A peer-reviewed global analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that natural non-forest ecosystems, including grasslands and open wetlands, were converted at nearly four times the rate of forested land between 2005 and 2020. The finding challenges decades of conservation policy that has concentrated monitoring and protection almost exclusively on forests, leaving the planet’s most widespread terrestrial biome to shrink with little public attention. Grasslands account for nearly 40% of land-based ecosystems and host roughly 33% of global biodiversity hotspots, making their rapid loss a direct threat to food security, carbon storage, and species survival.
Non-Forest Ecosystems Converted at Four Times the Forest Rate
The 15-year study compared conversion rates of natural non-forest ecosystems against lands meeting a common forest-height threshold of tree cover greater than 5 meters. Drawing on the new global assessment and the GLCLUC2020 satellite dataset, a state-of-the-art 30-meter resolution product covering 2000 to 2020, the research team tracked how grasslands, savannas, and open wetlands gave way to cropland and other human uses. The result was stark, non-forest ecosystems were converted at nearly four times the rate of tree-covered areas over the study period. That gap exposes a blind spot in global land-use monitoring, which has long treated deforestation as the primary signal of habitat loss while grassland conversion went largely uncounted.
The disparity matters because global supply chains for food, animal feed, and bioenergy crops are the main engines of this conversion. Researchers at Chalmers University emphasized that demand for soy, corn, and other row crops has pushed agricultural frontiers into grassland biomes across multiple continents. Unlike tropical deforestation, which triggers satellite alerts and international outcry, the plowing of open grassland rarely registers in headline-grabbing datasets or national climate pledges. The 2005–2020 study window captured a period of accelerating agricultural expansion into previously uncultivated land, revealing that much of the world’s land-use change is occurring outside the forest categories that dominate global reporting frameworks and carbon accounting.
US Midwest Cropland Expansion Tells a Regional Story
The global pattern has a sharp regional echo in the American heartland. A peer-reviewed study of land-use change found extensive grassland conversion in the Midwest between 2008 and 2016, using a well-cited dataset developed by Lark and colleagues. That work quantified how plowing native grassland increased soil loss, nutrient runoff, and carbon emissions across the region, especially where marginal or erosion-prone soils were brought under cultivation. The findings are consistent with the global study’s conclusion that agricultural cultivation is the dominant driver of grassland disappearance, but they add a layer of environmental accounting that shows the downstream costs in degraded soil, polluted waterways, and heightened flood risks.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has identified agricultural cultivation, development, invasive species, and climate change as the primary pressures on central grasslands, with visible damage in states like Wyoming and Nebraska. That institutional assessment, while not tied directly to the new global analysis, reinforces the same conclusion from a domestic policy perspective: grasslands face compounding threats that no single intervention can address. The Midwest case also highlights a persistent tension in US agricultural policy, where crop insurance subsidies, ethanol mandates, and other incentives can make it economically rational for landowners to convert native grass to row crops, even on lands where long-term productivity is uncertain and ecological costs are high.
Biodiversity and Carbon at Stake
The ecological value of grasslands extends well beyond their visual simplicity. Around one-third of global biodiversity hotspots are located in grassland regions, reflecting the extraordinary diversity of plants, insects, birds, and mammals that depend on open habitats. These ecosystems also contribute significantly to climate mitigation by storing carbon below ground in dense root networks and deep, organic-rich soils. When native prairie grasses with extensive root systems are plowed, much of that stored carbon is exposed to oxygen and released as carbon dioxide, undermining national and corporate climate targets that often overlook below-ground emissions from land conversion.
Conservation advocates stress that native grasslands are not easily replaced once they are gone. As one advocate, Lendrum, told a reporter, native prairie grasses “go a long way in lowering emissions” because of their deep roots and long-lived plant communities. Once those communities are destroyed, he warned, the landscapes quickly become “flyover country,” disappearing from both public consciousness and political debate. That invisibility compounds the risk that grassland losses will continue unchecked, even as countries pledge to protect biodiversity and reach net-zero emissions. Without targeted recognition of grasslands’ carbon and habitat value, existing climate and conservation frameworks may continue to misallocate attention and resources toward forests alone.
Policy Blind Spots and Emerging Responses
The new global findings expose a structural bias in how land-use change is monitored and governed. Many international initiatives, from REDD+ programs to corporate deforestation-free pledges, focus on tree cover as the primary metric of environmental performance. This emphasis can inadvertently encourage the expansion of tree plantations or woody crops into natural grasslands, a dynamic some researchers describe as “green grabbing” when climate or conservation goals justify the takeover of open ecosystems. A study in Environmental Research Letters found that bioenergy expansion and related policies risk displacing native vegetation and releasing additional carbon when land-use histories are ignored, underscoring how climate solutions that treat all non-forest land as available can backfire.
In response, scientists and advocates are calling for grasslands and other non-forest ecosystems to be explicitly recognized in global biodiversity and climate frameworks. That includes integrating grassland conversion into national greenhouse gas inventories, expanding protected areas to include representative open habitats, and revising land-based climate strategies so they do not incentivize tree planting on native prairies or savannas. The global analysis suggests that monitoring tools such as high-resolution satellite datasets can now track non-forest change with similar precision to deforestation, removing a key technical barrier. The remaining challenge is political, redirecting conservation attention and finance toward ecosystems that have long been treated as empty or expendable, even as they quietly underpin food systems, water security, and climate stability.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
