Landscape Partnership Resources Library
Fear of failure in conservation: The problem and potential solutions to aid conservation of extremely small populations
The potential for extirpation of extremely small populations (ESPs) is high due to their vulnerability to demographic and environmental stochasticity and negative impacts of human activity. We argue that conservation actions that could aid ESPs are sometimes delayed because of a fear of failure. In human psychology, the fear of failure is composed of several distinct cognitive elements, including ‘‘uncertainty about the future’’ and ‘‘upsetting important others.’’ Uncertainty about the future is often driven by information obstacles in conservation: information is either not easily shared among practitioners or information is lacking. Whereas, fear of upsetting important others can be due to apprehension about angering constituents, peers, funders, and other stakeholders. We present several ways to address these fears in hopes of improving the conservation process. We describe methods for increased information sharing and improved decision-making in the face of uncertainty, and recommend a shift in focus to cooperative actions and improving methods for evaluating success. Our hope is that by tackling stumbling blocks due to the apprehension of failure, conservation and management organizations can take steps to move from fear to action.
Reconciling nature conservation and traditional farming practices: a spatially explicit framework to assess the extent of High Nature Value farmlands in the European countryside
Over past centuries, European landscapes have been shaped by human management. Traditional, low intensity agricultural practices, adapted to local climatic, geographic, and environmental conditions, led to a rich, diverse cultural and natural heritage, reflected in a wide range of rural landscapes, most of which were preserved until the advent of industrialized agriculture (Bignal & McCracken 2000; Paracchini et al. 2010; Oppermann et al. 2012). Agricultural landscapes currently account for half of Europe’s territory (Overmars et al. 2013), with ca. 50% of all species relying on agricultural habitats at least to some extent (Kristensen 2003; Moreira et al. 2005; Halada et al. 2011). Due to their acknowledged role in the maintenance of high levels of biodiversity, low-intensity farming systems have been highlighted as critical to nature conservation and protection of the rural environment (Beaufoy et al. 1994; Paracchini et al. 2010; Halada et al.2011; Egan & Mortensen 2012).
Invited Review: Quantifying surface albedo and other direct biogeophysical climate forcings of forestry activities
By altering fluxes of heat, momentum, and moisture exchanges between the land surface and atmosphere, forestry and other land-use activities affect climate. Although long recognized scientifically as being important, these so-called biogeophysical forcings are rarely included in climate policies for forestry and other land management projects due to the many challenges associated with their quantification. Here, we review the scientific literature in the fields of atmospheric science and terrestrial ecology in light of three main objectives: (i) to elucidate the challenges associated with quantifying biogeophysical climate forcings connected to land use and land management, with a focus on the forestry sector; (ii) to identify and describe scientific approaches and/or metrics facilitating the quantification and interpretation of direct biogeophysical climate forcings; and (iii) to identify and recommend research priorities that can help overcome the challenges of their attribution to specific land-use activities, bridging the knowledge gap between the climate modeling, forest ecology, and resource management communities. We find that ignoring surface biogeophysics may mislead climate mitigation policies, yet existing metrics are unlikely to be sufficient. Successful metrics ought to (i) include both radiative and nonradiative climate forcings; (ii) reconcile disparities between biogeophysical and biogeochemical forcings, and (iii) acknowledge trade-offs between global and local climate benefits. We call for more coordinated research among terrestrial ecologists, resource managers, and coupled climate modelers to harmonize datasets, refine analytical techniques, and corroborate and validate metrics that are more amenable to analyses at the scale of an individual site or region.
A long-term perspective on a modern drought in the American Southeast
The depth of the 2006–9 drought in the humid, southeastern US left several metropolitan areas with only a 60–120 day water supply. To put the region’s recent drought variability in a long-term perspective, a dense and diverse tree-ring network—including the first records throughout the Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint river basin—is used to reconstruct drought from 1665 to 2010 CE. The network accounts for up to 58.1% of the annual variance in warm-season drought during the 20th century and captures wet eras during the middle to late 20th century. The reconstruction shows that the recent droughts are not unprecedented over the last 346 years. Indeed, droughts of extended duration occurred more frequently between 1696 and 1820. Our results indicate that the era in which local and state water supply decisions were developed and the period of instrumental data upon which it is based are amongst the wettest since at least 1665. Given continued growth and subsequent industrial, agricultural and metropolitan demand throughout the southeast, insights from paleohydroclimate records suggest that the threat of water-related conflict in the region has potential to grow more intense in the decades to come.
