Abstract The relative impact of climate change and land use change on biodiversity loss is still under discussion. To alleviate drawbacks related to the use of observed species distributions, we introduce a novel approach to separate the effects of climate change and land use change, the latter split into fragmentation, agricultural intensification and reforestation. This approach, coined the Attribute Importance Analysis (AIA), uses the ability of species attributes to explain population declines. Through the a priori association between attributes and individual drivers, the relative importance of the drivers in causing the species decline can be assessed. We tested this approach on the population decline of vertebrate, insect, vascular plant, and fungi species in the Netherlands since the 1950s. Fragmentation was clearly the strongest driver of species decline for vertebrates and plants, and this may also be true for insects. For fungi, climate change seems the only driver. We found a weak signal of the importance of agricultural intensification for the decline of vertebrates only. We ascribe this unexpected low importance of agricultural intensification to our partitioning of agricultural effects into fragmentation and intensification. Our generic approach can offer valuable quantitative information on the relative importance of drivers that change local community composition without the need for spatial explicit information. Without data on temporal trends in drivers, including local climate and land use change, accurate information on species decline, species attribute values and association of attributes with drivers can give insights into the causes of species decline, which, in turn, can be used to adapt nature management accordingly.

中文翻译：

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分析物种属性以确定主要环境驱动因素，以 1950 年代以来荷兰的物种减少为例

摘要 气候变化和土地利用变化对生物多样性丧失的相对影响仍在讨论中。为了减轻与使用观察到的物种分布相关的缺点，我们引入了一种新方法来分离气候变化和土地利用变化的影响，后者分为碎片化、农业集约化和重新造林。这种方法创造了属性重要性分析 (AIA)，它使用物种属性的能力来解释人口下降。通过属性和个体驱动因素之间的先验关联，可以评估驱动因素在导致物种减少方面的相对重要性。自 1950 年代以来，我们在荷兰脊椎动物、昆虫、维管植物和真菌物种的种群下降情况上测试了这种方法。碎片化显然是脊椎动物和植物物种减少的最强驱动力，昆虫也可能如此。对于真菌来说，气候变化似乎是唯一的驱动因素。我们发现农业集约化仅对脊椎动物减少的重要性的微弱信号。我们将农业集约化的这种意外的低重要性归因于我们将农业影响划分为碎片化和集约化。我们的通用方法可以提供有关改变当地社区组成的驱动因素的相对重要性的有价值的定量信息，而无需空间明确信息。如果没有关于驱动因素的时间趋势数据，包括当地气候和土地利用变化，物种减少的准确信息，