodiversity This essay’s primary objective is to trace and evaluate the impact of climate change on biological diversity through the lens of transformations in the marine and forest ecosystems and evaluation of the agricultural sector both […]
How Biodiversity Is Threatened by Human Activity Most of the marine biodiversity is found in the tropics, especially coral reefs that support the growth of organisms. Overexploitation in the oceans is caused by overfishing and fishing practices that cause destruction of biodiversity.
Natural Sciences: Biodiversity and Human Civilisation The author in conjunction with a team of other researchers used a modelling study to illustrate the fact approximately 2 percent of global energy is currently being deployed in the generation of wind and solar […]
How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity The disturbance of the ecosystem has some effects on the dynamics of vectors and infectious diseases. Change of climate is a contributing factor in the emergence of new species and infectious diseases.
Plant Interactions and Biodiversity: Ecological Insights The author is an ecologist whose main area of interest is in the field of biodiversity and composition of the ecosystem.
Reassessing Extinction Projections: Debunking Exaggerated Claims This is because most animals and plants have been projected to be extinct by the end of this century yet the method that is used to forecast this can exaggerate by more than 160%.
Biodiversity: Aspects Within the Sphere of Biology Finally, living objects consist of cells, which are the basic units of their function and structure. The viruses’ structure depends on which nucleic acid is included, which denotes that there are DNA and RNA viruses.
Coral Reef and Biodiversity in Ecosystems Coral reefs are formed only in the tropical zone of the ocean; the temperature limits their life – are from +18 to +29oS, and at the slightest deviation from the boundaries of the coral die.
Biodiversity and the Health of Ecosystems Various opinions are revealed concerning biodiversity, including the human impact, reversal of biodiversity loss, the impact of overpopulation, the future of biodiversity, and the rate of extinction.
Wild Crops and Biodiversity Threats However, out of millions of existing types of wild crop cultures, the vast majority have been abandoned and eradicated, as the agricultural companies placed major emphasis on the breeding of domesticated cultures that are easy […]
Biodiversity, Interdependency: Threatened and Endhangered Species In the above table, humans rely on bees to facilitate pollination among food crops and use their honey as food. Concurrently, lichens break down rocks to provide nutrient-rich soil in the relationship.
Invasive Processes’ Impact on Ecosystem’s Biodiversity If the invasive ones prove to be more adaptive, this will bring about the oppression of the native species and radical changes in the ecosystem.
Conserving Biodiversity: The Loggerhead Turtle The loggerhead sea turtle is the species of oceanic turtle which is spread all over the world and belongs to the Cheloniidae family.
Biodiversity and Dynamics of Mountainous Area Near the House It should be emphasized that the term ecosystem used in this paper is considered a natural community characterized by a constant cycle of energy and resources, the presence of consumers, producers, and decomposers, as well […]
National Biodiversity Strategy By this decision, the UN seeks to draw the attention of the world community and the leaders of all countries to the protection and rational use of natural resources.
Rewilding Our Cities: Beauty, Biodiversity and the Biophilic Cities Movement What is the source of your news item? The Guardian.
Biodiversity and Food Production This paper will analyze the importance of biodiversity in food production and the implications for human existence. Edible organisms are few as compared to the total number of organisms in the ecosystem.
Restoring the Everglades Wetlands: Biodiversity The Act lays out the functions and roles of the Department of Environmental Protection and the South Florida Water Management District in restoration of the Everglades.
Biodiversity: Importance and Benefits This is due to the fact that man is evolving from the tendency of valuing long term benefits to a tendency of valuing short terms benefits.
A Benchmarking Biodiversity Survey of the Inter-Tidal Zone at Goat Island Bay, Leigh Marine Laboratory Within each quadrant, the common species were counted or, in the case of seaweed and moss, proliferation estimated as a percentage of the quadrant occupied.
Biodiversity: Population Versus Ecosystem Diversity by David Tilman How is the variability of the plant species year to year in the community biomass? What is the rate of the plant productivity in the ecosystem?
Biodiversity Hotspots and Environmental Ethics The magnitude of the problem of losing biodiversity hotspots is too great, to the extend of extinction of various species from the face of the earth.
The Importance of Biodiversity in Ecosystem The most urgent problem right now is to maintain the level of biodiversity in this world but it has to begin with a more in-depth understanding of how different species of flora and fauna can […]
Natural Selection and Biodiversity These are featured by the ways in which the inhabiting organisms adapt to them and it is the existence of these organisms on which the ecosystems depend and therefore it is evident that this diversity […]
Scientific Taxonomy and Earth’s Biodiversity A duck is a domestic bird that is reared for food in most parts of the world. It is associated with food in the household and is smaller than a bee.
Global Warming: Causes and Impact on Health, Environment and the Biodiversity Global warming is defined in simple terms as the increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s surface including the air and oceans in recent decades and if the causes of global warming are not […]
Loss of Biodiversity in the Amazon Ecosystem The growth of the human population and the expansion of global economies have contributed to the significant loss of biodiversity despite the initial belief that the increase of resources can halt the adverse consequences of […]
California’s Coastal Biodiversity Initiative The considered threat to California biodiversity is a relevant topic in the face of climate change. To prevent this outcome, it is necessary to involve the competent authorities and plan a possible mode of operation […]
Biodiversity: American Museum of Natural History While staying at the museum, I took a chance to visit the Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life and the Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians.
Biodiversity and Animal Population in Micronesia This means that in the future, the people living in Micronesia will have to move to other parts of the world when their homes get submerged in the water.
Urban Plants’ Role in Insects’ Biodiversity The plants provide food, shelter and promote the defensive mechanisms of the insects. The observation was also an instrumental method that was used to assess the behavior and the existence of insects in relation to […]
Biodiversity Markets and Bolsa Floresta Program Environmentalists and scholars of the time led by Lord Monboddo put forward the significance of nature conservation which was followed by implementation of conservation policies in the British Indian forests.
Brazilian Amazonia: Biodiversity and Deforestation Secondly, the mayor persuaded the people to stop deforestation to save the Amazon. Additionally, deforestation leads to displacement of indigenous people living in the Amazonia.
Defining and Measuring Biodiversity Biodiversity is measured in terms of attributes that explore the quality of nature; richness and evenness of the living organisms within an ecological niche.
Biodiversity, Its Importance and Benefits Apart from that, the paper is going to speculate on the most and least diverse species in the local area. The biodiversity can be measured in terms of the number of different species in the […]
Biodiversity, Its Evolutionary and Genetic Reasons The occurrence of natural selection is hinged on the hypothesis that offspring inherit their characteristics from their parents in the form of genes and that members of any particular population must have some inconsiderable disparity […]
Biodiversity Hotspots: Evaluation and Analysis The region also boasts with the endangered freshwater turtle species, which are under a threat of extinction due to over-harvesting and destroyed habitat.
Marine Biodiversity Conservation and Impure Public Goods The fact that the issue concerning the global marine biodiversity and the effects that impure public goods may possibly have on these rates can lead to the development of a range of externalities that should […]
Biodiversity and Business Risk In conclusion, biodiversity risk affects businesses since the loss of biodiversity leads to: coastal flooding, desertification and food insecurity, all of which have impacts on business organizations.
Measurement of Biodiversity It is the “sum total of all biotic variation from the level of genes to ecosystems” according to Andy Purvus and Andy Hector in their article entitled “Getting the Measure of Diversity” which appeared in […]
Introduced Species and Biodiversity Rhymer and Simberloff explain that the seriousness of the phenomenon may not be very evident from direct observation of the morphological traits of the species.
Ecosystems: Biodiversity and Habitat Loss The review of the topic shows that the relationship between urban developmental patterns and the dynamics of ecosystem are concepts that are still not clearly understood in the scholarly world as well as in general.
When Human Diet Costs Too Much: Biodiversity as the Ultimate Answer to the Global Problems Because of the unreasonable use of the natural resources, environmental pollution and inadequate protection, people have led a number of species to extinction; moreover, due to the increasing rates of consumerist approach towards the food […]
The Impact of Burmese Pythons on Florida’s Native Biodiversity Scientists from the South Florida Natural Resource Center, the Smithsonian institute and the University of Florida have undertaken studies to assess the predation behavior of the Burmese pythons on birds in the area.
Essentials of Biodiversity At the same time, the knowledge and a more informed understanding of the whole concept of biodiversity gives us the power to intervene in the event that we are faced by the loss of biodiversity, […]
Threat to Biodiversity Is Just as Important as Climate Change This paper shall articulate the truth of this statement by demonstrating that threats to biodiversity pose significant threat to the sustainability of human life on earth and are therefore the protection of biodiversity is as […]
Cold Water Coral Ecosystems and Their Biodiversity: A Review of Their Economic and Social Value
Benchmarking DNA Metabarcoding for Biodiversity-Based Monitoring and Assessment
Prospects for Integrating Disturbances, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning Using Microbial Systems
Enterprising Nature: Economics, Markets, and Finance in Global Biodiversity Politics
Institutional Economics and the Behaviour of Conservation Organizations: Implications for Biodiversity Conservation
Fisheries, Fish Pollution and Biodiversity: Choice Experiments With Fishermen, Traders and Consumers
Last Stand: Protected Areas and the Defense of Tropical Biodiversity
Hardwiring Green: How Banks Account For Biodiversity Risks and Opportunities
Governance Criteria for Effective Transboundary Biodiversity Conservation
Marine Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas for Penguins in Antarctica: Targets for Conservation Action
Ecological and Economic Assessment of Forests Biodiversity: Formation of Theoretical and Methodological Instruments
Environment and Biodiversity Impacts of Organic and Conventional Agriculture
Food From the Water: How the Fish Production Revolution Affects Aquatic Biodiversity and Food Security
Biodiversity and World Food Security: Nourishing the Planet and Its People
Climate Change and Energy Economics: Key Indicators and Approaches to Measuring Biodiversity
Conflicts Between Biodiversity and Carbon Sequestration Programs: Economic and Legal Implications
Models for Sample Selection Bias in Contingent Valuation: Application to Forest Biodiversity
Optimal Land Conversion and Growth With Uncertain Biodiversity Costs
Internalizing Global Externalities From Biodiversity: Protected Areas and Multilateral Mechanisms of Transfer
Combining Internal and External Motivations in Multi-Actor Governance Arrangements for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
Balancing State and Volunteer Investment in Biodiversity Monitoring for the Implementation of CBD Indicators
Differences and Similarities Between Ecological and Economic Models for Biodiversity Conservation
Globalization and the Connection of Remote Communities: Household Effects and Their Biodiversity Implications
Shaded Coffee and Cocoa – Double Dividend for Biodiversity and Small-Scale Farmers
Spatial Priorities for Marine Biodiversity Conservation in the Coral Triangle
One World, One Experiment: Addressing the Biodiversity and Economics Conflict
Alternative Targets and Economic Efficiency of Selecting Protected Areas for Biodiversity Conservation in Boreal Forest
Analysing Multi Level Water and Biodiversity Governance in Their Context
Agricultural Biotechnology: Productivity, Biodiversity, and Intellectual Property Rights
Renewable Energy and Biodiversity: Implications for Transitioning to a Green Economy
Agricultural Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of Major Farming Systems
Integrated Land Use Modelling of Agri-Environmental Measures to Maintain Biodiversity at Landscape Level
Changing Business Perceptions Regarding Biodiversity: From Impact Mitigation Towards New Strategies and Practices
Forest Biodiversity and Timber Extraction: An Analysis of the Interaction of Market and Non-market Mechanisms
Poverty and Biodiversity: Measuring the Overlap of Human Poverty and the Biodiversity Hotspots
Protecting Agro-Biodiversity by Promoting Rural Livelihoods
Maintaining Biodiversity and Environmental Sustainability
Landscape, Legal, and Biodiversity Threats That Windows Pose to Birds: A Review of an Important Conservation Issue
Variable Mating Behaviors and the Maintenance of Tropical Biodiversity
Species Preservation and Biodiversity Value: A Real Options Approach
What Is Being Done to Preserve Biodiversity and Its Hotspots?
How Are Argentina and Chile Facing Shared Biodiversity Loss?
Are Diverse Ecosystems More Valuable?
How Can Biodiversity Loss Be Prevented?
Can Payments for Watershed Services Help Save Biodiversity?
How Can Business Reduce Impacts on the World’s Biodiversity?
Are National Biodiversity Strategies Appropriate for Building Responsibilities for Mainstreaming Biodiversity Across Policy Sectors?
How Does Agriculture Effect Biodiversity?
Are There Income Effects on Global Willingness to Pay For Biodiversity Conservation?
How Does the Economic Risk Aversion Affect Biodiversity?
What Are the Threats of Biodiversity?
How Has the Increased Usage of Synthetic Pesticides Impacted Biodiversity?
What Does Drive Biodiversity Conservation Effort in the Developing World?
How Does the Plantation Affect Biodiversity?
What Does Drive Long-Run Biodiversity Change?
How Does the United Nations Deal With Biodiversity?
What Factors Affect Biodiversity?
How Are Timber Harvesting and Biodiversity Managed in Uneven-Aged Forests?
When Should Biodiversity Tenders Contract on Outcomes?
Who Cares About Biodiversity?
Why Can Financial Incentives Destroy Economically Valuable Biodiversity in Ethiopia?
What Factors Affect an Area’s Biodiversity?
In What Ways Is Biodiversity Economically Valuable?
Which Human Activities Threaten Biodiversity?
How Can Biodiversity Be Protected?
In What Ways Is Biodiversity Ecologically Value?
In Which Countries Is Biodiversity Economically Valuable?
Does Species Diversity Follow Any Patterns?
How Is Biodiversity Measured?
What Is a Biodiversity Hotspot?
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, February 22). 133 Biodiversity Topics & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/biodiversity-essay-topics/

"133 Biodiversity Topics & Examples." IvyPanda , 22 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/biodiversity-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '133 Biodiversity Topics & Examples'. 22 February.

