DiVert: a global database of land use and management effects on local vertebrate abundance and diversity

Motivation

Given that land use is a major driver of biodiversity loss worldwide, it is key to understand how different land use types and management practices affect biodiversity. Existing global databases on biodiversity responses to land use generally distinguish only broad land use types, focus on a wide taxonomic coverage at the expense of detail or completeness, or do not include diversity in primary vegetation as a benchmark. Here, we introduce DiVert: a comprehensive global dataset with local measurements of vertebrate abundance and diversity in a variety of terrestrial land types and management practices as compared to primary vegetation.

Main types of variables contained

The database contains 5,702 diversity and 177,340 abundance values in seven main terrestrial land types: agroforestry, cropland, forestry, pasture, urban, secondary vegetation, and primary vegetation. For each record, we also report detailed information relevant for assessing impacts of land use and management on vertebrate abundance and diversity. This information includes prior land use, time since conversion, crop type and diversity, type of logging, and the presence of natural margins. In addition, we provide information about the data collection process for each record, such as sampling method, sampling effort and plot size, as well as taxonomic information.

Spatial location and grain

The database contains site-level data covering all continents except Antarctica.

Time period and grain

Records originate from studies conducted between 1955 and 2024

Major taxa and level of measurement

The dataset includes records of amphibians (6%), birds (82.6%), mammals (7.6%) and reptiles (3.8%). Abundance data are provided at the species (99.3%) or genus level (0.7%). Diversity metrics, such as number of species or Shannon index, are provided per taxonomic family, order, or class.