Land-use impacts on plant functional diversity throughout Europe

The global biodiversity loss resulting from anthropogenic land-use activities is a pressing concern, requiring precise assessments of impacts at large spatial extents. Existing models primarily focus on quantifying impacts on species richness and abundance, often overlooking the ecological relevance of species traits and their contributions to ecosystem functioning. To address this gap, we conducted a comprehensive analysis throughout Europe, investigating the effect of human land use on plant functional diversity across different land-use classes and bioregions. Integrating extensive databases of vegetation plots with spatial data on land use and land cover, we paired plots from areas actively used and modified by humans with plots from natural habitats under similar environmental conditions. Employing species occurrences and traits from the same databases, we computed three functional diversity metrics (functional richness, evenness, and divergence) per each plot. We assessed the impact of land use by comparing the functional diversity values in the paired. Our findings revealed that land used and modified by humans generally exhibits lower functional richness and divergence, but higher functional evenness compared to natural habitats, across most land-use classes and bioregions. Particularly noteworthy was the impact on functional richness in croplands and urban areas, identified as having the lowest functional richness values in multiple bioregions. Furthermore, the impact of human land use on plant communities displayed less variation among land-use classes than among bioregions. Our study emphasizes how land use impacts the functionality of species at a large scale, disclosing regional and land-use class differentiations. The results underscore the crucial need for informed conservation strategies and sustainable land management across various scales to address the escalating challenges posed by human activities to biodiversity and its associated functions. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.