The DOI matches its Crossref record; 24 of the 24 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Approaches to defining a planetary boundary for biodiversity
Open accessAbstract
The idea that there is an identifiable set of boundaries, beyond which anthropogenic change will put the Earth system outside a safe operating space for humanity, is attracting interest in the scientific community and gaining support in the environmental policy world. Rockstrom et al. (2009) identify nine such boundaries and highlight biodiversity loss as being the single boundary where current rates of extinction put the Earth system furthest outside the safe operating space. Here we review the evidence to support a boundary based on extinction rates and identify weaknesses with this metric and its bearing on humanity's needs. While changes to biodiversity are of undisputed importance, we show that both extinction rate and species richness are weak metrics for this purpose, and they do not scale well from local to regional or global levels. We develop alternative approaches to determine biodiversity loss boundaries and extend our analysis to consider large-scale responses in the Earth system that could affect its suitability for complex human societies which in turn are mediated by the biosphere. We suggest three facets of biodiversity on which a boundary could be based: the genetic library of life; functional type diversity; and biome condition and extent. For each of these we explore the science needed to indicate how it might be measured and how changes would affect human societies. In addition to these three facets, we show how biodiversity's role in supporting a safe operating space for humanity may lie primarily in its interactions with other boundaries, suggesting an immediate area of focus for scientists and policymakers.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
A safe operating space for humanity
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F. S., Lambin, E. F., Lenton, T. M., Scheffer, M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H. J., et al. (2009) · Nature · doi:10.1038/461472a · Cited by 13,333
Self-citationBiodiversity loss and its impact on humanity
Cardinale, B. J., Duffy, J. E., Gonzalez, A., Hooper, D. U., Perrings, C., Venail, P., Narwani, A., Mace, G. M., Tilman, D., Wardle, D. A., et al. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature11148 · Cited by 7,457 · cited 4×
“The best monoculture often outperforms the most diverse system because certain species are very effective at a particular process on their own, but in general, especially at intermediate levels of richness, lower species richness leads to reduced ecosystem functions (Cardinale et al., 2012).”
BackgroundInfluentialSelf-citationPlanetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F. S. I., Lambin, E., Lenton, T. M., Scheffer, M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H. J., et al. (2009) · Ecology and Society · doi:10.5751/es-03180-140232 · Cited by 7,187
Self-citationTrophic Downgrading of Planet Earth
Estes, J. A., Terborgh, J., Brashares, J. S., Power, M. E., Berger, J., Bond, W. J., Carpenter, S. R., Essington, T. E., Holt, R. D., Jackson, J. B. C., et al. (2011) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1205106 · Cited by 4,087 · cited 2×
“It could be designed to be sensitive to large-scale losses in particular functional groups, such as important food and fibre species, top predators (Estes et al., 2011), plants with traits for high carbon assimilation, transfer and storage below ground (De Deyn et al.”
BackgroundA global synthesis reveals biodiversity loss as a major driver of ecosystem change
Hooper, D. U., Adair, E. C., Cardinale, B. J., Byrnes, J. E. K., Hungate, B. A., Matulich, K. L., Gonzalez, A., Duffy, J. E., Gamfeldt, L., & O’Connor, M. I. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature11118 · Cited by 2,406
Primary forests are irreplaceable for sustaining tropical biodiversity
Gibson, L., Lee, T. M., Koh, L. P., Brook, B. W., Gardner, T. A., Barlow, J., Peres, C. A., Bradshaw, C. J. A., Laurance, W. F., Lovejoy, T. E., et al. (2011) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature10425 · Cited by 2,147
Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere
Barnosky, A. D., Hadly, E. A., Bascompte, J., Berlow, E. L., Brown, J. H., Fortelius, M., Getz, W. M., Harte, J., Hastings, A., Marquet, P. A., et al. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature11018 · Cited by 1,966
High plant diversity is needed to maintain ecosystem services
Isbell, F., Calcagno, V., Hector, A., Connolly, J., Harpole, W. S., Reich, P. B., Scherer-Lorenzen, M., Schmid, B., Tilman, D., van Ruijven, J., et al. (2011) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature10282 · Cited by 1,664
Incorporating plant functional diversity effects in ecosystem service assessments
Díaz, S., Lavorel, S., de Bello, F., Quétier, F., Grigulis, K., & Robson, T. M. (2007) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0704716104 · Cited by 1,658
Self-citationBiodiversity loss threatens human well-being
Díaz, S., Fargione, J., Chapin, F. S., & Tilman, D. (2006) · PLoS Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040277 · Cited by 1,544
Self-citation
Cited by
Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet
Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S. E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E. M., Biggs, R., Carpenter, S. R., de Vries, W., de Wit, C. A., et al. (2015) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1259855 · Cited by 12,527
Self-citationWhitmee, S., Haines, A., Beyrer, C., Boltz, F., Capon, A. G., de Souza Dias, B. F., Ezeh, A., Frumkin, H., Gong, P., Head, P., et al. (2015) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(15)60901-1 · Cited by 2,998
Self-citationThe IPBES Conceptual Framework — connecting nature and people
Díaz, S., Demissew, S., Carabias, J., Joly, C., Lonsdale, M., Ash, N., Larigauderie, A., Adhikari, J. R., Arico, S., Báldi, A., et al. (2015) · Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability · doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2014.11.002 · Cited by 2,617
Self-citationSafe and just Earth system boundaries
Rockström, J., Gupta, J., Qin, D., Lade, S. J., Abrams, J. F., Andersen, L. S., Armstrong McKay, D. I., Bai, X., Bala, G., Bunn, S. E., et al. (2023) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06083-8 · Cited by 1,400
Social-ecological resilience and biosphere-based sustainability science
Folke, C., Biggs, R., Norström, A. V., Reyers, B., & Rockström, J. (2016) · Ecology and Society · doi:10.5751/es-08748-210341 · Cited by 1,254
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Mace, G. M., Reyers, B., Alkemade, R., Biggs, R., Chapin, F. S., Cornell, S. E., Díaz, S., Jennings, S., Leadley, P., Mumby, P. J., Purvis, A., Scholes, R. J., Seddon, A. W. R., Solan, M., Steffen, W., & Woodward, G.
- Venue
- Global Environmental Change
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-09
- Volume
- 28
- Pages
- 289-297
- ISSN
- 0959-3780 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2150196981
- Cited by
- 349
- References
- 24
- FWCI
- 23.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Approaches to defining a planetary boundary for biodiversity. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.07.009
- The paper
- Mace, G. M., Reyers, B., Alkemade, R., Biggs, R., Chapin, F. S., Cornell, S. E., Díaz, S., Jennings, S., Leadley, P., Mumby, P. J., Purvis, A., Scholes, R. J., Seddon, A. W. R., Solan, M., Steffen, W., & Woodward, G. (2014). Approaches to defining a planetary boundary for biodiversity. Global Environmental Change. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.07.009
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
