MSU Geography Colloquium Series: Nick Haddad

Fri, September 19, 2025 4:00 PM - Fri, September 19, 2025 5:00 PM at Geography Building, Rm 126

Join us for our next MSU Geography Colloquium session as we welcome Nick Haddad for a presentation titled "A half-century debate resolved: habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity". 

For a half-century, ecologists have debated whether habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity more than it is reduced by loss of habitat area alone. I resolve this debate, showing that habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity, by drawing on results of a three-decade-long experiment and a global meta-analysis. Habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity across plants and animals. Further, conservation efforts that reduce fragmentation by increasing landscape connectivity have effects that become stronger over decades. Conservation to increase landscape connectivity can now occur across millions of acres, benefiting nature and people.