IvyPanda . 2024. "133 Biodiversity Topics & Examples." February 22, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/biodiversity-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "133 Biodiversity Topics & Examples." February 22, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/biodiversity-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "133 Biodiversity Topics & Examples." February 22, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/biodiversity-essay-topics/.

Ecosystem Essay Topics
Climate Change Titles
Environment Research Topics
Disaster Essay Titles
Evolution Topics
Glaciers Topics
Hunting Questions
Global Warming Essay Titles

Trends and gaps in biodiversity and ecosystem services research: A text mining approach

Open access
Published: 03 September 2022
Volume 52 , pages 81–94, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

Viktoria Takacs ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6340-0253 1 &
C. David O’Brien 2 , 3

5822 Accesses

5 Citations

2 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Understanding the relationship between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services concepts is essential for evidence-based policy development. We used text mining augmented by topic modelling to analyse abstracts of 15 310 peer-reviewed papers (from 2000 to 2020). We identified nine major topics; “Research & Policy”, “Urban and Spatial Planning”, “Economics & Conservation”, “Diversity & Plants”, “Species & Climate change”, “Agriculture”, “Conservation and Distribution”, “Carbon & Soil & Forestry”, “Hydro-& Microbiology”. The topic “Research & Policy” performed highly, considering number of publications and citation rate, while in the case of other topics, the “best” performances varied, depending on the indicator applied. Topics with human, policy or economic dimensions had higher performances than the ones with ‘pure’ biodiversity and science. Agriculture dominated over forestry and fishery sectors, while some elements of biodiversity and ecosystem services were under-represented. Text mining is a powerful tool to identify relations between research supply and policy demand.

An Innovative Methodological Framework for Analyzing Existing Scientific Research on Land-Use Change and Associated Environmental Impacts

Research trends in biodiversity loss: a bibliometric analysis

Textual analysis of published research articles on the environmental impacts of land-use change.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

The adverse impacts of human activity on nature are being increasingly recognised, with some authors referring to a biodiversity crisis (Western 1992 ; Eldredge 2000 ; IPBES 2019 ). There has also been a greater understanding of the importance of biodiversity for people as an asset that should be protected and maintained for our needs and those of future generations. This linkage has been acknowledged in both scientific publications and in policy at national and international levels. The term ‘biodiversity’ first attained prominence in the international policy agenda at the Earth Summit (CBD 1992 ), which listed three components: species, ecosystems and genetic diversity. The vital role of biodiversity for humanity was further expounded in the Millennium Ecosystem Services report (MEA 2005 ), which has led to a growth in research in the ecosystem services (ES) that biodiversity provides.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD 1992 ) is a major driver of policy with 196 signatories. Twenty targets were set when the parties met at Nagoya, Aichi prefecture, Japan in 2010 and ecosystem services feature prominently in the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity (CBD 2010 ; United Nations 2011 ). However, few countries have been able to meet even half of the targets and at a global level, none were fully met (CBD 2020 ). Other assessments such as the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES 2019 ) and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) (Sukhdev et al. 2014 ) also link the two concepts and have come to similar conclusions regarding the ineffectiveness of actions to date. In response, the CBD parties are working to produce new targets that will track progress to 2030 and beyond (CBD 2021a ). A key point in early discussions has been understanding the benefits humanity gains from ecosystem services (CBD 2021b ). While these policy documents highlight a need for evidence, the link between evidence needs and recent publications is not clear. Better understanding of what research has been carried out, and what opportunities and gaps exist will help funding agencies to direct resources where they can have the greatest impact for biodiversity and the benefits it provides.

Biodiversity conservation and the concept of ecosystem services are not always complementary. Thus, enhancing ecosystem service provision does not necessarily lead to biodiversity conservation or sustainable resource management (Oguh et al. 2021 ). In general, there are three ways of treating biodiversity within the ecosystems services framework (Mace et al. 2012 ); (i) biodiversity and ecosystems services are treated as synonyms; (ii) the “conservationist perspective” includes biodiversity as an ecosystem service by itself; or (iii) biodiversity can sometimes be a final ecosystem service—e.g. wild relatives of cultivated crops, which can be a source of improvement for domesticated species, or medicines from wild plants (Mace et al. 2012 ).

During the evolution of the ecosystem services concept, the role of biodiversity in the ecosystem service categories has changed. At the beginning of ES theory summarised in the MEA (MEA 2005 highlighted earlier by Constanza et al. in 1997 ), biodiversity was mentioned as a category of ES (within the category of “supporting” services). Later, “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity” (TEEB) assessment changed the name of the category to “habitat and supporting services”. In an effort to avoid redundancy and counting supporting services (such as biodiversity itself) twice, the hierarchical scheme of ecosystem services devised by the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES 5.1.) (Haines-Young and Potschin 2018 ) does not treat biodiversity as a separate Ecosystem Service itself and does not mention it directly among the ES categories. The category most directly related to biodiversity is within Cultural ES, category 3.2.2.1 “Characteristics of living systems that has an existence value”. In addition, biodiversity is included in 2.2.2.3. “Maintaining nursery populations and habitats (Including gene pool protection)”. However, it has been argued that nature’s contribution to people, and thus ES, cannot be understood without considering biodiversity (Maes et al. 2016 ).

The need to base policy on sound evidence and the need for robust indicators to underpin this evidence is becoming increasingly recognised by policy-makers (e.g. Wentworth and Henly 2021 ). This is particularly important as nations negotiate the framework for global biodiversity (CBD 2021a , b ). There are additional links that should be explored in the field of biodiversity indicators of sustainability (Hillebrand et al. 2018 ) and biodiversity’s links to ecosystem functioning (Balvanera et al. 2006 , 2012 ; IPBES 2018 ). As a result of the urgent need for scientific evidence on nature’s contribution to people as well as on the state and trends of biodiversity, the quantity of scientific publication in these fields has increased rapidly (McDonough et al 2017 ; IPBES 2018 , 2019 ). This process is reflected in the increased frequency of these words in policy documents as well as in peer-reviewed publications (McDonough et al. 2017 ; Czucz et al. 2018 , 2021 ). As a result of the extremely large amount of material, it is not practical to perform a “traditional” systematic review in order to identify trends, and ‘hot and cold’ topics. We propose a method that is novel for this scientific field: text mining with a topic modelling approach.

Bibliometric analyses have been incorporated into reviews (research weaving) as supporting material to systematic reviews (Nakagawa et al. 2019 ). Text mining techniques have gained popularity in summarizing trends and giving guidelines in fields where published information is too great to review all publications. Text mining as a technique has become particularly popular in fields where a rapid increase in published material has occurred, such as information technology and computing, mathematical sciences, linguistics, medical and educational sciences (Nakagawa et al. 2019 ; Westgate et al. 2020 ). However, in the fields of biology, ecology and behavioural sciences, there are relatively few publications based on this technique (Jung and Lee 2020 ).

The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis of how biodiversity and ecosystem services have been considered together in peer-reviewed papers from 2000 to 2020. By doing so, we seek to provide evidence of interest and, potentially, gaps in research. We believe this will be of value in the development of research to support policy in these two key topics. Our research question is: which are the most frequent research fields, and how have they evolved in time. This is the first time that the topic modelling technique has been applied for ecosystem services and biodiversity, allowing us a first comprehensive analysis of the development of scientific interest on these topics.

Materials and methods

In our article’s search and research question formulation, we partially followed the ROSES protocol (RepOrting standards for Systematic Evidence Syntheses; Collaboration for Environmental Evidence 2013 ) as a basic guideline for systematic reviews and systematic mapping). The protocol contains “research search”, “article screening and appraisal”, “critical appraisal”, “data extraction” and “data synthesis and presentation”. We followed the ROSES protocol for systematic mapping concerning literature search; however, we diverged from the protocol in the phases of “article screening and study appraisal” as no further screening strategy, or reduction of the basic collection of the articles was applied. Our method does not allow for data extraction, while presentation and synthesis of the data also contained elements of the protocol, “narrative synthesis” and identifying “knowledge gaps”.

Using Web of Science (WOS) on the 9th of March 2021, we simultaneously collected all entries where abstract, article title or keywords contained (ecosystem AND service*) AND [biodiversity OR (biological AND diversity)]. Our analysis focussed on peer-reviewed original research papers and reviews, published in the English language. Book chapters, book reviews, conference materials, as well as grey literature, were excluded from the analyses. We restricted our analyses to the period 2000–2020. Altogether, 15 310 publications were included in the corpus of our analyses.

All analyses were performed in R 3.0.3. (R core team 2021 ). First, we exported all articles found in WOS into a single table (a maximum of 500 articles can be exported at once so we combined several tables into one). We then removed duplicated documents that were present in the WOS dataset. Abstracts were converted into a “tidy” format; a table with one token per row (Silge and Robinson 2016 : a token is a meaningful unit of text, such as a word, that we are interested in using for analysis). To achieve this, we first converted the dataset with the help of packages dplyr (Wickham et al. 2020 ) and tidytext (Silge and Robinson 2016 ). After this, we cleansed the dataset for common words such as articles, “the” “of” ‘a”, so that only the meaningful words remained (stopwords function in tm package Feinerer et al. 2008 ). Additionally, we removed the keywords for which the literature search was conducted and commonly added tags (e.g. Elsevier Rights Reserved) via filtering the word matrix.

We obtained the main research topics with the help of topic modelling. This technique is equivalent to clustering in text analyses (reviewed by Westgate et al. 2015 ). Topic modelling reduces a corpus of scientific documents to a set of topics, and makes it possible to compare them and analyse temporal changes of these topics as a means of gaining insight into the development of scientific fields (Griffiths and Steyvers 2004 ). Topic modelling was conducted via Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) with the help of R package “topicmodels” (Grün and Hornik 2011 ). LDA is a machine learning based method for allocating the documents to “topics” (Blei et al. 2003 ; Siege and Robinson 2017 ). “Topics” are mixtures of words that occur together in one document with higher probability than they do with others. Each document is a mixture of topics, and a single word might belong to several topics. As a result, LDA is a sort of “fuzzy clustering”. LDA finds the group of words that are associated with each topic and also determines the mixture of topics that describe a document. As a result, we obtain the probability of a document belonging to each of k topics ( γ or prevalence) and the probability of each word belonging to a topic ( β ) (Murakami et al. 2017 ; Perry and McGlone 2021 ). Thus, LDA is a mathematical method for finding the mixture of words that is associated with each topic, while also determining the mixture of topics that describes each document (Silge and Robinson 2017 ).

The number of clusters (topics) is typically pre-defined by the user as based on an ‘optimal’ number of topics for a given set, and is unambiguous (Silge and Robinson 2017 ). In order to define this optimal number we ran the programme with several pre-defined initial numbers of topics ( k = 5, 9, 10, 20, 30) and we chose the largest number of categories that grouped articles such that they belonged nearly exclusively (maximal level of gamma over 0.999) to one topic. In this way, we obtained nine main topics, which gave us meaningful segregation of the published material. For all publications, we assigned the topic that best fitted (highest gamma scores). This allowed us to test the temporal patterns in publication number and citations.

Our analyses were based on abstracts only as it was not practical to obtain the full texts for over 15 000 articles. To bias check the assignment of documents based on abstracts, we downloaded full texts of the 20 best fitting articles for each topic (180 articles). We completed topic modelling on these full texts, and compared the division of articles with the results to the analyses based on the abstracts. After topic assignment (each article to the topic), we were able to observe temporal changes in publication numbers, topic specifics (average gamma values), citation metrics, and temporal changes. The significances of temporal trends, and relations between the amounts of citations and articles were tested by linear regression models (annual mean values of number of articles (gamma), number of citations as a function of time, and annual mean number of citation as a function of annual mean number of articles). All these metrics served for comparing topics and identifying the “hot” fields as well as temporal changes. “Hot topics” are of two types: those topics that occur most frequently and those that appear in the articles that have the highest number of citations. “Cold topics” have the opposite characteristics, appearing infrequently or being cited less often than the other topics considered.

Finally, to be able to achieve a narrative synthesis of the topics, we applied a novel approach (a quantitative tool for comparing the content of the nine topics). We inspected the occurrences of certain pre-defined fields (of interest to us) within the most frequent word matrices in the nine topics. We searched terms among the first hundred most frequent words (according to beta values) within the nine topics. Our chosen fields of interest were as follows: economically important sectors (agriculture, forestry and fishery), policy, nature conservation, economics, taxonomic representation and ecosystem service types (using CICES categories). We compared the sum of beta values (probabilities of belonging to the given topic) of words belonging to those pre-defined fields. This approach gave us further insight into important fields as well as allowing us to identify some knowledge gaps.

