The global human impact on biodiversity

The global human impact on biodiversity

Keck, F., Peller, T., Alther, R. et al. The global human impact on biodiversity. Nature 641, 395–400 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08752-2

Human activities drive a wide range of environmental pressures, including habitat change, resulting in unprecedented effects on biodiversity.

We compiled 2,133 publications covering 97,783 impacted and reference sites, creating an unparallelled dataset of 3,667 independent comparisons of biodiversity impacts across all main organismal groups, habitats and the five most predominant human pressures.

We show that human pressures distinctly shift community composition and decrease local diversity across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems. Yet, contrary to long-standing expectations, there is no clear general homogenization of communities. Critically, the direction and magnitude of biodiversity changes vary across pressures, organisms and scales at which they are studied.