“Around the world, rising crop yields are allowing agricultural land to be returned to nature, but how long does it take for that land to regain a wild, abundant equilibrium? A recently published study in Ecuador’s Chocó rainforest found that recovery can happen fairly rapidly. After analyzing abandoned agricultural land at different phases of recovery, the researchers estimated that within 30 years, the land regained over 90 percent of the abundance and species diversity found in old-growth forests, and about 75 percent of their species composition,” reports The Doomslayer.
Our World In Data explains:
Humans have been reshaping the planet’s land for millennia by clearing wildlands to grow crops and raise livestock. As a result, humans have cleared one-third of the world’s forests and two-thirds of wild grasslands since the end of the last ice age.
This has come at a huge cost to the planet’s biodiversity. In the last 50,000 years – and as humans settled in regions around the world – wild mammal biomass has declined by 85%.
Expanding agriculture has been the biggest driver of the destruction of the world’s wildlands.
This expansion of agricultural land has now come to an end. After millennia, we have passed the peak, and in recent years global agricultural land use has declined.
Tropical rainforests are home to almost two-thirds of all vertebrate species and three-quarters of all tree species: they are the most species-rich terrestrial ecosystem on Earth. However, over half of these diverse rainforests have already been cleared, and their area continues to decline drastically, primarily for agricultural purposes. Is there a chance of regeneration, and can not only trees but also the unique diversity of thousands of animal species return to cleared areas?
The answer is surprisingly clear-cut and encouragingly positive: Trees regrow rapidly on agricultural land as soon as land use ceases. A diverse range of animal species also re-establish themselves.
Biodiversity recovered to more than 90% of its original level within 30 years. During this period, as many as three-quarters of the animal and plant species typical of primary forest returned.
The paper is published in the journal Nature. Teams led by Professors Thomas Schmitt and Jörg Müller from the University of Würzburg’s Biocenter contributed to the publication.