A summary of the methods applied is presented on Fig. 1 .

A summary of applied methods and obtained information

Our search found 15 451 peer-reviewed scientific articles that contain the terms “biodiversity” and “ecosystem services”. Of these articles, 141 did not have abstracts that were available in the WOS database: as a result, we analysed 15 310 documents. These documents contained 47 754 distinct terms, which served as a base of the topic modelling.

Topic modelling revealed nine distinct topics. The top 10 most frequent words from each topics are presented in Fig. 2 . [for the top 100 most commonly occurring terms, see Supplementary Material ( S1 )]. The full texts of the twenty best fitting articles from each topic were analysed, applying the same methods. We compared clusters and article divisions in both abstract and full-text analyses. Out of the “top 20 best fitting full texts” (174 full-text documents as six of the “top bests” were not available), only 10 were not assigned into the same group as the abstract had been. This means that topic modelling based on abstracts gave a 94% identical assignment (in the case of the best fitting articles).

Top ten most frequently occurring words in the nine main topics (the highest β values from the topic modelling,). All topics are defined by the matrix of frequencies of word occurrences. Each document can be characterised by its probabilities of belonging to certain topics. Consequently, topics are not exclusive, rather they are matrices of co-occurring words

Topics are ordered according to the number of articles, after assigning the articles to the topic to which it has the highest probability of belonging, based on the article abstract word matrix (Table 1 ).

In case of three topics (“Research & Policy”, “Urban & Spat. Plan”, “Hydro- & Microbiology”), characteristic words ( β values) are evenly distributed. For the remaining topics (“Diversity & Plants”, “Species & Climate change”, “Agriculture”, “Carbon & Soil & Forestry”), the group is characterised by a dominance of the titular words (Fig. 2 ).

Overall number of publications in all topics increased after the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005 (annual numbers 2000–2021 are presented as a function of number of published articles).

There was an increase of publications in every topic (Fig. 3 ); however, this was most rapid in the case of topics” Research & Policy” and “Urban & Spat. plan.”.

Temporal changes in the number of articles in the nine topics. Points show the annual sum of articles. Regression lines are drawn in cases with significance at p < 0.05 level

The annual changes of topic prevalence (Fig. 4 ) show a significant decrease in the case of the “Agriculture” and “Species & Climate change” topics and a slight increase in the case of “Economics and conservation”. F and p values are presented in Supplementary Material S2 .

Changing topic prevalence over time. Each article was assigned to the topic with the highest gamma (prevalence) value. Gamma value shows how “well” the articles fit into the given topic. Points show the annual mean gamma values, with point ranges showing standard errors. Regression lines are drawn in cases with significance at p < 0.05 level

The annual total of citation scores for articles in most topics show a nonlinear pattern in time, with a peak around 2015. This peak may in part reflect a lag before the most recent articles are cited.

The number of citations significantly increases in time in the case of five topics, (at p < 0.05 level) (presented in Fig. 5 a): “Cons. & Distribution”, “Diversity & Plants”, “Hydro- & Microbiology”, “Research & Policy” and “Urban & Spat. Plan.”. Of these topics, in the case of first three, there was an increase in citations reflected in an increase in articles (Fig. 5 b); “Diversity & Plants”, “Research & Policy” and “Hydro- & Microbiology” F and p values are presented in Supplementary Material S2 . This suggests that in the case of “Cons. & Distribution”, the increasing trend in citations is probably due to a small number of highly influential articles.

a Changing number of citations over time. The points indicate the annual sum of citations and number of articles in a given topic. Regression lines are drawn in cases of significant trend at p < 0.05 level. b Changing number of citations as a function of article numbers ( b ). The points indicate the annual sum of citations and number of articles in a given topic. Regression lines are drawn in cases of significant trend at p < 0.05 level

The highest number of articles belongs to the topic “Research & Policy” followed by “Urban & Spat. Plan” and “Economics and conservation” (see also Table 1 ) with the first two topics showing the highest increase rate over time. Average topic prevalence (gamma) is the highest in “Agriculture” and “Research and Policy” topics, and lowest in “Species & Climate change” and “Carbon & Soil & Forestry”, though both “Agriculture” and “Species & Climate change” show a decrease over time. As by definition, gamma is the probability of words belonging to the topic, a decreasing gamma value means a decreasing trend in topic specificity.

The highest overall number of citations per publication was shown by articles from the group “Species & Climate change” ( n = 80.5), followed by “Research & Policy” ( n = 41.1) and “Agriculture” ( n = 37.0). In the cases of topics “Species & Climate change” and “Agriculture”, high citation numbers are not in conjunction with temporal changes or with article numbers, suggesting that there are few very influential articles in these topics with many citations.

All the metrics we investigated might contribute to identifying “hot topics”. The topic which performs best or close to best in most metrics is “Research and Policy”. In all other cases, however, different metrics favour different topics. This suggests that for these other cases, there may be a mismatch between what topics are preferred by authors at a given time (i.e. number of articles) compared with those which have the most influence, as recognised by number of citations.

Within the top 100 words from each topic (Supplementary material S1 ), we checked the frequencies of certain terms related to chosen topics; these frequencies are presented in Table 2 .

Agriculture and forestry-related terms appear with a relatively high frequency (Sum β%) compared to fishery sectors.

A high frequency was attributed to terms related to nature conservation and species protection. These words were among the most frequent 100 terms in the case of six topics, with the highest frequently in “Econ. & Cons.” and “Cons. & Distribution”, and to a smaller extent in topics “Research & Policy”, “Urban & Spat. plan.” and with low frequency in “Diversity & Plants” and “Agriculture”.

“Policy” and related terms were characterised by a high overall frequency. These words were frequent mainly in topics “Science & Policy”, “Econ. & Cons.”, “Urban & Spat. plan” and to a lesser extent “Cons & Distribution”.

Terms related to Economics appear somewhat less frequently overall: mainly in topics “Econ. and Cons.” and to a lesser extent in two other topics “Urban and Spat. plan” and “Research & Policy”.

Ecosystem service categories appeared (based on the terminology of CICES) with a relatively high frequency (Sum β = 12.463%). However, in this case, we have certain limitations as our categorisation is based on single words, while ES categories are more complex. On the other hand, parts of these ES terms might be in other contexts. As a result, in our matrix, certain terms might be an over-represented—e.g. soil organic carbon might appear with 3 different beta values, and some other terms might be not detected in the word matrix. Nevertheless, the appearance of these terms in certain topics is indicative of their prevalence, particularly in contrast to the low frequency of certain services (wind shelter, nursery populations).

Taxonomic names of biota appeared in two topics only: “Hydro- & Microbiology” and “Agriculture”, with summarised β value of 4.011%. Only birds, fish, insects, invertebrates, bacteria and microbiota and flowers were mentioned.

Over the past 20 years, the increasing number of publications in the fields of ecosystem services and biodiversity makes it impossible to summarise them using the traditional methods of meta-analyses or systematic reviews. The presented method, which allows analysis of trends and temporal patterns related to certain topics, is proposed for overcoming this problem. In our analysis, we have contributed to knowledge on the relationship between ecosystem services and biodiversity research, showing publication trends and hot topics within this field. This is of particular importance when we consider the need to match research with wider societal needs and pressure for policy to be evidence-based (Sutherland et al. 2004 ). We discuss the advantages and limitations of the applied method, and following this, we compare and suggest interpretations of the topics’ performances.

While topic modelling has already proved to be of value in other areas of science and technology, its potential is yet to be exploited in ecology (Jung and Lee 2020 ). We believe our paper shows it can be a useful tool to help understand trends, highlight gaps in research and thereby better align research with policy priorities. It is able to handle large numbers of articles: in this case over 15 000. Our analyses were based on abstracts and included all documents containing the search terms. A traditional review or text mining of full articles could be more accurate; however, in the case of more than ten thousand documents, the review process necessarily would end up with a subjective choice in order to decrease the number of articles at some point. Abstracts can be easily downloaded and analysed in large numbers as well, allowing us to analyse a large number of documents at the same time. There was only a 6% difference in classification result between abstracts and full texts, therefore, we consider abstracts as good representative material for reviews. However, we should keep in mind that our bias test is based on analyses of the most characteristic articles from each topic; it may well be that other sets of full-text articles would not give such a good fit. We propose that any future analyses should also consider the differences between topic model results based on abstracts and full-text documents. A further area of investigation might be grey literature (including technical reports and project findings), which may be a better reflection of how practitioners are responding to research and be a means of understanding the “research—implementation gap” (Cadotte et al. 2020 . This analysis might be aided by repositories such as Applied Ecology Resources (Cadotte et al. 2020 ). At the same time, we note that there will be challenges to analysing documents that may not have summaries or abstracts, or that may contain duplicates of work published elsewhere. Generally, Topic modelling has many advantages in reviewing published materials on given topics; however, there is a difficulty in interpretation of such wide material. We proposed comparing representation of certain fields in the topics based on the frequency of appearance as a simple way to objectively summarise the results.

In our case, topic modelling of abstracts suggested a minimum of nine distinct “topics” at the interface of biodiversity and ecosystems services research. At the moment, there is no standardised method for choosing the numbers of clusters. In this study, the number of the topics was the largest number of clusters where at least one article showed above 99% fit; this is slightly different from other authors (e.g. the approach of Westgate et al. 2015 , 2020 ), where a higher number of clusters was chosen. We recognise that there may be advantages to a standard method for choosing the number of topics in topic modelling but also note that authors may prefer to set a number of topics based on the planned uses of their analyses.

The number of publications in all topics showed a strong increase after the publication of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005; e.g. “species and climate change” and “agriculture”), and in the CBD Aichi conference in 2010 (e.g. “research and policy” and “cons. and distribution”), which suggests an effort by researchers to make papers that are policy-relevant. This impression is further supported by the finding that “Research & Policy” was generally the “hottest” topic in terms of applied metrics (number of publications, number of citations and a constant, relatively high level of topic prevalence). It will be instructive to see if there are similar upturns or changes in “hot topics” following the Kunming CBD conference in 2022. Policy and related terms appeared among the most frequent words in the case of three other topics, two of which also showed a high performance based on the applied metrics. These results reflect recognition by the research community of the increasing need for considering biodiversity and ecosystem services in policymaking development and practice, as stated in several recent documents (IPBES 2016 , 2018 , 2019 ; CBD 2021b ). Outside of the topic “Research & Policy”, it was not so straightforward to assign “hot topics” as different metrics gave differing results.

The increasing tendency to include economic and human dimensions into ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation issues has been reflected in recent policies such as CBD (CBD 2021b ), EU biodiversity strategy 2030 (EC 2020 ) or the Green Deal (EC 2019 ). These policies demonstrate a shift from nature conservation aiming at nature’s intrinsic value (stated in EU habitat directives as an example) towards a “natural capital” approach (Buijs et al. 2022 ; Hermoso et al. 2022 ). This shift in perception led from a protective conservation strategy towards treating nature as an asset—a practical development of the ecosystem services approach (Hermoso et al. 2022 ). The fact that the first three most published topics “Research & Policy”, “Urban & Spat. plan.” and “Economics & Cons.” are those with the dominance of human dimensions rather than traditional or pure biodiversity may be a reflection of this process.

The second most published topic “Urban & Spat.plan.” reflects the increasing recognition of the importance of spatial planning in influencing biodiversity and ecosystems services (Albert et al. 2020 ; Van der Biest et al. 2020 ). The topic “Economics & Cons.” is characterised by a high citation rate and this is the only topic with an increasing prevalence, reflecting that economic dimensions of conservation are crucial to its integration into policy priorities.

Climate change has been identified as a key pressure on biodiversity (summarised in Dìaz et al. 2019), and this is also reflected in policies (e.g. The European Green Deal EC 2019 ). There have been repeated calls to better integrate climate-related issues into science and policy (e.g. Pettorelli et al. 2021 ). The “Species & Climate change” topic gained the highest citations rates per article; twice as much as any of other topics, although the annual citations show a decreasing tendency. This may be a result of some articles with exceptionally high influences during the climate debate. The term “climate” appears among the top 100 common terms in five other topics as well. Our analysis thus provides some evidence of an integrated approach to climate change, biodiversity and ecosystems services, in particular the interactions between climate and species distribution.

Agriculture is one of the main pressures on ecosystem services and biodiversity (e.g. Diaz et al. 2019). Agriculture is also one of the main beneficiaries of nature’s contribution to people, and therefore sustainable production is one of the key issues and opportunities for biodiversity (IPBES 2018 , 2019 ). This is reflected in major policies e.g. Common Agricultural Policy (2021–2027) and The European Green Deal (EC 2019 ). The topic “Agriculture” showed the highest prevalence among all topics (although with a decreasing relative frequency over time); moreover, this topic had a relatively high citation per article.

The shift towards a “natural capital” approach might be a reason why the second topic with conservation among the ten most common words, “Cons. & Distributions”, was a far less “hot topic” compared to “Economics & conservation” (although nature conservation-related terms appeared in four more topics among the top 100). “Cons. & Distributions” and “Diversity & Plants” are two topics that might be considered closer to the core of pure biodiversity research and had fewer human implications than other topics, and we conjecture that this may be a reason why these topics were less “hot”.

