LIFE: A metric for quantitively mapping the impact of land-cover change on global extinctions

Human-driven habitat loss is recognised as the greatest cause of biodiversity loss yet to date we lack robust, spatially explicit metrics quantifying the impacts of anthropogenic changes in habitat extent on species’ extinctions. Existing metrics either fail to consider species identity or focus solely on recent habitat losses. The persistence score approach developed by Durán et al. (2020) (1) represented an important development by combining species’ ecologies and land-cover data whilst considering the cumulative and non-linear impact of past habitat loss on species’ probability of extinction. However, it is computationally demanding, limiting its global use and application. Here we couple the persistence score approach with high-performance computing to generate global maps of what we term the LIFE (Land-cover change Impacts on Future Extinctions) metric for 29772 species of terrestrial vertebrates at 1 arc-minute resolution (3.4km2 at the equator). These maps provide quantitative estimates, for the first time, of the marginal changes in the expected number of extinctions (both increases and decreases) caused by (1) converting remaining natural vegetation to agriculture, and (2) restoring farmland to natural habitat. We demonstrate statistically that this approach integrates information on species richness, endemism, and past habitat loss. Our resulting maps can be used to 10% certainty at scales from 0.5-1000km2, and offer unprecedented opportunities to estimate the impact on extinctions of diverse actions that change land cover, from individual dietary choices through to global protected area development.