Scenarios of future land use change around United States’ protected areas
Land use change around protected areas can diminish their conservation value, making it important to predict future land use changes nearby. Our goal was to evaluate future land use changes around protected areas of different types in the United States under different socioeconomic scenarios. We analyzed econometric-based projections of future land use change to capture changes around 1260 protected areas, including National Forests, Parks, Refuges, and Wilderness Areas, from 2001 to 2051, under different land use policies and crop prices. Our results showed that urban expansion around protected areas will continue to be a major threat, and expand by 67% under business-as-usual conditions. Concomitantly, a substantial number of protected areas will lose natural vegetation in their surroundings. National land-use policies or changes in crop prices are not likely to affect the overall pattern of land use, but can have effects in certain regions. Discouraging urbanization through zoning, for example, can reduce future urban pressures around National Forests and Refuges in the East, while the implementation of an afforestation policy can increase the amount of natural vegetation around some Refuges throughout the U.S. On the other hand, increases in crop prices can increase crop/pasture cover around some protected areas, and limit the potential recovery of natural vegetation. Overall, our results highlight that future land-use change around protected areas is likely to be substantial but variable among regions and protected area types. Safeguarding the conservation value of protected areas may require serious consideration of threats and opportunities arising from future land use.
Scaling up from gardens: biodiversity conservation in urban environments
As urbanisation increases globally and the natural environment becomes increasingly fragmented, the importance of urban green spaces for biodiversity conservation grows. In many countries, private gardens area major component of urban green space and can provideconsiderable biodiversity benefits. Gardens and adjacent habitats form interconnected networks and a landscape ecology framework is necessary to understand the relationship between the spatial configuration of garden patches and their constituent biodiversity. A scale-dependent tension is apparent in garden management, whereby the individual garden is much smaller than the unit of management needed to retain viable populations. To overcome this, here we suggest mechanisms for encouraging ‘wildlife-friendly’ management of collections of gardens across scales from the neighbourhood to the city.
Resampling Methods for Evaluating Classification Accuracy of Wildlife Habitat Models
Predictive models of wildlife-habitat relationships often have been developed without being tested The apparent classification accuracy of such models can be optimistically biased and misleading. Data resampling methods exist that yield a more realistic estimate of model classification accuracy. These methods are simple and require no new sample data. We illustrate these methods (cross-validation. jackknife resampling, and bootstrap resampling) with computer simulation to demonstrate the increase in precision of the estimate. The bootstrap method is then applied to field data as a technique for model comparison We recommend that biologists use some resampling procedure to evaluatewildlife habitat models prior to field evaluation.
A global overview of drought and heat-induced tree mortality reveals emerging climate change risks for forests
Greenhouse gas emissions have significantly altered global climate, and will continue to do so in the future. Increases in the frequency, duration, and/or severity of drought and heat stress associated with climate change could fundamentally alter the composition, structure, and biogeography of forests in many regions. Of particular concern are potential increases in tree mortality associated with climateinduced physiological stress and interactions with other climate-mediated processes such as insect outbreaks and wildfire. Despite this risk, existing projections of tree mortality are based on models that lack functionally realistic mortality mechanisms, and there has been no attempt to track observations of climate-driven tree mortality globally. Here we present the first global assessment of recent tree mortality attributed to drought and heat stress. Although episodic mortality occurs in the absence of climate change, studies compiled here suggest that at least some of the world’s forested ecosystems already may be responding to climate change and raise concern that forests may become increasingly vulnerable to higher background tree mortality rates and die-off in response to future warming and drought, even in environments that are not normally considered water-limited. This further suggests risks to ecosystem services, including the loss of sequestered forest carbon and associated atmospheric feedbacks. Our review also identifies key information gaps and scientific uncertainties that currently hinder our ability to predict tree mortality in response to climate change and emphasizes the need for a globally coordinated observation system. Overall, our review reveals the potential for amplified tree mortality due to drought and heat in forests worldwide.
Are conservation organizations configured for effective adaptation to global change?
Conservation organizations must adapt to respond to the ecological impacts of global change. Numerous changes to conservation actions (eg facilitated ecological transitions, managed relocations, or increased corridordevelopment) have been recommended, but some institutional restructuring within organizations may also be needed. Here we discuss the capacity of conservation organizations to adapt to changing environmental conditions, focusing primarily on public agencies and nonprofits active in land protection and management in the US. After first reviewing how these organizations anticipate and detect impacts affecting target species and ecosystems, we then discuss whether they are sufficiently flexible to prepare and respond by reallocating funding, staff, or other resources. We raise new hypotheses about how the configuration of different organizations enables them to protect particular conservation targets and manage for particular biophysical changes that require coordinated management actions over different spatial and temporal scales. Finally, we provide a discussion resource to help conservation organizations assess their capacity to adapt.