The topics “Carbon & Soil & Forestry” and “Hydro- & Microbiology” showed a relatively low performance according to our metrics (low number of articles, coupled with low prevalence although accompanied by a relatively high citation score). Despite the clear importance of soil biology in carbon capture, flood mitigation and agricultural productivity (Pereira et al. 2018 ), as well as the wider role of microbial diversity (Antwis et al. 2017 ), this finding suggests that soil is under-researched. Soil has been somewhat neglected in the biodiversity policy sphere: it is barely mentioned in the Aichi targets and has only begun to gain prominence within CBD reporting in the 2021 first draft (CBD 2010 , 2021a , b ). In contrast, we found “Hydro- and Microbiology” is slightly more cited, and citation increases with the number of publications. This topic is distinct from the previous topic, despite the overlap of some properties between soil and water such as soil sealing and runoff. Given the increased prevalence and intensity of flood events in Europe and North America, there may well be greater policy-led demand for research on the interface of soil biology, hydrology and hydrobiology. This has been represented in a recent debate over the concept of Nature-based Solutions; a potential win–win situation for biodiversity and flood management (Opperman et al. 2009 ; Turkelboom et al. 2021 ). Considering the fact that many of the current emerging topics in the field of global conservation issues, identified by Sutherland et al. ( 2021 ) fit topics “Hydro- and Microbiology”, one would expect a higher future performance of this topic, in comparison with others.

In addition to the topics that came out of our analysis, it is interesting to note some potential topics that did not. The lack of representation of genetic diversity among the top 10 terms is perhaps unsurprising given its relative neglect in policy frameworks such as the CBD (Hoban et al. 2020 ). Co-development and co-production were likewise absent: the need for more co-development in biodiversity research has been highlighted by other authors (Mupepele et al. 2021 ; O'Brien et al. 2021 ). More unexpected was the lack of the words ‘animal’ (lacking even from the top 100 terms) though this may be an artefact resulting from a tendency of zoologists to use finer taxonomic scales (e.g. bird, insect or bee, rather than animal). On the contrary, ‘plant’ appeared amongst the most common words in the topic “Diversity & Plants”. Although clearly a key part of biodiversity, plants are sometimes reported upon separately (e.g. Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, reviewed by Sharrock 2020 ) and this approach may in part account for the status of botany we observed. Among the top 100 terms, only some of the main taxonomic groups, mainly those with importance for Ecosystem Services as “invertebrate”, “bird”, “insects”, ” fish”, “reef”, “bee”, “flower” and “bacteria” appear, while other groups such as “fungi”, “mammals”, “amphibians” and “herpetofauna” are missing.

Within the ecosystem service categories mentioned in CICES 5.1., only “pest control”, “pollination”, “agricultural and forest and aquaculture production” and “nutrient cycling” appear among the top “terms”. Other categories such as “wind protection”, “nursery” or “cultural services” are not present among the most frequent words. This suggests something of a disconnect between the terminology of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The only topic where recognisable ecosystem service terms (CICES 5.1. categories) are completely missing among the top 100 terms is in the topic “Conservation and Distribution”.

It would be interesting to rerun these analyses in the future to see if such topics and others highlighted in horizon scanning exercises based on expert interviews using the Delphi method (e.g. Sutherland et al. 2021 ) emerge. Post hoc testing of horizon scanning using text mining would help to quantify its effectiveness, potentially identify biases and ultimately improve their predictive power. We note, however, that there are biases inherent in our approach, not least of which is its limitation to publications in English (Amano et al. 2021 ). While English may be the lingua franca of science, many policy-makers understandably prefer to read texts in their native language and thus the influence of papers in these languages may well be important.

We have shown that text mining can provide insights into trends in research. When a research field includes tens of thousands of papers, applying automated analyses is an alternative of subjective shortening the document list. We applied this technique to the documents containing ecosystem service and biodiversity research. However, as there is no generally accepted protocol for text mining techniques yet, further research is needed in defining the least number of eligible topics (number of meaningful clusters), and also for a standardised bias testing between full-text and abstract-based analyses. As we had an ambitious goal reviewing a large amount of research, we faced difficulties in interpretation, which we tried to overcome with the help of a novel method. However, this would have been challenging without referring to our knowledge of events such as publication of key policy documents. Additionally, should the technique achieve wider use, a summarised indicator could be developed for comparison of “hot” and “cold” topics.

Our analysis found a marked increase in the number of publications bringing together biodiversity and ecosystem services. Out of the nine identified topics, “Science & Policy” is among the most numerous, best cited and the fastest growing topics, which might reflect demand from policy-makers and stakeholders for a rigorous evidence base. All other topics show differing performances in each of the indicators we used (number of articles, beta and gamma values, number of citations, temporal dynamics) and while it is not easy to give a comprehensive answer to the question of which topics are the “hot” and “cold” ones, it does offer insights into recent trends. “Hot topics” cover two concepts: frequency of papers which refer to that topic and the frequently with which they are cited. Both of these metrics offer insight into the research priorities of at the time. Number of articles may be the better reflection of research output but it is the number of citations that shows research influence.

The applied metrics showed a slightly better performance in the topics that had applied or human implications, compared to those topics with mainly pure scientific terms. Among the main ES production sectors, agriculture overwhelms the others (forestry and fishery). There were missing categories found in both taxonomic groups and ES categories.

As demonstrated in the case of biodiversity and ecosystems services, we believe text mining can suggest relationships between policy development and research agendas and perhaps crucially identify gaps where more knowledge may be needed to provide an evidence base. The technique, among others, can also be used to test horizon scanning and improve the quality of any literature review.

Albert, C., C. Fürst, I. Ring, and C. Sandström. 2020. Research note: Spatial planning in Europe and Central Asia-Enhancing the consideration of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Landscape and Urban Planning 196: 103741.

Article Google Scholar

Amano, T., V.B. Espinola, A.P. Christie, K. Willott, M. Akasaka, A. Baldi, A. Berthinussen, S. Bertolino, et al. 2021. Tapping into non-English-language science for the conservation of global biodiversity. PLoS Biology 19: e3001296.

Article CAS Google Scholar

Antwis, R.E., S.M. Griffiths, X.A. Harrison, P. Aranega-Bou, A. Arce, A.S. Bettridge, F.L. Brailsford, A. de Menezes, et al. 2017. Fifty important research questions in microbial ecology. FEMS Microbiology Ecology 93: 044.

Balvanera, P., A.B. Pfisterer, N. Buchmann, J.S. He, T. Nakashizuka, D. Raffaelli, and B. Schmid. 2006. Quantifying the evidence for biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning and services. Ecology Letters 9: 1146–1156. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2006.00963.x .

Balvanera, P., M. Uriarte, L. Almeida-Leñero, A. Altesor, F., DeClerck, T., Gardner, and M. Vallejos. 2012. Ecosystem services research in Latin America: The state of the art. Ecosystem Services 2: 56–70.

Blei, D.M., A.Y. Ng, and M.I. Jordan. 2003. Latent dirichlet allocation. Journal of Machine Learning Research 3: 993–1022.

Google Scholar

Buijs, A., D. Kamphorst, T. Mattijssen, R. van Dam, W. Kuindersma, and I. Bouwma. 2022. Policy discourses for reconnecting nature with society: The search for societal engagement in Dutch nature conservation policies. Land Use Policy 114: 105965. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105965 .

Burkhard, B., and J. Maes, (eds.). 2017. Mapping Ecosystem Services. Pensoft Publishers, Sofia, 374 http://ab.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=12837

Cadotte, M.W., H.P. Jones, and E.L. Newton. 2020. Making the applied research that practitioners need and want accessible. Ecological Solutions and Evidence 1: 5.

CBD. 1992. Convention on Biological Diversity, Rio de Janeiro, 1992, in lnternational Legal Materials 31 (1992), 818.

CBD. 2010. Decision X/2, The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. Nagoya, Japan, 18 to 29 October 2010.

CBD. 2020. Global biodiversity outlook 5 . Montreal: CBD.

CBD. 2021. First draft of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework . Montreal: CBD.

CBD. 2021. Overview of the consultations conducted and other contributions received regarding the preparation of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework since the second meeting of the working group . Montreal: CBD.

Collaboration for Environmental Evidence. 2013. Guidelines for Systematic Review and Evidence Synthesis in Environmental Management. Version 4.2. Environmental Evidence: http://environmentalevidence.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Review-guidelinesversion-4.2-finalPRINT.pdf .

Constanza, R., R. D’Arge, R.S. de Groot, S. Farber, M. Grasso, B. Hannon, K. Limburg, S. Naeem, et al. 1997. The value of world’s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature 387: 253–260.

Czúcz, B., I. Arany, M. Potschin-Young, K. Bereczki, M. Kertész, M. Kiss, R. Aszalós, and R. Haines-Young. 2018. Where concepts meet the real world: A systematic review of ecosystem service indicators and their classification using CICES. Ecosystem Services 29: 145–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.11.018 .

Czúcz, B., H. Keith, A. Driver, B. Jackson, E. Nicholson, and J. Maes. 2021. A common typology for ecosystem characteristics and ecosystem condition variables. One Ecosystem 6: 1–16. https://doi.org/10.3897/oneeco.6.e58218 .

EC. 2019. European Green Deal. Brussels. 11.12.2019 COM(2019) 640 final.

EC. 2020. EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. Bringing nature back into our lives . Brussels: European Union.

Eldredge, N. 2000. Life in the balance: Humanity and the biodiversity crisis . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Feinerer, I., K. Hornik, and D. Meyer. 2008. Text mining infrastructure in R. Journal of Statistical Software 25: 1–54.

Griffiths, T.L., and M. Steyvers. 2004. Finding scientific topics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 101: 5228–5235.

Grün, B., and K. Hornik. 2011. topicmodels: An R package for fitting topic models. Journal of Statistical Software 40: 1–30. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v040.i13 .

Haines-Young, R., and M.B. Potschin. 2018. Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) V5.1 and Guidance on the Application of the Revised Structure. Available from www.cices.eu .

Hermoso, V., S.B. Carvalho, S. Giakoumi, D. Goldsborough, S. Katsanevakis, S. Leontiou, V. Markantonatou, B. Rumes, et al. 2022. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030: Opportunities and challenges on the path towards biodiversity recovery. Environmental Science and Policy 127: 263–271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2021.10.028 .

Hillebrand, H., B. Blasius, E.T. Borer, J.M. Chase, W. Stanley, J.A. Downing, and A.B. Ryabov. 2018. Biodiversity change is uncoupled from species richness trends: Consequences for conservation and monitoring. Journal of Applied Ecology 55: 169–184. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12959 .

Hoban, S., M. Bruford, J.D.U. Jackson, M. Lopes-Fernandes, M. Heuertz, P.A. Hohenlohe, I. Paz-Vinas, P. Sjögren-Gulve, et al. 2020. Genetic diversity targets and indicators in the CBD post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework must be improved. Biological Conservation 248: 108654.

IPBES. 2016. Summary for policymakers of the assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services on pollinators, pollination and food production. In ed. S.G. Potts, V.L. Imperatriz-Fonseca, H.T. Ngo, J.C. Biesmeijer, T.D. Breeze, L.V. Dicks, L.A. Garibaldi, R. Hill, et al. Bonn: Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

IPBES. 2018. The IPBES regional assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services for Europe and Central Asia . In ed. M. Rounsevell, M. Fischer, A. Torre-Marin Rando, and A. Mader, 892 p. Bonn: Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

IPBES. 2019. Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services . In ed. S. Díaz, J. Settele, E.S. Brondízio, H.T. Ngo, M. Guèze, J. Agard, A. Arneth, P. Balvanera, et al., 56 p. Bonn: IPBES Secretariat.

Jung, H., and B.G. Lee. 2020. Research trends in text mining: Semantic network and main path analysis of selected journals. Expert Systems with Applications 162: 113851.

Mace, G.M., K. Norris, and A.H. Fitter. 2012. Biodiversity and ecosystem services: A multilayered relationship. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 27: 19–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2011.08.006 .

Maes, J., C. Liquete, A. Teller, M. Erhard, M.L. Paracchini, J.I. Barredo, B. Grizzetti, A. Cardoso, et al. 2016. An indicator framework for assessing ecosystem services in support of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. Ecosystem Services 17: 14–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2015.10.023 .

McDonough, K., S. Hutchinson, T. Moore, and J.M.S. Hutchinson. 2017. Analysis of publication trends in ecosystem services research. Ecosystem Services 25: 82–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.03.022 .

MEA. 2005. Ecosystems and human wellbeing: Current state and trends , vol. 1. Washington: Island Press.

Mupepele, A.C., H. Bruelheide, C. Brühl, J. Dauber, M. Fenske, A. Freibauer, B. Gerowitt, A. Krüß, et al. 2021. Biodiversity in European agricultural landscapes: Transformative societal changes needed. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 36: 1067–1070.

Murakami, A., P. Thompson, S. Hunston, and D. Vajn. 2017. ‘What is this corpus about?’: Using topic modelling to explore a specialised corpus. Corpora 12: 243–277.

Nakagawa, S., G. Samarasinghe, N.R. Haddaway, M.J. Westgate, R.E.O. Dea, D.W.A. Noble, and M. Lagisz. 2019. Research weaving: Visualizing the future of research synthesis. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 34: 224–238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.11.007 .

