Assessing the effects of agricultural intensification on natural habitats and biodiversity in Southern Amazonia

diet that is mainly based on crop products helped to avoid the necessity to convert rainforest or other natural vegetation into pastures. The reduction of meat demand led to a release of pas- ture area that could be utilized to expand cropland area that is now employed to produce addi- tional crops in order to substitute the share of calories that was originally consumed in the form of meat in PA. In order to realize this substitution of calorie sources in MT, compared with the Trend Scenario, 16% more natural vegetation had to be converted into cropland. Agricultural intensification has played an important role in regard to recent agricultural production growth in Brazil and is likely to further increase Brazil´s crop and beef production considerably [79]. The observed decoupling of production increases from deforestation in the latter half of the first decade of this century [29, 80] have shown that the intensification of agri- cultural systems not only supports food provisioning, it also limits the expansion of agricul- tural area; thus the destruction of natural habitats [81]. This trend could be confirmed. The negative effect of projected future agricultural production growth on the extent of natural hab- itats is considerably reduced through agricultural intensification and particularly through intensification of grazing intensities on pastures (compare with [19, 81]). Especially the Legal Intensification Scenario shows substantially less converted natural habitats compared to the

Trend Scenario based on constant crop yields and grazing intensities of the reference year 2010. This is also confirmed by Cohn et al. [18] who have shown that the encouragement of an intensification of pastures, either through subsidies of intensified systems or tax on extensive pastures, considerably limits the conversion of natural habitats until 2020. Nonetheless, the reducing effect of an intensification of pastures is much lower in the case of the Illegal Intensifi- cation Scenario where protected areas are made accessible for conversion into managed land. This leads to a relocation of managed land into these areas due to higher net primary produc- tivity on pastures or higher possible yields on cropland, causing higher conversion rates. This illustrates what has been confirmed by several other authors e.g. [82, 83], who found that the Table 3. Land-use and land-cover change matrix for the years 2010 to 2030 (103 km2). PA TREND LI ILI SUST CR PS ext. UR CR PS ext. UR LR CR PS ext. UR CR PS ext. UR RF 16.84 89.94 0.00 54.01 0.00 0.00 216.02 33.48 66.15 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 NV 5.82 6.38 0.01 8.95 5.00 0.01 0.00 8.84 6.29 0.01 4.80 0.00 0.01 FA 0.19 0.00 0.00 0.34 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.04 0.40 0.00 0.48 0.00 0.00 CR 139.33 0.00 0.03 139.33 0.00 0.03 0.00 128.62 4.47 0.03 125.26 0.00 0.02 PS 0.00 96.70 0.00 7.11 89.60 0.00 0.00 5.28 91.38 0.00 83.86 12.84 0.00 UR 0.00 0.00 0.56 0.00 0.00 0.56 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.56 0.00 0.00 0.56 MT TREND LI ILI SUST

CR PS int. UR CR PS int. UR LR CR PS int. UR CR PS int. UR RF 0.00 28.38 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.70 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 NV 6.62 27.82 0.00 18.51 17.05 0.00 0.00 51.26 3.33 0.00 40.10 0.00 0.00 FA 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.07 0.00 0.00 CR 184.63 23.47 0.00 208.52 0.00 0.00 0.00 181.51 5.90 0.00 208.51 0.00 0.00 PS 0.00 158.42 0.00 3.05 148.13 0.00 0.00 1.36 132.62 0.00 2.31 156.10 0.00 UR 0.00 0.00 0.85 0.00 0.00 0.85 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.85 0.00 0.00 0.85 (TREND = Trend Scenario, LI = Legal Intensification Scenario, ILI = Illegal Intensification Scenario, SUST = Sustainable Development Scenario) (CR = cropland, PS (extensive (ext.) in PA; intensive (int.) in MT) UR = urban area, RF = Rainforest, NV = natural vegetation, FA = fallow land). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225914.t003 PLOS ONE Agricultural intensification effects on natural habitats and biodiversity PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225914 November 25, 2020 9 / 21