ArticleNature communications2020
Cropland expansion in the United States produces marginal yields at high costs to wildlife.
Article in Nature communications, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
43 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Downtown diet: a global meta-analysis of increased urbanization on the diets of vertebrate predators.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Pooled it
- Article
- Optimization of New Cropland Allocation to Enhance Stable Utilization Potential: A Case Study of Guangdong Province, China.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Forecasting US land use through 2067 using multi-method projections applied to seven decades of USDA data.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Modeling cropland conversion for conservation prioritization across the United States.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Drivers of seasonal space use and movements of mule deer in agriculturally modified landscapes of the Great Plains.Movement ecology · 2026Article
- Eastern North American Monarch Butterfly Conservation Needs and Opportunities: What the Science Tells Us.Insects · 2026Review
- The effects of temperature and barometric pressure on the wingbeat frequency of the seasonal migrant, Euxoa auxiliaris (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae).Journal of insect science (Online) · 2026Article
- Article
- Reconciling crop production, climate action and nature conservation in Europe by agricultural intensification and extensification.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Climate and Land-Use Changes Predicted to Jointly Drive Soil Fungal Diversity Losses in One-Third of North American Coniferous Forests.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Climate and human-modified landscapes influence spread of invasive agricultural pest Popillia japonica Newman in American Midwest and Great Plains.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Drivers of the unintended use of emptied chemical containers by smallholder farmers.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Eliminating hunger in a world serious about climate mitigation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Complexity Reduction Methods for Large-Scale Spatially Explicit Biofuels Network Design.Industrial & engineering chemistry research · 2025Article
- Broad and Fine Scale Range Shifts of a Species at Risk Across North America.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Ecologically informed solar enables a sustainable energy transition in US croplands.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Spatial-temporal distribution of farmland occupation and compensation and its impact on ecological service value in China from 1990 to 2021.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Landscape-scale predictions of future grassland conversion to cropland or development.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2025Article
- Tracking cropland transitions: A comparative analysis of U.S. land cover change data.PloS one · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recent expansion of croplands in the United States has caused widespread conversion of grasslands and other ecosystems with largely unknown consequences for agricultural production and the environment. Here we assess annual land use change 2008-16 and its impacts on crop yields and wildlife habitat. We find that croplands have expanded at a rate of over one million acres per year, and that 69.5% of new cropland areas produced yields below the national average, with a mean yield deficit of 6.5%. Observed conversion infringed upon high-quality habitat that, relative to unconverted land, had provided over three times higher milkweed stem densities in the Monarch butterfly Midwest summer breeding range and 37% more nesting opportunities per acre for waterfowl in the Prairie Pothole Region of the Northern Great Plains. Our findings demonstrate a pervasive pattern of encroachment into areas that are increasingly marginal for production, but highly significant for wildlife, and suggest that such tradeoffs may be further amplified by future cropland expansion.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.