O’Brien, D., J.E. Hall, A. Miró, K. O’Brien, and R. Jehle. 2021. A co-development approach to conservation leads to informed habitat design and rapid establishment of amphibian communities. Ecological Solutions and Evidence 2: e12038.

Oguh, C.E., E.N.O. Obiwulu, O.J. Umezinwa, S.E. Ameh, C.V. Ugwu, and I.M. Sheshi. 2021. Ecosystem and ecological services; need for biodiversity conservation—A critical review. Asian Journal of Biology 11: 1–14. https://doi.org/10.9734/AJOB/2021/v11i430146 .

Opperman, J.J., G.E. Galloway, J. Fargione, J.F. Mount, B.D. Richter, and S. Secchi. 2009. Sustainable floodplains through large-scale reconnection to rivers. Science 326: 1487–1488.

Perry, G.L.W., and M.S. McGlone. 2021. Networks and themes in the publications of the New Zealand Ecological Society over the last six decades. New Zeeland Journal of Ecology 45: 12. https://doi.org/10.20417/nzjecol.45.12 .

Pereira, P., I. Bogunovic, M. Muñoz-Rojas, and E.C. Brevik. 2018. Soil ecosystem services, sustainability, valuation and management. Current Opinion in Environmental Science & Health 5: 7–13.

Pettorelli, N., N.A. Graham, N. Seddon, M.M. da MariaCunhaBustamante, M.J. Lowton, W.J. Sutherland, and J. Barlow. 2021. Time to integrate global climate change and biodiversity science-policy agendas. Journal of Applied Ecology 58: 2384–2393.

R Core Team. 2021. R: A language and environment for statistical computing . Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.

Science for Environment Policy. 2015. Ecosystem Services and the Environment. In-depth Report 11 produced for the European Commission, DG Environment by the Science Communication Unit, UWE, Bristol. http://ec.europa.eu/science-environment-policy .

Sharrock, S. 2020. Plant Conservation Report 2020: A review of progress in implementation of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation 2011–2020 . Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Montréal, Canada and Botanic Gardens Conservation International, Richmond, UK. Technical Series No. 95, 68 p.

Silge, J., and D. Robinson. 2016. tidytext: Text mining and analysis using tidy data principles in R. Journal of Open Source Software 1: 37.

Silge, J., and D. Robinson. 2017. Text mining with R: A tidy approach . Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media Inc.

Sukhdev, P., H. Wittmer, and D. Miller. 2014. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB): challenges and responses. In Nature in the balance: The economics of biodiversity , ed. D. Helm and C. Hepburn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sutherland, W.J., P.W. Atkinson, S. Broad, S. Brown, M. Clout, M.P. Dias, L.V. Dicks, H. Doran, et al. 2021. A 2021 horizon scan of emerging global biological conservation issues. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 36: 87–97.

Sutherland, W.J., A.S. Pullin, P.M. Dolman, and T.M. Knight. 2004. The need for evidence-based conservation. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 19: 305–308.

Turkelboom, F., R. Demeyer, L. Vranken, P. De Becker, F. Raymaekers, and L. De Smet. 2021. How does a nature-based solution for flood control compare to a technical solution? Case study evidence from Belgium. Ambio 50: 1431–1445. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01548-4 .

United Nations. 2011. Resolution 65/161. Convention on Biological Diversity.

Van der Biest, K., P. Meire, T. Schellekens, B.D. D’hondt Bonte, T. Vanagt, and T. Ysebaert. 2020. Aligning biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services in spatial planning: Focus on ecosystem processes. Science of the Total Environment 712: 136350.

Wentworth, J., and L. Henly. 2021. Effective biodiversity indicators . UK Parliament Post Note 644. London: Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.

Western, D. 1992. The biodiversity crisis: a challenge for biology. Oikos , 29–38.

Westgate, M.J., P.S. Barton, J.C. Pierson, D.B. Lindenmayer. 2015. Text analysis tools for identification of emerging topics and research gaps in conservation science. Conservation Biology 29: 1606–1614. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12605 .

Westgate, M.J., P.S. Barton, D.B. Lindenmayer, and N.R. Andrew. 2020. Quantifying shifts in topic popularity over 44 years of Austral Ecology. Austral Ecology 45: 663–671.

Wickham, H., R. Francios, L. Henry, and K. Müller. 2020. dplyr: A grammar of data manipulation. R package version 1.0.2. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dplyr .

Download references

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editor and reviewers for their helpful comments. We are grateful to Piotr Cichocki, for introducing the methodology of topic modelling and to Danny O’Brien for helpful comments on the draft. V. Takacs partially was founded by project Ecoserv-Pol Services provided by main types of ecosystems in Poland—an applied approach; Iceland Lichtenstein Norway Grant (“Environment, Energy and Climate Change” EOG 2014-2021).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Zoology, Faculty of Veterinarian and Animal Sciences, Poznan University of Life Sciences, Wojska Polskiego 71/c, 60625, Poznan, Poland

Viktoria Takacs

NatureScot (Scottish Natural Heritage), Inverness, IV3 8NW, UK

C. David O’Brien

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR, UK

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Viktoria Takacs .

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (XLSX 34 kb)

Supplementary file2 (pdf 1022 kb), rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Takacs, V., O’Brien, C.D. Trends and gaps in biodiversity and ecosystem services research: A text mining approach. Ambio 52 , 81–94 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01776-2

Download citation

Received : 12 October 2021

Revised : 01 February 2022

Accepted : 01 August 2022

Published : 03 September 2022

Issue Date : January 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01776-2

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Biological diversity
Nature’s contribution to people
Research policy interface
Research trends
Research weaving
Topic modelling
Find a journal
Publish with us
Track your research

zur Hauptnavigation

Current Research Topics

The Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group studies the structure, function and change of terrestrial ecosystems by using plants, vegetation and soil as integrative key features in landscape ecology. Processes of global change especially of man-made climate and land use changes as well as changes in biogeochemical cycles are studied on local and regional scale with regard to their importance for conservation of biodiversity and sustainable use of natural resources.

Grassland ecology

Restoration of species-rich grassland: management, site conditions, diversity
Floodplain ecology: nutrient- and hydrodynamics, soil seed banks, dispersal processes, establishment
Project GolfBiodivers : Biodiversity effects of an ecological enhancement of golf courses - a building block of the National Strategy on Biological Diversity
Project RecovFun within the DFG framework project Biodiversity Exploratories (BE) on effects of grassland extensification as a restoration measure - project page coming soon!

Monitoring and evaluation of nature conservation measures

project GiBBS - Biodiversity in the building material industry

Extensive grazing in nature conservation

project Year-round grazing projects in Northwestern Germany
project Effects of grazing on calcareous grasslands in limestone quarries of the Teutoburg Forest

Forest ecology

project BiCO2 - Biodiversity and carbon storage along a forestry intensity gradient

Peatland restoration

Project ReVersal - Restoration of peatlands of the nemoral zone under conditions of variable water availability and quality

Completed projects

Grassland and restoration ecology project Biodiversity in Urban Grasslands project Rapid evolution in novel environment: a multispecies approach
Functional biodiversity research project STOICHIO - Land-use effects on plant–herbivore stoichiometry: micro- and macronutrients project ESCAPE - Effects of disturbance and seed addition on plant community assembly and ecosystem functions
Monitoring and evaluation of nature conservation measures project Roads to diversity - Lifelines on sand
Bog ecology project CANDYbog - Carbon, water and nutrient dynamics in vascular plant- vs. Sphagnum-dominated bog ecosystems in southern Patagonia project Establishment of hummock peat mosses in rewetted cutover bogs
Effects of Climate Change on biodiversity scientific steering of the project Fit for climate change - measures for a sustainable, near-natural adaptation of wet forests in the Münsterland to climate change project Climate Change and Biodiversity NRW
Ecological consequences of land use changes on local and regional scale project CopWoods - The biodiversity of traditional socio-ecological systems: Large coppiced woods in Germany project SASCHA - Sustainable land management and adaptation strategies to climate change for the Western Siberian Grain Belt project BALTRAK - Balancing trade-offs between agriculture and biodiversity in the steppes of Kazakhstan project Steppe Ecosystems in Kazakhstan
Animal migration project Messengers of a changing world - the migration ecology of Asian land birds
Use of near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in ecology project BioComp - Biodiversity Exploratories

Go to page Follow us on LinkedIn - CIRAD
Go to page Follow us on Facebook - CIRAD
Go to page Follow us on Instagram - CIRAD
Go to page Follow us on X - CIRAD
Go to page Follow us on Youtube - CIRAD
Go to page Contact us - CIRAD
Go to page RSS - CIRAD

Priority research topics

Sustainable tropical value chains

Teaching and training

Informing public policy

Science diplomacy support

Geostrategic priorities

Regional offices

CIRAD worldwide

Platforms in partnership

CIRAD in a nutshell

Remit and strategy

Organization and governance

Research units

Our partnerships

Ethical commitments

Social responsibility policy

Science and society

Our history

Solutions from Cirad'Innov

Open science

Share on Linkedin
Share on Facebook
Send by e-mail
Our activities, our impact

Biodiversity

Bee on a citron flower, Guadeloupe. D. Bazille © CIRAD

Research topics

Helping rural societies adapt and transform biological, technical and social systems to ensure their resilience means pinpointing the regulatory effects of biodiversity, and the disruptions it can cause.

The research being done by CIRAD and its partners is recognized and will be stepped up to:

understand the role of genetic and species biodiversity in regulating agricultural systems, including understanding and regulating pathosystems within the plant and animal kingdoms;
study and understand the impact of transformations, disruptions and fractures on various spatial and temporal levels that either gradually or suddenly modify biodiversity;
assess the effects of different biodiversity management methods in the biology, technology and social fields;
mobilize wild or cultivated species or mixtures of species that generate ecosystem services;
build collections and information and documentation systems on biodiversity, the services it renders, and the interactions it sustains;
support decisions on drafting and applying biodiversity policy and regulations. CIRAD has specific expertise and tools for this.

The lines of research to be explored should make it possible to:

adapt the major species to climate change, broaden the range of cultivated species and varieties that satisfy new criteria, and identify and make use of previously largely unstudied plant species that could serve to diversify the possible responses to global change;
understand and exploit the interactions between species, and between species and ecosystems, and combine plant and/or animal species to generate synergies and optimize the supply of services and manage risks, emerging diseases and epidemics, and their impact and regulation more efficiently;
coordinate production operations, local expertise and rights-of-use in terms of biodiversity, to support innovation and build levers for resilience and development;
understand and propose systems for the conservation or sustainable management of natural tropical ecosystems (forest systems, protected areas, preserving landscapes from fragmentation, etc);
understand and analyse changes in the compromises, conflicts, controversies and facilitation systems linked to the juxtaposition or succession of agrosystems and natural ecosystems over time (land sparing vs land sharing), by developing appropriate indicators and information systems;
manage biodiversity information and documentation systems and appropriate genetic resource collections, ex situ and in situ.

Related news items

Legend: A field invaded by Bothriochloa barbinodis at Octon, near lake Salagou in the Hérault department, in 2015 © Guillaume Fried

Results & impact 7 May 2024

Do invasive plants escape diseases?

Manual harvesting of Arabica coffee cherries, in the Kintamani region of Indonesia © A. Rival, CIRAD

Results & impact 29 April 2024

The genomes of Arabica coffee and its parents finally deciphered

Reconciling sustainable agricultural development and biodiversity preservation, a research challenge CIRAD and its partners in LMadagascar have been working on for 20 years © E. Menguy, CIRAD

Institutional news 26 April 2024

Madagascar: 20 years of research partnerships for agriculture and biodiversity preservation

Related projects.

Synthetic view of the main objectives for which GUARDEN methods and tools will be developed © CIRAD

Safeguarding biodiversity and critical ecosystem services across sectors and scales

Bambari groundnut diversity in southeastern Senegal (Kédougou region) © V. Labeyrie, CIRAD

Access to crop diversity and resilience of agroecosystems in the semi-arid regions

Breeding for coffee and cocoa resilience in organic cropping systems based on improved root-stocks

Poultry on a market in Mali. S. Molia, © CIRAD

An integrated animal, plant and ecosystem health approach, in connection with public health

Cultivation on the slopes of Empung volcano in Sulawesi. B. Locatelli © CIRAD

Agroecological transitions

Engineering agroecological transitions

Collecting water north of Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo. D. Louppe © CIRAD

Climate change

Helping farming systems in the global South adapt to climate change

Biodiversity Loss Increases the Risk of Disease Outbreaks, Analysis Suggests

Researchers found that human-caused environmental changes are driving the severity and prevalence of disease, putting people, animals and plants at risk

Christian Thorsberg

Daily Correspondent

A monarch butterfly sips nectar from an orange and red flower.

Human-driven changes to the planet are bringing widespread and sometimes surprising effects—including shifting the Earth’s rotation , hiding meteorites in Antarctic ice and, potentially, supporting locust swarms .

Now, a large-scale analysis of nearly 1,000 scientific studies has shown just how closely human activity is tied to public health. Published last week in the journal Nature , the findings suggest anthropogenic environmental changes are making the risk of infectious disease outbreaks all the more likely.

The biodiversity crisis—which has left some one million plant and animal species at risk of extinction —is a leading driver of disease spread, the researchers found.

