Chemical pollution research should be better integrated with other drivers of biodiversity loss and the assessment of human impacts on ecosystems, to more effectively guide management strategies for biodiversity loss mitigation.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Relevant articles
Open Access articles citing this article.
-
MIND: a proposed strategic and collaborative platform for advancing chemical environmental risk assessment
Environmental Sciences Europe Open Access 10 January 2026
-
Nitrogen pollution in rivers as potential driver of invertebrate species turnover
Environmental Sciences Europe Open Access 22 December 2025
-
Aquatic ecosystems as a final receptor of atmospheric organic particulate-bound pollutants: a plea for the integration of aquatic ecotoxicology into the risk assessment of air pollution
Environmental Sciences Europe Open Access 25 June 2025
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$32.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$119.00 per year
only $9.92 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to the full article PDF.
USD 39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Data availability
All data are publicly available from the sources cited in the Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.
References
Tollefson, J. Nature 569, 171 (2019).
Johnson, C. N. et al. Science 356, 270–275 (2017).
Persson, L. et al. Environ. Sci. Technol. 56, 1510–1521 (2022).
IPBES. Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Summary for Policymakers (IPBES secretariat, 2019).
Grier, J. W. Science 218, 1232–1235 (1982).
Oaks, J. L. et al. Nature 427, 630–633 (2004).
Bernhardt, E. S., Rosi, E. J. & Gessner, M. O. Front. Ecol. Environ. 15, 84–90 (2017).
Wang, Z., Walker, G. W., Muir, D. C. G. & Nagatani-Yoshida, K. Environ. Sci. Technol. 54, 2575–2584 (2020).
Carson, R. Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
Köhler, H. R. & Triebskorn, R. Science 341, 759–765 (2013).
Sigmund, G. et al. Science 376, 1280 (2022).
Groh, K., Vom Berg, C., Schirmer, K. & Tlili, A. Environ. Sci. Technol. 56, 707–710 (2022).
Sigmund, G. et al. Glob. Change Biol. 29, 3240–3255 (2023).
Schuijt, L. M., Peng, F. J., van den Berg, S. J. P., Dingemans, M. M. L. & Van den Brink, P. J. Sci. Total Environ. 795, 148776 (2021).
Brack, W. et al. Environ. Sci. Eur. 31, 62 (2019).
Brack, W. et al. Environ. Sci. Eur. 31, 10 (2019).
Medina, M. H., Correa, J. A. & Barata, C. Chemosphere 67, 2105–2114 (2007).
Blowes, S. A. et al. Science 366, 339–345 (2019).
van den Brink, P. J., Roelsma, J., Van Nes, E. H., Scheffer, M. & Brock, T. C. M. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 21, 2500–2506 (2002).
Senf, C. Ecosystems 25, 1719–1737 (2022).
Carraro, L., Mächler, E., Wüthrich, R. & Altermatt, F. Nat. Commun. 11, 3585 (2020).
Ågerstrand, M. et al. Environ. Sci. Technol. 57, 2205–2208 (2023).
UNEP CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity). COP15: final text of Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. cbd.int, https://www.cbd.int/article/cop15-final-text-kunming-montreal-gbf-221222 (22 December 2022).
Acknowledgements
The authors have been supported by the RobustNature Excellence Initiative (internal prefunding of the Goethe University Frankfurt).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
F. Sylvester, F.G.W. and H.H. conceived this work. F. Sylvester, V.L.L. and F.G.W. conducted the literature searches and data analyses with the help of S.F., K.J.G., J.J., S.J., F.L., R.O., J.P., M.P., S.S., M.S.-S. and F. Strobl. Writing was led by F. Sylvester with extensive input from H.H. Substantial contributions to writing and the direction of the manuscript were made by K.J.G., K.T., M.S., W.B. and J.J. Figures had substantial input from L.M.S., F.G.W, V.L.L., M.S.-S. and F. Sylvester. All other authors (M.B., L.B., C.B., B.B., J.C., P. Dierkes, P. Döll, I.E., E.J.N.H., T.H., S.K., H.K., D.M., T.M., J.O., S.U.P., G.J.S., J.F.S., A. Schlottmann, F. Schneider., E.S., F. Strobl, A. Sundermann, T.T., A.V., C.V. and R.W.) contributed to specific aspects and to further elaborate the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information (download PDF )
Supplementary Methods.
Supplementary Data 1 (download XLSX )
Random papers reviewed to assess to what extent the Scopus searches conducted yielded papers on the topics targeted by the present study. We examined 100 papers for each of the five topics assessed (500 papers examined in total): chem, chemical pollution; cc, climate change; land, habitat degradation and loss caused by changes in land and water use; nis, invasion by non-native species; and bio, biodiversity loss.
Supplementary Data 2 (download XLSX )
Number of published papers per year retrieved by Scopus searches (1990-2021) on five assessed topics: chemical pollution (chem), climate change (cc), habitat degradation and loss caused by changes in land and water use (land), invasion by non-native species (nis), and biodiversity loss (bio).
Supplementary Data 3 (download XLSX )
Number of published papers per journal retrieved by Scopus searches (1990-2021) on five assessed topics: chemical pollution (chem), climate change (cc), habitat degradation and loss caused by changes in land and water use (land), invasion by non-native species (nis), and biodiversity loss (bio). The journals are ranked in decreasing order of paper contribution, and the tables show the first 158 journals with the largest contribution in each topic.
Source data
Source Data Fig. 1 (download XLSX )
The most productive journals, accounting for 50% of the papers published on five topics: chemical pollution (chem), climate change (cc), habitat degradation and loss caused by changes in land and water use (land), invasion by non-native species (nis), and biodiversity loss (bio) searched in Scopus between 1990 and 2021. These journals are a subset of 119 journals out of a total of 367 identified journals. The Scopus sub-subject area information is provided for each of the 119 journals.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sylvester, F., Weichert, F.G., Lozano, V.L. et al. Better integration of chemical pollution research will further our understanding of biodiversity loss. Nat Ecol Evol 7, 1552–1555 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02117-6
Published:
Version of record:
Issue date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02117-6
This article is cited by
-
MIND: a proposed strategic and collaborative platform for advancing chemical environmental risk assessment
Environmental Sciences Europe (2026)
-
Nitrogen pollution in rivers as potential driver of invertebrate species turnover
Environmental Sciences Europe (2025)
-
Assessing chemical pollution with biomonitoring approaches in streams and rivers: a critical review
Environmental Sciences Europe (2025)
-
Aquatic ecosystems as a final receptor of atmospheric organic particulate-bound pollutants: a plea for the integration of aquatic ecotoxicology into the risk assessment of air pollution
Environmental Sciences Europe (2025)
-
Vulnerability of soil food webs to chemical pollution and climate change
Nature Ecology & Evolution (2025)
