查看更多>>摘要：Assessing the road effects on biodiversity is challenging because impacts may depend on both wildlife responses to roads and on the spatial arrangement of roads. We questioned whether an increase in road encroachment leads to significant changes in species occurrence and community composition. Using a large citizen-science dataset of point-counts performed throughout Iberian Peninsula, we modelled the effect of road density on the occurrence of common birds (n = 78 species), while accounting for potential confounding effects of environment and survey effort. We then tested if species' occurrence patterns would be linked to specific traits related to the ability to cope with human presence. Finally, we assessed how road density affects the community compositional dissimilarity. We estimated 36 (46%) and 18 (23%) species to be negatively and positively affected by roads, respectively. Increased road encroachment was positively related with urban dwelling and fecundity, and negatively related with nesting on the ground. Furthermore, increasing road density translated into an increasing community compositional dissimilarity, mostly due to species turnover. Overall, we found that different species specific responses to roads translate into changes at the community level. Landscape and road-network management should be conceived acknowledging that roads are contributing to biodiversity changes. As so, building upon the concepts of land sharing/land sparing, conservation actions should be tailored according to the different species responses e.g., road verge management targeting species having a positive relation with road density; and compensation actions targeting species showing a negative response toward roads.
查看更多>>摘要：Understanding the impact of multiple anthropogenic threats on tree species is urgently needed for estimating population decline and enabling coordinated and efficient conservation actions. We applied a spatially explicit framework to assess the vulnerability of three highly valuable Asian rosewood species (Dalbergia cochinchinensis, D. cultrata, D. oliveri) to five key threats across their native ranges in six countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion. All three species face significant threat levels from at least one of the five threats in more than 75% of their native ranges, including within existing protected areas. Overexploitation is the single most important threat (53-60%), followed by habitat conversion (17-41%) and fire (20-28%). About 21% of the distribution range of D. cultrata is under medium to very high threat from climate change, which is predicted to have less impact on D. oliveri and on D. cochinchinensis. Based on our threat assessment we delineated species-specific priority areas for conservation and restoration that we subdivided by ecoregions as a surrogate for adaptive variation within species. Half of the ecoregions were classified as priority for improving the conservation of adaptive variation in one or more of the species. We propose spatially explicit follow-up actions that include in situ conservation, restoration, and ex situ conservation to improve the effectiveness of current conservation measures to capture adaptive variation within species. Transboundary coordination will be important to effectively address conservation threats. The study can act as a model for regional planning for other valuable tree species.
查看更多>>摘要：Expanding the coverage of reserve networks is critical for halting declines in biodiversity. Opportunities for land protection are driven in part by market dynamics, which affect conservation budgets, land acquisition costs, and the threat of habitat conversion. The financial and institutional characteristics of conservation organizations may lead to them having distinct patterns of acquisition timing in relation to market conditions. We examined how trends in wider economic conditions and in markets for natural resources and land development impact the effectiveness of different land acquisition patterns through time using a simulation. We found that organizations with patterns of acquisition timing that result in more acquisitions when returns from undeveloped land-use are low, when returns from developed land-use are high, or when the wider economy is doing well often yielded greater conservation benefits through land acquisitions. These acquisition patterns reflect different business models; for example, organizations funding acquisitions with mitigation funds from development projects will tend to make acquisitions when the development market is doing well, while those relying on philanthropic donations may tend to acquire when overall economy is doing well. We also found that how advantageous different acquisition timing patterns will prove is moderated by relationships between relevant markets and by the level of budgetary flexibility of conservation organizations. Our results suggest conservation organizations operating different business models may be better suited to delivering conservation benefits in particular locations and economic environments. Our findings also suggest financial strategies conservation organizations can implement to increase the effectiveness of their land protection.
查看更多>>摘要：Fire plays an important role in maintaining grassy forests, and reduced fire frequency has been linked to encroachment of woody plants into grassy forests and woodlands globally. In Australia a range of threatened animals, including the northern population of the endangered eastern bristlebird (Dasyornis brachypterus), are dependent on grassy forests. We examined this issue by collating three decades of detailed monitoring and fire data for 43 current and historically-occupied bristlebird sites, and examined the relationships among fire history, bristlebird occupancy and habitat patch size/condition. Habitat patch size declined by over 50% between 1980 and 2009 due to woody plant encroachment. Bristlebird occupancy was associated with reduced habitat loss and time since fire, while reduced fire frequency was the main predictor of decline in grassy cover, a critical habitat element for bristlebirds. Our models suggested habitat loss was strongly influenced by fire history, particularly fire frequency, with reduced habitat loss associated with more-frequent burning. Native grass cover can return quickly, and remained high until 5-10 years post-fire; densest grass cover was found at sites with fire intervals of between 3.5 and 7 years. Active fire management, including regular ecological burning, is imperative for conservation of the eastern bristlebird and other threatened fauna that depend on these grassy forests. The massive changes in global patterns of fire currently occurring, and the threat this poses to biodiversity, make understanding the nuances of fire ecology, including the role of fire frequency, essential to improving conservation management.