“It could mean that by modifying the environment, we increase the risks of future pandemics,” Jason Rohr , a co-author of the study and a biologist at the University of Notre Dame, tells the Washington Post ’s Scott Dance.

An overhead view of a muddy Arctic river, surrounded by green forested areas and permafrost

The analysis centered on earlier studies that investigated at least one of five “global change drivers” affecting wildlife and landscapes on Earth: biodiversity change, climate change, habitat change or loss, chemical pollution and the introduction of non-native species to new areas. Based on the previous studies’ findings, they collected nearly 3,000 data points related to how each of these factors might impact the severity or prevalence of infectious disease outbreaks.

Researchers aimed to avoid a human-centric approach to their analysis, considering also how plants and animals would be at risk from pathogens. Their conclusions showed that four of the examined factors—climate change, chemical pollution, the introduction of non-native species to new areas and biodiversity loss—all increased the likelihood of spreading disease, with the latter having the most significant impact.

Disease and mortality were nearly nine times higher in areas of the world where human activity has decreased biodiversity, compared to the levels expected by Earth’s natural variation in biodiversity, per the Washington Post .

Scientists hypothesize this finding could be explained by the “dilution effect”: the idea that pathogens and parasites evolve to thrive in the most common species, so the loss of rarer creatures makes infection more likely.

“That means that the species that remain are the competent ones, the ones that are really good at transmitting disease,” Rohr tells the New York Times ’ Emily Anthes.

For example, white-footed mice, the main carriers of Lyme disease, have become one of the most dominant species in their habitat as other, rarer animals have disappeared—a change that might have played a role, among other factors, in driving rising rates of Lyme disease in the United States.

One global change factor, however, actually decreased the likelihood of disease outbreaks: habitat loss and change. But here, context is key. Most habitat loss is linked to creating a single type of environment—urban ecosystems—which generally have good sanitation systems and less wildlife, reducing opportunities for disease spillover.

“In urban areas with lots of concrete, there is a much smaller number of species that can thrive in that environment,” Rohr tells the Guardian ’s Phoebe Weston. “From a human disease perspective, there is often greater sanitation and health infrastructure than in rural environments.”

Deforestation, another type of habitat loss, has been shown to increase the likelihood of disease. The incidence of malaria and Ebola , for example, worsens in such instances.

The new work adds to past research on how human activity can prompt the spread of disease. For instance, climate change-induced permafrost melt may release pathogens from the Arctic , a concern that’s been well-documented in recent years. And both habitat loss and climate change may force some animals to move closer together—and closer to humans — increasing the potential for transmitting disease .

Additionally, the research signals the need for public health officials to remain vigilant as the effects of human-caused climate change play out, experts say.

“It’s a big step forward in the science,” Colin Carlson , a global change biologist at Georgetown University who was not an author of the new analysis, tells the New York Times. “This paper is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that I think has been published that shows how important it is health systems start getting ready to exist in a world with climate change, with biodiversity loss.”

Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Christian Thorsberg | READ MORE

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue , Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal .

No results found.

Research topics

Leibniz Biodiversity combines the expertise and resources of its 18 member institutions and develops solutions for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity through interdisciplinary research. Scientific findings are processed for political and social actors in order to contribute to the implementation of biodiversity agreements and to raise awareness of the value of biological diversity.

Main research areas

Research for the National Biodiversity Strategy (NBS)

What is the status of biological diversity in Germany and how can we protect it?

Biodiversity Forecast

How will biological diversity adapt to global change, and what risks or opportunities does this entail?

Biodiversity & Bioeconomy

What solutions does nature provide for a sustainable and climate-friendly use of resources?

Photo by mwooten Pixabay

share this!

May 13, 2024

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

fact-checked

Study shows natural shorelines support greater biodiversity in the Chicago river

by Shedd Aquarium

New research published today sheds light on the positive effects of maintaining natural shoreline structure on freshwater ecosystems, as opposed to armoring them with steel walls or piles of rocks. The work is published in the journal Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems .

The study, conducted by Shedd Aquarium, Illinois Department of Natural Resources and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, revealed important trends in fish diversity and abundance along various types of shorelines in the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS). The findings indicated that both fish species richness and the numbers of fish grew with increasing proportions of natural shoreline.

Shoreline armoring, or the practice of reinforcing shorelines to prevent erosion, is a common alteration to aquatic systems worldwide. However, while its impact on coastal and estuarine environments is extensively studied, research of its effects on freshwater systems has been sparse. To address this gap, the study reviewed data collected during a large-scale, long-term fish survey with a new lens. There was a clear correlation between shoreline type and biodiversity, consistent with those shown in coastal ecosystem studies.

"Our research shows the importance of natural shorelines, which can be functional for both aquatic life and humans," said Dr. Austin Happel, research biologist at Shedd Aquarium. "As urbanization continues to encroach on freshwater systems, reviewing alternatives to armoring, along with restoring or enhancing vegetated space and advocating for policy are all proactive conservation measures to safeguard the health and biodiversity of freshwater ecosystems , which benefits human health, economies, and climate."

One key example the authors point out is that barge traffic is prevalent both in the downtown portion of the Chicago River and the Little Calumet River. However, only the downtown portion exhibits extreme levels of shoreline armoring, while the Little Calumet River sections support relatively high barge traffic without extensively armored shorelines.

The shoreline differences between these two sections are reflected by strong changes to the fish communities. For example, none of the 15 downtown Chicago samples had more than 6 species, whereas 53% of the 336 samples from the Little Calumet River had 10 or more species. The authors use this example to illustrate that extensive barge traffic does not require extensive shoreline armoring, and more natural shore could aid aquatic biodiversity.

Further, particularly of note for the CAWS is the hunting habitat provided by natural sloping shorelines for wading birds like great blue herons (Ardea herodias) and the state-endangered black-crown night-heron (Nycticorax nycticorax). As such, a reduction of steel-walled bulkhead areas in urban waterways, in favor of natural and vegetated shorelines, would increase biodiversity and ecosystem services both within and around the aquatic ecosystem.

In areas where de-armoring is not possible, additions of new habitats or enhancements could also benefit the ecosystem. Floating wetlands with native plants are one example of ways to supplement habitat for aquatic life in urban waterways. Shedd Aquarium has teamed up with local nonprofit Urban Rivers to expand floating habitats on the Wild Mile and in the South Branch of the Chicago River. While any shoreline changes require regulatory reviews from municipal, state and federal agencies, continued novel approaches and innovations for restoration and reducing reliance on armoring provide benefits to aquatic life and people who rely on freshwater systems.

Provided by Shedd Aquarium

Explore further

Feedback to editors

From roots to resilience: Investigating the vital role of microbes in coastal plant health

Temperature, time and blueberry wine: Researchers examine fermentation's effects on health-promoting compounds

Heating proteins to body temperature reveals new drug targets

2 hours ago

What fire ants can teach us about making better self-healing materials

3 hours ago

Robotic 'superlimbs' could help moonwalkers recover from falls

A novel multifunctional catalyst turns methane into valuable hydrocarbons

NASA's Juno provides high-definition views of Europa's icy shell

New research addresses alleged benefits of a vegan diet for dogs

Trees on a university campus endure droughts with help from leaky pipes

4 hours ago

First direct imaging of radioactive cesium atoms in environmental samples

Relevant physicsforums posts, is it usual for vaccine injection site to hurt again during infection, a brief biography of dr virgina apgar, creator of the baby apgar test.

May 12, 2024

Who chooses official designations for individual dolphins, such as FB15, F153, F286?

May 9, 2024

The Cass Report (UK)

May 1, 2024

Is 5 milliamps at 240 volts dangerous?

Apr 29, 2024

Major Evolution in Action

Apr 22, 2024

Potamophylax kosovaensis, an insect species newly discovered in Kosovo, is already endangered

Apr 15, 2024

Riverine fish numbers increase amidst environmental challenges

Feb 14, 2024

From homebodies to prolific swimmers, researchers track Chicago River fish to find out where they are going and why

Sep 25, 2023

Study finds microbes hitchhike on microplastics to reach the sea

Apr 9, 2024

Some spiders can transfer mercury contamination to land animals, study shows

Sep 13, 2023

Urban ponds require attention to ensure biodiversity, shows study

Feb 20, 2023

Recommended for you

Scientists find Eurasian jays can use 'mental time travel' like humans

Bees and butterflies on the decline in western and southern North America

Killer whales breathe just once between dives, study confirms

Let us know if there is a problem with our content.

Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form . For general feedback, use the public comments section below (please adhere to guidelines ).

Please select the most appropriate category to facilitate processing of your request

Thank you for taking time to provide your feedback to the editors.

Your feedback is important to us. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages.

E-mail the story

Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Phys.org in any form.

Newsletter sign up

Get weekly and/or daily updates delivered to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time and we'll never share your details to third parties.

More information Privacy policy

Donate and enjoy an ad-free experience

We keep our content available to everyone. Consider supporting Science X's mission by getting a premium account.

E-mail newsletter

Share full article

Supported by

Environmental Changes Are Fueling Human, Animal and Plant Diseases, Study Finds

Biodiversity loss, global warming, pollution and the spread of invasive species are making infectious diseases more dangerous to organisms around the world.

A white-footed mouse perched in a hole in a tree.

By Emily Anthes

Several large-scale, human-driven changes to the planet — including climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the spread of invasive species — are making infectious diseases more dangerous to people, animals and plants, according to a new study.

Scientists have documented these effects before in more targeted studies that have focused on specific diseases and ecosystems. For instance, they have found that a warming climate may be helping malaria expand in Africa and that a decline in wildlife diversity may be boosting Lyme disease cases in North America.

But the new research, a meta-analysis of nearly 1,000 previous studies, suggests that these patterns are relatively consistent around the globe and across the tree of life.

“It’s a big step forward in the science,” said Colin Carlson, a biologist at Georgetown University, who was not an author of the new analysis. “This paper is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that I think has been published that shows how important it is health systems start getting ready to exist in a world with climate change, with biodiversity loss.”

In what is likely to come as a more surprising finding, the researchers also found that urbanization decreased the risk of infectious disease.

The new analysis, which was published in Nature on Wednesday, focused on five “global change drivers” that are altering ecosystems across the planet: biodiversity change, climate change, chemical pollution, the introduction of nonnative species and habitat loss or change.

The researchers compiled data from scientific papers that examined how at least one of these factors affected various infectious-disease outcomes, such as severity or prevalence. The final data set included nearly 3,000 observations on disease risks for humans, animals and plants on every continent except for Antarctica.

The researchers found that, across the board, four of the five trends they studied — biodiversity change, the introduction of new species, climate change and chemical pollution — tended to increase disease risk.

“It means that we’re likely picking up general biological patterns,” said Jason Rohr, an infectious disease ecologist at the University of Notre Dame and senior author of the study. “It suggests that there are similar sorts of mechanisms and processes that are likely occurring in plants, animals and humans.”

The loss of biodiversity played an especially large role in driving up disease risk, the researchers found. Many scientists have posited that biodiversity can protect against disease through a phenomenon known as the dilution effect.

The theory holds that parasites and pathogens, which rely on having abundant hosts in order to survive, will evolve to favor species that are common, rather than those that are rare, Dr. Rohr said. And as biodiversity declines, rare species tend to disappear first. “That means that the species that remain are the competent ones, the ones that are really good at transmitting disease,” he said.

Lyme disease is one oft-cited example. White-footed mice, which are the primary reservoir for the disease, have become more dominant on the landscape, as other rarer mammals have disappeared, Dr. Rohr said. That shift may partly explain why Lyme disease rates have risen in the United States. (The extent to which the dilution effect contributes to Lyme disease risk has been the subject of debate, and other factors, including climate change, are likely to be at play as well.)

Other environmental changes could amplify disease risks in a wide variety of ways. For instance, introduced species can bring new pathogens with them, and chemical pollution can stress organisms’ immune systems. Climate change can alter animal movements and habitats, bringing new species into contact and allowing them to swap pathogens .

Notably, the fifth global environmental change that the researchers studied — habitat loss or change — appeared to reduce disease risk. At first glance, the findings might appear to be at odds with previous studies, which have shown that deforestation can increase the risk of diseases ranging from malaria to Ebola. But the overall trend toward reduced risk was driven by one specific type of habitat change: increasing urbanization.

The reason may be that urban areas often have better sanitation and public health infrastructure than rural ones — or simply because there are fewer plants and animals to serve as disease hosts in urban areas. The lack of plant and animal life is “not a good thing,” Dr. Carlson said. “And it also doesn’t mean that the animals that are in the cities are healthier.”

And the new study does not negate the idea that forest loss can fuel disease; instead, deforestation increases risk in some circumstances and reduces it in others, Dr. Rohr said.

Indeed, although this kind of meta-analysis is valuable for revealing broad patterns, it can obscure some of the nuances and exceptions that are important for managing specific diseases and ecosystems, Dr. Carlson noted.

Moreover, most of the studies included in the analysis examined just a single global change drive. But, in the real world, organisms are contending with many of these stressors simultaneously. “The next step is to better understand the connections among them,” Dr. Rohr said.

Emily Anthes is a science reporter, writing primarily about animal health and science. She also covered the coronavirus pandemic. More about Emily Anthes

Explore the Animal Kingdom

A selection of quirky, intriguing and surprising discoveries about animal life..

