<p>Global biodiversity has declined between 2% and 11% during the 20th century due to land-use change alone, according to a large multi-model study published in <em>Science</em>. Projections show climate change could become the main driver of biodiversity decline by the mid-21st century. </p>
<p>The analysis was led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and is the largest modelling study of its kind to date. The researchers compared thirteen models for assessing the impact of land-use change and climate change on four distinct biodiversity metrics, as well as on nine ecosystem services.</p>