查看更多>>摘要：Large-scale disturbance events are forecast to increase in severity and frequency due to climate change. Onground surveys are crucial for assessing the immediate impact of disturbances on biodiversity and for informing management responses. However, there are few examples where quantitative tools have guided postdisturbance survey design. In this study, we integrated species distribution modelling and spatial prioritisation to identify taxonomic and spatial gaps in surveys for 92 priority vertebrates 6 months after the 2019-20 wildfires in Australia. We predicted the pre-fire distribution of priority species, mapped locations of post-wildfire surveys that were already underway, and integrated this information with remotely-sensed fire severity maps in the tool, Zonation, to prioritise locations for new surveys across three fire severity classes (unburnt, low severity, high severity). Our results suggest that 6 months after the wildfires, surveys by government agencies had targeted 17 of 20 mammals (85%); 11 of 17 birds (65%); 10 of 17 frogs (59%); 10 of 23 reptiles (43%) and 5 of 17 fish (29%). We developed species distribution models for 63 of these species after collating 120,118 occurrence records from 6 data repositories. By predicting their distribution before the wildfires, we most efficiently identified gaps in survey effort while ensuring representation across species and fire severity classes. Our analysis provided an important `stocktake' of the response effort to the 2019-20 wildfires in Australia and helped inform the allocation of government-funded wildfire recovery programs. Although we focus on wildfire, our approach could assess gaps in survey effort following any large-scale disturbance.
查看更多>>摘要：The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has become influential in biodiversity conservation. Its research is published widely and has been adopted by the United Nations and the Convention for Biological Diversity. This platform includes discussion about how values relate to biodiversity conservation. The IPBES emphasizes "relational values", connecting these with living a "good life," and "nature's contributions to people" (NCP); building upon ecosystem services (ES), which have dominated nature valuation for 15+ years. Although the IPBES acknowledges instrumental and intrinsic natural values, they purport that by adopting relational values, conservation will become more socially- and culturally-inclusive, moving beyond the "unhelpful dichotomy" between instrumental and intrinsic values. We wholeheartedly agree that conservation should become more inclusive - it should, in fact, morally include nonhuman nature. We argue that far from being half of an unhelpful dichotomy, intrinsic natural values are incontrovertible elements of any honest effort to sustain Earth's biodiversity. We find NCP to be mainly anthropocentric, and relational values to be largely instrumental. The "good life" they support is a good life for humans, and not for nonhuman beings or collectives. While passingly acknowledging intrinsic natural values, the current IPBES platform gives little attention to these, and to corresponding ecocentric worldviews. In this paper we demonstrate the important practical implications of operationalizing intrinsic values for conservation, such as ecological justice, i.e., "peoples' obligations to nature". We urge the IPBES platform, in their future values work, to become much more inclusive of intrinsic values and ecocentrism.
查看更多>>摘要：Transportation infrastructure has expanded rapidly in Southeast Asian forests over the last 20 years, opening up remote areas to the degrading effects of internal forest fragmentation and human exploitation. Natural World Heritage sites (NWHS) can be a powerful policy instrument to safeguard tropical forest ecosystems (when adequately implemented and enforced, and communicated to all relevant stakeholders); however, despite this mechanism, transportation infrastructure pressure has been increasing in NWHS forests. Here we propose a novel GIS approach to assess spatial and temporal changes in transportation infrastructure pressure on NWHS in Southeast Asia using a Transportation Infrastructure Pressure Index (TIPI) and forest fragmentation analysis, underpinned by global open-source datasets. Mean pressure in Southeast Asian NWHS is lower than in their surrounding areas (15 km), suggesting that NWHS protection is preventing some deterioration. However, in the last 5 years, these sites have also come under increasing transportation infrastructure pressure (at a mean rate of 14.9% over the period 2014-2019 across 12 sites in Southeast Asia). Furthermore, increases in transportation pressure in NWHS surrounding areas are correlated with increases in transportation pressure inside NWHS. With transportation infrastructure projected to continue to expand globally, GIS-based analysis methods such as these could enhance existing NWHS monitoring efforts, providing early warning about pressures that may be contributing to forest degradation and biodiversity declines in NWHS.