Scientists say they have found an “alphabet” in the songs of sperm whales , raising the possibility that the animals are communicating in a complex language.

Indigenous rangers in Australia’s Western Desert got a rare close-up with the northern marsupial mole , which is tiny, light-colored and blind, and almost never comes to the surface.

For the first time, scientists observed a primate in the wild treating a wound with a plant that has medicinal properties.

A new study resets the timing for the emergence of bioluminescence back to millions of years earlier than previously thought.

Scientists are making computer models to better understand how cicadas emerge collectively after more than a decade underground .

Frontiers in Earth Science
Geoinformatics
Research Topics

Applications of Remote Sensing Over Plateau Mountainous Areas

Total Downloads

Total Views and Downloads

About this Research Topic

Plateau mountainous areas occupy about one fifth of the Earth’s surface, they are home to approximately one tenth of the global population, and provide goods and services to about half of humanity. Plateau mountain environments are essential to the survival of the global ecosystem. Many of them are experiencing degradation in terms of accelerated soil erosion, landslides, and rapid loss of habitat and genetic diversity. Compared with other landscapes, plateau mountainous areas are increasingly threatened by climate warming, posing a threat to future water security, biodiversity, and sustainable development. For example, climate warming poses an increased threat of natural hazards from the mountain cryosphere, such as glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), avalanches, slope failures, debris flows, or a combination of one or more hazards in a cascading chain. Other degradations also greatly threaten the plentiful ecosystem services provided by plateau mountainous areas. Given the significance of the mountain eco-environment, it is imperative to be able to track its rapid change, with the goal of being able to develop predictive capacity. Hence, proper management of mountain resources and socio-economic development of the people deserves immediate action. This Research Topic aims to collect the current development of remote sensing applications for the monitoring of plateau mountainous areas. Remote sensing has advanced rapidly in recent years, both in the physical hardware of the sensors and in the algorithms or methodologies used to subsequently process the data. However, the challenges associated with imaging areas of high relief are great, due to the strong topographic effect, frequent cloud over, terrain shadowing, and limited ground observation. Meanwhile, the highly dynamic environment of mountain area further brocks the application of remote sensing for mountain areas. Topics can include but are not limited to: • Mountain Hazards Remote Sensing Identification and Monitoring Techniques; • Quantitative Remote Sensing Retrieval and Modeling in Plateau Mountain Areas; • Remote Sensing Applications in Plateau Lakes; • Application of Remote Sensing in High-altitude Agriculture.

Keywords : Plateau Mountain Areas, Remote Sensing Applications, Mountain disaster and hazards monitoring, Plateau Lakes, High-altitude Agriculture

Important Note : All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

Topic Editors

Topic coordinators, submission deadlines, participating journals.

Manuscripts can be submitted to this Research Topic via the following journals:

total views

Demographics

No records found

total views article views downloads topic views

Top countries

Top referring sites, about frontiers research topics.

With their unique mixes of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author.

International edition
Australia edition
Europe edition

Researchers from Brazil's state-run Fiocruz Institute shine a light on a bat

Biodiversity loss is biggest driver of infectious disease outbreaks, says study

Researchers say reducing emissions and biodiversity loss and preventing invasive species could control disease

Biodiversity loss is the biggest environmental driver of infectious disease outbreaks, making them more dangerous and widespread, a study has found.

New infectious diseases are on the rise and they often originate in wildlife. In meta-analysis published in the journal Nature, researchers found that of all the “global change drivers” that are destroying ecosystems, loss of species was the greatest in increasing the risk of outbreaks. Biodiversity loss was followed by climate change and introduction of non-native species.

“The take-home messages are that biodiversity loss, climate change and introduced species increase disease, whereas urbanisation decreases it,” said lead researcher Prof Jason Rohr from the University of Notre Dame in the US. Experts analysed nearly 1,000 studies of global environmental drivers of infectious disease, covering all continents except for Antarctica. They looked at both the severity and prevalence of disease in plant, animal and human hosts.

The team focused on five global change drivers – biodiversity loss, climate change, chemical pollution, non-native species, and habitat loss. They found four out of five increased disease spread: all except habitat loss increased disease. Their results were the same across human and non-human diseases.

Habitat change reduced the risk because of the trend of humans moving towards a specific type of habitat – cities. Urban areas tend to have less disease, partly due to better public sanitation but also because there is less wildlife. Rohr said: “In urban areas with lots of concrete, there is a much smaller number of species that can thrive in that environment. From a human disease perspective, there is often greater sanitation and health infrastructure than in rural environments.”

Interest in zoonotic disease has increased since the Covid pandemic, which some researchers believe came from a bat. Many other diseases currently alarming global health authorities – including swine flu and avian flu – also originated in wildlife. Three-quarters of emerging diseases in humans are zoonotic, meaning they also infect wildlife and domestic animals.

Previous studies pointed to links between these diseases and environmental change (for example, global warming could mean malaria is becoming more widespread) but it was previously unclear which environmental drivers had the biggest impact. The researchers noted that many of the drivers are interconnected: “For example, climate change and chemical pollution can cause habitat loss and change, which in turn can cause biodiversity loss.”

Researchers say that reducing emissions, reducing biodiversity loss and preventing invasive species could all help to reduce the burden of disease. “We hope that our analyses will facilitate disease control, mitigation and surveillance efforts globally,” researchers wrote in the paper.

Find more age of extinction coverage here , and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

Environment
The age of extinction
Coronavirus
Infectious diseases
Medical research
Biodiversity
Climate crisis
Conservation

Most viewed

Suggestions or feedback?

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Machine learning
Social justice
Black holes
Classes and programs

Departments

Aeronautics and Astronautics
Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Architecture
Political Science
Mechanical Engineering

Centers, Labs, & Programs

Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
Lincoln Laboratory
School of Architecture + Planning
School of Engineering
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Sloan School of Management
School of Science
MIT Schwarzman College of Computing
Q&A: Exploring ethnic dynamics and climate change in Africa

Q&A: Exploring ethnic dynamics and climate change in Africa

Press contact :.

Evan Lieberman, holding a microphone, speaks at a lectern bearing an open laptop

Previous image Next image

Evan Lieberman is the Total Professor of Political Science and Contemporary Africa at MIT, and is also director of the Center for International Studies. During a semester-long sabbatical, he’s currently based at the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town .

In this Q&A, Lieberman discusses several climate-related research projects he’s pursuing in South Africa and surrounding countries. This is part of an ongoing series exploring how the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences is addressing the climate crisis.

Q: South Africa is a nation whose political and economic development you have long studied and written about. Do you see this visit as an extension of the kind of research you have been pursuing, or a departure from it?

A: Much of my previous work has been animated by the question of understanding the causes and consequences of group-based disparities, whether due to AIDS or Covid. These are problems that know no geographic boundaries, and where ethnic and racial minorities are often hardest hit. Climate change is an analogous problem, with these minority populations living in places where they are most vulnerable, in heat islands in cities, and in coastal areas where they are not protected. The reality is they might get hit much harder by longer-term trends and immediate shocks.

In one line of research, I seek to understand how people in different African countries, in different ethnic groups, perceive the problems of climate change and their governments’ response to it. There are ethnic divisions of labor in terms of what people do — whether they are farmers or pastoralists, or live in cities. So some ethnic groups are simply more affected by drought or extreme weather than others, and this can be a basis for conflict, especially when competing for often limited government resources.

In this area, just like in my previous research, learning what shapes ordinary citizen perspectives is really important, because these views affect people’s everyday practices, and the extent to which they support certain kinds of policies and investments their government makes in response to climate-related challenges. But I will also try to learn more about the perspectives of policymakers and various development partners who seek to balance climate-related challenges against a host of other problems and priorities.

Q: You recently published “ Until We Have Won Our Liberty ," which examines the difficult transition of South Africa from apartheid to a democratic government, scrutinizing in particular whether the quality of life for citizens has improved in terms of housing, employment, discrimination, and ethnic conflicts. How do climate change-linked issues fit into your scholarship?

A: I never saw myself as a climate researcher, but a number of years ago, heavily influenced by what I was learning at MIT, I began to recognize more and more how important the issue of climate change is. And I realized there were lots of ways in which the climate problem resonated with other kinds of problems I had tackled in earlier parts of my work.

There was once a time when climate and the environment was the purview primarily of white progressives: the “tree huggers.” And that’s really changed in recent decades as it has become evident that the people who've been most affected by the climate emergency are ethnic and racial minorities. We saw with Hurricane Katrina and other places [that] if you are Black, you’re more likely to live in a vulnerable area and to just generally experience more environmental harms, from pollution and emissions, leaving these communities much less resilient than white communities. Government has largely not addressed this inequity. When you look at American survey data in terms of who’s concerned about climate change, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans are more unified in their worries than are white Americans.

There are analogous problems in Africa, my career research focus. Governments there have long responded in different ways to different ethnic groups. The research I am starting looks at the extent to which there are disparities in how governments try to solve climate-related challenges.

Q: It’s difficult enough in the United States taking the measure of different groups’ perceptions of the impact of climate change and government’s effectiveness in contending with it. How do you go about this in Africa?

A: Surprisingly, there’s only been a little bit of work done so far on how ordinary African citizens, who are ostensibly being hit the hardest in the world by the climate emergency, are thinking about this problem. Climate change has not been politicized there in a very big way. In fact, only 50 percent of Africans in one poll had heard of the term.

In one of my new projects, with political science faculty colleague Devin Caughey and political science doctoral student Preston Johnston, we are analyzing social and climate survey data [generated by the Afrobarometer research network] from over 30 African countries to understand within and across countries the ways in which ethnic identities structure people’s perception of the climate crisis, and their beliefs in what government ought to be doing. In largely agricultural African societies, people routinely experience drought, extreme rain, and heat. They also lack the infrastructure that can shield them from the intense variability of weather patterns. But we’re adding a lens, which is looking at sources of inequality, especially ethnic differences.

I will also be investigating specific sectors. Africa is a continent where in most places people cannot take for granted universal, piped access to clean water. In Cape Town, several years ago, the combination of failure to replace infrastructure and lack of rain caused such extreme conditions that one of the world’s most important cities almost ran out of water.

While these studies are in progress, it is clear that in many countries, there are substantively large differences in perceptions of the severity of climate change, and attitudes about who should be doing what, and who’s capable of doing what. In several countries, both perceptions and policy preferences are differentiated along ethnic lines, more so than with respect to generational or class differences within societies.

This is interesting as a phenomenon, but substantively, I think it’s important in that it may provide the basis for how politicians and government actors decide to move on allocating resources and implementing climate-protection policies. We see this kind of political calculation in the U.S. and we shouldn’t be surprised that it happens in Africa as well.

That’s ultimately one of the challenges from the perch of MIT, where we’re really interested in understanding climate change, and creating technological tools and policies for mitigating the problem or adapting to it. The reality is frustrating. The political world — those who make decisions about whether to acknowledge the problem and whether to implement resources in the best technical way — are playing a whole other game. That game is about rewarding key supporters and being reelected.

Q: So how do you go from measuring perceptions and beliefs among citizens about climate change and government responsiveness to those problems, to policies and actions that might actually reduce disparities in the way climate-vulnerable African groups receive support?

A: Some of the work I have been doing involves understanding what local and national governments across Africa are actually doing to address these problems. We will have to drill down into government budgets to determine the actual resources devoted to addressing a challenge, what sorts of practices the government follows, and the political ramifications for governments that act aggressively versus those that don’t. With the Cape Town water crisis, for example, the government dramatically changed residents’ water usage through naming and shaming, and transformed institutional practices of water collection. They made it through a major drought by using much less water, and doing it with greater energy efficiency. Through the government’s strong policy and implementation, and citizens’ active responses, an entire city, with all its disparate groups, gained resilience. Maybe we can highlight creative solutions to major climate-related problems and use them as prods to push more effective policies and solutions in other places.

In the MIT Global Diversity Lab , along with political science faculty colleague Volha Charnysh, political science doctoral student Jared Kalow, and Institute for Data, Systems and Society doctoral student Erin Walk, we are exploring American perspectives on climate-related foreign aid, asking survey respondents whether the U.S. should be giving more to people in the global South who didn’t cause the problems of climate change but have to suffer the externalities. We are particularly interested in whether people’s desire to help vulnerable communities rests on the racial or national identity of those communities.

From my new seat as director of the Center for International Studies (CIS), I hope to do more and more to connect social science findings to relevant policymakers, whether in the U.S. or in other places. CIS is making climate one of our thematic priority areas, directing hundreds of thousands of dollars for MIT faculty to spark climate collaborations with researchers worldwide through the Global Seed Fund program.

COP 28 (the U.N. Climate Change Conference), which I attended in December in Dubai, really drove home the importance of people coming together from around the world to exchange ideas and form networks. It was unbelievably large, with 85,000 people. But so many of us shared the belief that we are not doing enough. We need enforceable global solutions and innovation. We need ways of financing. We need to provide opportunities for journalists to broadcast the importance of this problem. And we need to understand the incentives that different actors have and what sorts of messages and strategies will resonate with them, and inspire those who have resources to be more generous.

