Biodiv4Future: Managing Future Risks of Biodiversity Tipping Points in South America’s Seasonal Dry Ecosystems

The overarching goal of Biodiv4Future is to understand how human pressure in the Dry Diagonal in South America may lead to a tipping in biodiversity, and how this tipping affects coupled social-ecological systems. The Dry Diagonal represents the largest continuous area of dry forests and savannahs in South America, extending over 3 million km² across Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay. However, natural vegetation in the Dry Diagonal has been transformed on a grand scale over the past 30 years due to massive agricultural expansion and intensification. There are now many signs that natural vegetation losses have reached critical levels in the Dry Diagonal. Major research gaps prevail, however, in our understanding of how these transformations impact the unique and rich biodiversity of the Dry Diagonal, and how this affects the ecological integrity and the provisioning of ecosystem services that are critical for livelihoods. Biodiv4Future will investigate (i) drivers of natural vegetation loss and how they impact ecological integrity, (ii) under which conditions, where, and at which scales this may lead to biodiversity tipping points, and (iii) how tipping points may impact on human well-being.