SynthesisGlobal change biology2025
A Global Synthesis on Land-Cover Changes in Watersheds Shaping Freshwater Detrital Food Webs.
Synthesis in Global change biology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 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
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A Global Synthesis on Land-Cover Changes in Watersheds Shaping Freshwater Detrital Food Webs.Global change biology · 2025Pooled it
- Temporal dynamics outweigh spatial gradients in shaping water quality across a regulated Afrotropical reservoir cascade.Environmental monitoring and assessment · 2026Article
- Riparian Forests and Macroinvertebrates Support Multiple Ecosystem Processes Across Temperate and Tropical Streams.Ecosystems (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Anthropogenic land-cover changes are among the most pressing global threats to both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, jeopardizing biodiversity and the critical connections between these systems. Resource flows and trophic interactions intricately link aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, with terrestrial-derived detritus playing a fundamental role in supporting aquatic food webs. These detrital inputs form essential cross-ecosystem linkages, underpinning key ecological processes and providing vital resources for aquatic communities. Yet, little research has focused on how land-cover changes cascade across this linkage. To better understand how land-cover changes in the watershed influence freshwater detrital food webs, we conducted a meta-analysis of field studies reporting the effects of vegetation changes on freshwater detrital consumers and organic matter decomposition. The results from 144 studies, reporting 1235 comparisons, showed that, overall, land-cover changes in the watershed vegetation, especially through harvest and land-use conversion, have negative effects on aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem processes. These vegetation changes reduced diversity, abundance, and biomass across multiple trophic levels in freshwater detrital food webs. Studies examining multiple organism groups most often observed negative responses across multiple trophic levels, suggesting that these land-cover changes negatively affected multiple detrital food-web components simultaneously. Our results also show that outcomes of restoration of watershed vegetation were context-dependent, and no clear trend of improvement was visible. Therefore, conservation of natural riparian and catchment vegetation is key to maintaining freshwater ecosystem processes and aquatic biodiversity worldwide, and more efficient and evidence-based restoration measures are urgently needed. As our global synthesis shows that direct human-induced alterations of vegetation in watersheds have significant negative effects on freshwater detrital food webs, there is a pressing need to consider cross-ecosystem consequences of land-cover changes in conservation and ecosystem management.
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.