The speed of change in climate and land cover is associated with the speed of biodiversity changes in avian assemblages of the United States

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0330153 August 29, 2025 11 / 20 Table 3. Adjusted R2 across buffer resolutions for all GAMMs. Ecoregion Resolution (km) Total assemblage dissimilarity Species replacement Species loss Species Richness Eastern Temperate Forest 12.5 0.09 0.03 0.05 0.01 25 0.08 0.04 0.04 0.02 50 0.09 0.03 0.03 0.03 Great Plains 12.5 0.08 0.02 0.12 0 25 0.07 0.02 0.12 0 50 0.12 0.06 0.14 0.06 North American Deserts 12.5 0 0.11 0 0 25 0.06 0.10 0.13 0 50 0.53 0.04 0.01 15 Northern Forests 12.5 0.27 0.06 0.19 0.17 25 0.33 0.07 0.30 0.17 50 0.30 0 0.32 0.14 Northwestern Forested Mountains 12.5 0.38 0.02 0 0.21 25 0.27 0 0 0.03 50 0.47 0.10 0 0 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0330153.t003 Fig 4. Relative importance of climate and LULC as drivers of rate of change of biodiversity in five ecoregions of the US (1990–2019). The leg- end shows the proportion of predictors per driver (i.e., climate, LULC, or both) for which the GAMMs showed a significant association with the biodiver- sity metrics. Hatched blue lines represent instances in which both climatic and LULC predictors were significant, but the proportion of significant LULC predictors surpassed the proportion of significant climatic predictors. NF: Northern Forest; NFM: Northwestern Forested Mountains, GP: Great Plains; NAD: North American Deserts; ETF: Eastern Temperate Forests. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0330153.g004