Share this news article on:

Reflecting on COP28 — and humanity’s progress toward meeting global climate goals

Side-by-side headshots of Richard Samuels and Evan Lieberman

A transformative era ends at the Center for International Studies

From South Africa, a success story for democracy

Evan Lieberman: Southern Africa as a lens on ethnicity, governance, and citizenship

Previous item Next item

More MIT News

27 circular grayscale headshots labeled with names on a blue background

2024 MIT Supply Chain Excellence Awards given to 35 undergraduates

Read full story →

Portrait photo of Reimi Hicks standing next to an indoor stairway abutting a wall of windows

Faces of MIT: Reimi Hicks

John Joannopoulos sits in his office full of stacks of paper, binders, and folders.

John Joannopoulos receives 2024-2025 Killian Award

Bianca Champenois poses against a concrete wall with her bicycle

The MIT Bike Lab: A place for community, hands-on learning

A kitchen faucet runs, and it has a unique filter filled with bead-like objects. An inset shows that the beads are hydrogel capsules containing many bean-shaped yeast.

Repurposed beer yeast may offer a cost-effective way to remove lead from water

A night-time photo shows a white, cylindrical observatory with the roof open part-way, in a rural landscape. The sky is full of the Milky Way and stars.

Newly discovered Earth-sized planet may lack an atmosphere

More news on MIT News homepage →

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA

Map (opens in new window)
Events (opens in new window)
People (opens in new window)
Careers (opens in new window)
Accessibility
Social Media Hub
MIT on Facebook
MIT on YouTube
MIT on Instagram

IMAGES

Infographic: Why is forest biodiversity important?
Conservation of Biodiversity Essay for Students and Children in English
EnviroAtlas Benefit Category: Biodiversity Conservation
how is biodiversity beneficial to humans
🐈 My actions to conserve biodiversity essay. An Essay on Conservation
What Is Biodiversity

VIDEO

MSBTE Environmental Studies Unit 3: Ecosystem and Biodiversity
ENVIRONMENT ┃ BIODIVERSITY LECTURE 1┃LECTURE 13┃ UPSC
This Is What It’s All About: Protecting Biodiversity in Africa
ENVIRONMENT ┃ BIODIVERSITY LECTURE 3┃LECTURE 15┃ UPSC
utube short video _ what is biodiversity?
Class12 Biology Most Important Topics

COMMENTS

Nature's Secrets: Top 200 Ecology Research Topics
Top 10 Ecology Research Topics On Forest Ecology. Old-Growth Forest Ecology and Conservation. Forest Fragmentation and its Impact on Biodiversity. Fire Ecology: Natural Processes and Human Intervention. Forest Carbon Sequestration and Climate Change Mitigation. Dynamics of Tree-Soil Interactions in Forest Ecosystems.
Biodiversity
Biodiversity articles from across Nature Portfolio. Biodiversity is the variation in living forms and can be measured in ways that include the number of species, functional variety of species ...
Biodiversity & Conservation
For many ecologists, conserving biodiversity is a critical part of their mission. Biodiversity refers to the diversity of life—on a planet, in a watershed, or in a single stream. It's often used to describe how many different species live in a certain area. But biodiversity can just as easily refer to diversity within a single species or ...
Biodiversity Studies
Experimental manipulations complement observational studies to allow rapid assessment of environmental change on plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria in our forests. Examples of species inventories and experimental investigations of biodiversity studies include. The Harvard Forest Flora and Herbarium. Microbial ecology of soils.
Biodiversity
Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities. Inventory data from more than 1 million trees across African, Amazonian and Southeast Asian tropical forests suggests that ...
Biodiversity conservation in a changing environment beyond 2020
To this end, the 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15) for Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Kunming, China this October will focus on developing a post-2020 global biodiversity framework to replace the 2011-2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity (including the Aichi Biodiversity Targets). Given the failure to meet previous policy ...
Home
It includes reviews, research papers, editorials, commentaries, and letters, and sometimes whole issues devote to particular topics. ... the following topics: cultural forests and biodiversity assessment, traditional forest practices for landscape-scale biodiversity preservation, biodiversity assessment and evaluation in forest landscapes ...
Research Topics
Since 1907, the Harvard Forest has served as a center for research and education in forest biology and conservation. The Forest's Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, established in 1988 and funded by the National Science Foundation, provides a framework for much of this activity.. Browse the topics below for an overview of Harvard Forest research by category, or explore abstracts of ...
Top 100 research questions for biodiversity conservation in Southeast
Discussion. Our identification of the top 100 questions for biodiversity conservation in SE Asia and the themes that emerged give an overview of research areas that experts commonly identified as priorities for SE Asia. Of those considered biodiversity-loss drivers, the most "populous" ones, i.e., with the most questions, are (1) wildlife ...
Frontiers in Conservation Science
Measuring and Monitoring Human-Wildlife Conflict Locally, Nationally and Globally. Alexandra Zimmermann. 710 views. This multidisciplinary journal explores ecology, biology and social sciences to advance conservation and management. It advances the knowledge required to meet or surpass global biodiversity and c...
Hot topics in biodiversity and climate change research
Relative growth of refereed studies on climate change and biodiversity, compared to non-climate-related biodiversity research. Number of refereed papers listed in the Web of Science database that were published between 2001 and 2014 on the specific topic "biodiversity AND (climate change)" (blue line, secondary y-axis) compared to the more general search term "biodiversity NOT (climate ...
234 questions with answers in BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH
Biodiversity Research - Science topic. Explore the latest questions and answers in Biodiversity Research, and find Biodiversity Research experts. Questions (234) Publications (71,110)
(PDF) Biodiversity: Concept, Threats and Conservation
Biodiversity is the variety of different forms of life on earth, including the different plants, animals, micro-organisms, the. genes they contain and the ecosystem they form. It refers to genetic ...
Biodiversity Assessment
Biodiversity Assessment. Different species occupy different niches in the web of life. Knowing what species inhabit an ecosystem, and how many of each kind there are, is critical to understanding that ecosystem's structure and function, and predicting future changes. Scientists who look at the variation of life in a forest, a stream or a patch ...
BiodiversiTREE
May 7, 2021. Statement on Data Ownership & Authorship Policies for Research at BiodiversiTREE. BiodiversiTREE@SERC is a large-scale, long-term experimental research forest designed to test whether tree diversity impacts ecosystem function at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Edgewater, MD. It is the largest tree diversity-ecosystem function experiment in North America ...
Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation
About this book series. Springer's book series, Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation, brings together some of the most exciting and topical papers in biodiversity and conservation research. The result is a series of useful themed collections covering issues such as the diversity and conservation of specific habitats or groups of organisms ...
133 Biodiversity Essay Topics & Samples
Biodiversity Research Topics; We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts. 808 writers online . Learn More . 🔝 Top-10 Biodiversity Topics for Presentation. Biodiversity loss. Global biodiversity conservation. The Amazon rainforest. Animal ecology research.
Trends and gaps in biodiversity and ecosystem services research: A text
The topic "Research & Policy" performed highly, considering number of publications and citation rate, while in the case of other topics, the "best" performances varied, depending on the indicator applied. Topics with human, policy or economic dimensions had higher performances than the ones with 'pure' biodiversity and science.
Research Topics
The Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group studies the structure, function and change of terrestrial ecosystems by using plants, vegetation and soil as integrative key features in landscape ecology. Processes of global change especially of man-made climate and land use changes as well as changes in biogeochemical cycles are studied on local ...
Biodiversity
Priority research topics. Biodiversity. Biodiversity. Biodiversity is a vital part of all agricultural production, but farming systems centring on homogenizing practices and landscapes shrink that biodiversity and often pose a threat to ecosystems . To foster the emergence or productive, sustainable and resilient systems, agricultural research ...
Biodiversity Loss Increases the Risk of Disease Outbreaks, Analysis
The biodiversity crisis—which has left some one million plant and animal species at risk of extinction—is a ... The new work adds to past research on how human activity can prompt the spread ...
Leibniz Biodiversity: Research topics
Scientific findings are processed for political and social actors in order to contribute to the implementation of biodiversity agreements and to raise awareness of the value of biological diversity. Main research areas. Research for the National Biodiversity Strategy (NBS) What is the status of biological diversity in Germany and how can we ...
Study shows natural shorelines support greater biodiversity in the
New research published today sheds light on the positive effects of maintaining natural shoreline structure on freshwater ecosystems, as opposed to armoring them with steel walls or piles of rocks.
Protecting the biodiversity of the Great Southern Reef
Though decades behind the better-known Great Barrier Reef in terms of public awareness and resourcing, the Great Southern Reef is at last being recognised for the vital - and increasingly threatened - role it plays in biodiversity, ecosystem services and climate change mitigation. UWA research has been critical to that shift.
Deforestation Harms Biodiversity of the Amazon's Perfume-Loving Orchid
"This study on orchid bees was an add-on to previous research on stingless bees. Orchid bees are so easy to collect, so we added them to our broader survey of bee biodiversity across this rapidly developing region in the Amazon," said lead author J. Christopher Brown, professor of geography & atmospheric science at KU.
Environmental Changes Are Fueling Human, Animal and Plant Diseases
Biodiversity loss, global warming, pollution and the spread of invasive species are making infectious diseases more dangerous to organisms around the world. ... But the new research, a meta ...
Restoration Ecology
Restoration ecology seeks to restore the health, integrity and sustainability of ecosystems that have been degraded by human activities. Research on methods, application of active interventions and evaluations are important tools used to restore ecosystems for their inherent value and the ecosystem services they provide humans. Restoration ecology draws on concepts related to disturbance ...
Applications of Remote Sensing Over Plateau Mountainous Areas
Keywords: Plateau Mountain Areas, Remote Sensing Applications, Mountain disaster and hazards monitoring, Plateau Lakes, High-altitude Agriculture . Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements.
Biodiversity loss is biggest driver of infectious disease outbreaks
Biodiversity loss is the biggest environmental driver of infectious disease outbreaks, making them more dangerous and widespread, a study has found. New infectious diseases are on the rise and ...
Q&A: Exploring ethnic dynamics and climate change in Africa
In the MIT Global Diversity Lab, along with political science faculty colleague Volha Charnysh, political science doctoral student Jared Kalow, and Institute for Data, Systems and Society doctoral student Erin Walk, we are exploring American perspectives on climate-related foreign aid, asking survey respondents whether the U.S. should be giving ...

Nature’s Secrets: Top 200 Ecology Research Topics

What Is Ecology?

What Are The 6 Topics Studied In Ecology?

Top 200 Ecology Research Topics

Top 10 Ecology Research Topics On Biodiversity Conservation

Top 10 Research Topics On Climate Change Impacts

Top 10 Ecology Research Topics On Habitat Restoration

Top 10 Research Topics On Ecosystem Services

Top 10 Ecology Research Topics On Wildlife Ecology

Top 10 Ecology Research Topics On Marine Ecology

Top 10 Research Topics On Urban Ecology

Top 10 Ecology Research Topics On Forest Ecology

Top 10 Research Topics On Invasive Species Management

Top 10 Ecology Research Topics On Conservation Genetics

Top 10 Research Topics On Landscape Ecology

Top 10 Ecology Research Topics On Agroecology

Top 10 Research Topics On Ecological Modeling

Top 10 Ecology Research Topics On Environmental Pollution

Top 10 Research Topics On Ecotourism Impact

Top 10 Ecology Research Topics On Plant Ecology

Top 10 Research Topics On Evolutionary Ecology

Top 10 Ecology Research Topics On Freshwater Ecology

Top 10 Research Topics On Microbial Ecology

Top 10 Ecology Research Topics On Sustainable Agriculture

Top 50 Ecology Essay Topics

Top 10 Essay Research Topics On Environmental Sustainability

Top 10 Essay Research Topics On Social Justice and Equity

Top 10 Essay Research Topics On Technology and Society

Top 10 Essay Research Topics On Health and Wellness

Top 10 Essay Research Topics On Global Economic Trends

Related Posts

Step by Step Guide on The Best Way to Finance Car

The Best Way on How to Get Fund For Business to Grow it Efficiently

Research Topics

Search form

Major Research Topics

Experimental Scale

Harvard Forest Weather

Google Maps & Directions

Stay Connected

Hot topics in biodiversity and climate change research

Damien A. Fordham

Peer Review Summary

Introduction

Filtering and categorising the publications

Analysis of trends, biases and gaps

Key findings of the highly cited paper collection for 2012–2014

Future directions

Funding Statement

Referee response for version 1

Jonathan Rhodes

Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation

Book titles in this series

Biodiversity of the Himalaya: Jammu and Kashmir State

Naturalists, Explorers and Field Scientists in South-East Asia and Australasia

Bioprospecting

Publish with us

133 Biodiversity Topics & Examples

Trends and gaps in biodiversity and ecosystem services research: A text mining approach

Cite this article

Similar content being viewed by others

An Innovative Methodological Framework for Analyzing Existing Scientific Research on Land-Use Change and Associated Environmental Impacts

Research trends in biodiversity loss: a bibliometric analysis

Introduction

Materials and methods

Acknowledgements

Author information

Corresponding author

Additional information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary file1 (XLSX 34 kb)

About this article

Share this article

Current Research Topics

Completed projects

Biodiversity

Related news items

Do invasive plants escape diseases?

The genomes of Arabica coffee and its parents finally deciphered

Madagascar: 20 years of research partnerships for agriculture and biodiversity preservation