查看更多>>摘要：An increasing number of species at risk raise concerns worldwide. While global assessments provide a comprehensive framework, national species conservation status is needed to provide specific policies. The IUCN Red List and the Mexican Norm (MER) methods were used to assign risk categories for 310 endemic species of terrestrial vertebrates at national and ecoregion levels. We used ecological niche models projected as species potential distributions, and refined species extant distributions including only remnant suitable habitat, to assess species risk assignments for Criterion A and B (IUCN Red List), and Criterion A, B, C, and D (MER). Of the total number of species, the IUCN Red List and MER report 71 and 155 species at risk, respectively. Our assessment assigned a risk category to 38 and 299 species, respectively. The discrepancies in the number of species between our proposal and the IUCN Red List and MER are striking and probably due to shortcomings of deficient information or expert opinion of species, standardization between methods, and the number and particular characteristics of criteria. Species occurring in the Mexican Transvolcanic Belt, the Great Plains and the Yucatan Peninsula ecoregions were at higher extinction risk than species occurring in the Mexican deserts, the Mexican High Plateau, the Southern Sierra Madre and the Western Sierra Madre ecoregions. Our proposal of using species potential and extant distributions models facilitates frequent species assessments, as conditions of risks fluctuate over time, and contributes to designing national and regional conservation programs of species and populations at risk.
Stuber, Erica F.Robinson, Orin J.Bjerre, Emily R.Otto, Mark C....
11页
查看更多>>摘要：Methods are being developed to capitalize on citizen science data for research and monitoring, but these data are rarely used within established decision-making frameworks of wildlife agencies. Citizen science data are often collected at higher resolution and extent than targeted monitoring programs, and may provide complementary information. Here, we demonstrate that carefully filtered semi-structured citizen science observations, when paired with targeted survey data, can produce ecological predictions at higher resolution and extent than targeted surveys alone, and both datasets can represent complementary aspects of species' ecology. We present case studies demonstrating how citizen science data can enhance or supplement decision-making of government and conservation organizations. First, we show how the continuous spatial coverage of citizen science projects, when coupled with targeted surveys, can improve estimates of metrics used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in regulatory processes to estimate population size, and inform take limits of federally managed species nationwide. Second, we show that the spatial coverage of citizen science accommodates dynamic avian space use patterns during key times of the year, relative to standardized monitoring protocols carried out by the Illinois Natural History Survey. Lastly, we demonstrate that citizen science information can replicate estimates of migratory chronologies for the Illinois Natural History Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for some waterfowl species, and in some contexts can supplement missing data on abundance. These findings illustrate the value of integrating validated information from semi-structured citizen science into the current evidence base used to justify, inform, and evaluate conservation decision-making.
查看更多>>摘要：The reduction of deadwood due to forest management threatens saproxylic diversity. Therefore, deadwood needs to be preserved and enriched. While the importance of deadwood tree identity is well investigated, the value of different object types and microclimate for diversity is insufficiently understood. Conservation-oriented forest management, therefore, requires guidelines on how deadwood types under various microclimatic conditions can help to sustain saproxylic diversity. We set up an experiment in sub-montane beech forest to disentangle effects of microclimate (sun vs. shade) and deadwood types (logs, stumps, snags). By surveying beetles, fungal fruiting bodies, and fungal molecular taxa (amplicon sequence variants, ASVs) in early-decomposition stage deadwood, we asked: (i) What is the relative importance of deadwood types vs. microclimate on saproxylic alpha- and beta-diversity? (ii) What is the importance of stumps, logs, and snags for saproxylic alpha- and beta-diversity? (iii) Which combinations of microclimate and deadwood type maximize gamma-diversity? Deadwood types had a stronger effect on alpha- and beta-diversity of all groups than microclimate, which was not significant in most cases. Among deadwood types, alpha-diversity was higher on logs than on other deadwood types for beetles and fungal fruiting species. Fungal ASVs reached high alpha-diversity on snags. Considering effective combinations of deadwood types and microclimate in their contribution to gamma-diversity, shaded and sunny logs showed most importance for beetles and fruiting fungi, while sunny snags were important for fungal ASVs. Maintenance of saproxylic diversity is therefore best achieved via enrichment of different deadwood types and by emphasizing logs and snags under variable microclimates.
NSTL
Elsevier