Amphibian pond loss as a function of landscape change - A case study over three decades in an agricultural area of northern France

Agricultural reform and infrastructural development are among the major drivers of biodiversity loss and landscape homogenization worldwide. Ponds and other small stagnant water bodies are crucial for maintaining regional biodiversity, yet they are vulnerable to human induced landscape change. We investigated for 199 ponds in the 'departement Pas-de-Calais in north-western France if pond persistence (n = 86, 43%) or disappearance (n = 113, 57%) was related to wider changes in the landscape, over the period 1975-2006. Landscape data were obtained from aerial photographs (1963), two ASTER satellite images (2001 and 2003) and observations on the ground (1975 and 2006) and land use around the ponds was described over concentric circles with five different radii in the 100-1000 m range. Overall, pond disappearance was associated with a decrease in grassland and an increase in arable fields around the ponds. We found that the small, man-made cattle ponds, with either natural substrate or concrete drinking troughs, were more often affected than the larger, semi-natural ponds. Since the cattle ponds are regularly used for amphibian reproduction, their massive abandonment therewith weakens the population network and puts the local occurrence of some of the rarer species at risk. Spatial extrapolation of models on pond persistence allowed the identification of areas most at risk of further pond loss. We suggest that local amphibian conservation efforts will be the most effective if the focus is on the marshes and dune areas and on pond preservation in the remaining grasslands. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.