Impacts of mountaintop mining on terrestrial ecosystem integrity: identifying landscape thresholds for avian species in the central Appalachians, United States
Reclaimed mine-dominated landscapes (less forest and more grassland/shrubland cover) elicited more negative (57 %) than positive (39 %) species responses. Negative thresholds for each landscape metric generally occurred at lower values than positive thresholds, thus negatively responding species were detrimentally affected before positively responding species benefitted. Forest interior birds generally responded negatively to landscape metric thresholds, interior edge species responses were mixed, and early successional birds responded positively. The forest interior guild declined most at 4 % forest loss, while the shrubland guild increased greatest after 52 % loss
Temporal dynamics of a commensal network of cavity-nesting vertebrates: increased diversity during an insect outbreak
Network analysis offers insight into the structure and function of ecological communities, but little is known about how empirical networks change over time during perturbations. ‘‘Nest webs’’ are commensal networks that link secondary cavity-nesting vertebrates (e.g., bluebirds, ducks, and squirrels, which depend on tree cavities for nesting) with the excavators (e.g., woodpeckers) that produce cavities. In central British Columbia, Canada, Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) is considered a keystone excavator, providing most cavities for secondary cavity-nesters. However, roles of species in the network, and overall network architecture, are expected to vary with population fluctuations. Many excavator species increased in abundance in association with a pulse of food (adult and larval beetles) during an outbreak of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae), which peaked in 2003–2004. We studied nest-web dynamics from 1998 to 2011 to determine how network architecture changed during this resource pulse.Cavity availability increased at the onset of the beetle outbreak and peaked in 2005. During and after the outbreak, secondary cavity-nesters increased their use of cavities made by five species of beetle-eating excavators, and decreased their use of flicker cavities. We found low link turnover, with 74% of links conserved from year to year. Nevertheless, the network increased in evenness and diversity of interactions, and declined slightly in nestedness and niche overlap. These patterns remained evident seven years after the beetle outbreak, suggesting a legacy effect. In contrast to previous snapshot studies of nest webs, our dynamic approach reveals how the role of each cavity producer, and thus quantitative network architecture, can vary over time. The increase in interaction diversity with the beetle outbreak adds to growing evidence that insect outbreaks can increase components of biodiversity in forest ecosystems at various temporal scales. The observed changes in (quantitative) network architecture contrast with the relatively stable (qualitative) architecture of empirical mutualistic networks that have been studied to date. However, they are consistent with recent theory on the importance of population fluctuations in driving network architecture. Our results support the view that models should allow for the possibility of rewiring (species switching partners) to avoid overestimation of secondary extinction risk.
Growing feedback from ocean carbon to climate
The finding that feedbacks between the ocean’s carbon cycle and climate may become larger than terrestrial carbon–climate feedbacks has implications for the socio-economic effects of today’s fossil-fuel emissions.
Climate: Sawyer predicted rate of warming in 1972
Excerpt: "In four pages Sawyer summarized what was known about the role of carbon dioxide in enhancing the natural greenhouse effect, and made a remarkable prediction of the warming expected at the end of the twentieth century.He concluded that the 25% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide predicted to occur by 2000 corresponded to an increase of 0.6 °C in world temperature..... In fact the global surface temperature rose about 0.5 °C between the early 1970s and2000. Considering that global temperatures had, if anything, been falling in the decades leading up to the early 1970s, Sawyer’s prediction of a reversal of this trend, and of the correct magnitude of the warming, is perhaps the most remarkable long-range forecast ever made. Despite huge efforts, and advances in the science, the scientific consensus on the amount of global warming expected from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations has changed little from that in Sawyer’s time.
Biodiversity gains from efficient use of private sponsorship for flagship species conservation
To address the global extinction crisis, both efficient use of existing conservation funding and new sources of funding are vital. Private sponsorship of charismatic ‘flagship’ species conservation represents an important source of new funding, but has been criticized as being inefficient. However, the ancillary benefits of privately sponsored flagship species conservation via actions benefiting other species have not been quantified, nor havethe benefits of incorporating such sponsorship into objective prioritization protocols. Here, we use a comprehensive dataset of conservation actions for the 700 most threatened species in New Zealand to examine the potential biodiversity gains from national private flagship species sponsorship programmes. We find that private funding for flagship species can clearly result in additional species and phylogenetic diversity conserved, via conservation actions shared with other species. When private flagship species funding is incorporated into a prioritization protocol to preferentially sponsor shared actions, expected gains can be more than doubled. However, these gains are consistently smaller than expected gains in a hypothetical scenario where private funding could be optimally allocated among all threatened species. We recommend integrating private sponsorship of flagship species into objective prioritization protocols to sponsor efficient actions that maximize biodiversity gains, or wherever possible, encouraging private donations for broader biodiversity goals.
‘As Earth’s testimonies tell’: wilderness conservation in a changing world
Too often, wilderness conservation ignores a temporal perspective greater than the past 50 years, yet a long-term perspective (centuries to millennia) reveals the dynamic nature of many ecosystems. Analysis of fossil pollen, charcoal and stable isotopes, combined with historical analyses and archaeology can reveal how ongoing interactions between climatic change, human activities and other disturbances have shaped today’s landscapes over thousands of years. This interdisciplinary approach can inform wilderness conservation and also contribute to interpreting current trends and predicting how ecosystems might respond to future climate change. In this paper, we review literature that reveals how increasing collaboration among palaeoecologists, archaeologists, historians, anthropologists and ecologists is improving understanding of ecological complexity. Drawing on case studies from forested and non-forested ecosystems in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australia, we discuss how this integrated approach can inform wilderness conservation and ecosystem management.
A drought-induced pervasive increase in tree mortality across Canada’s boreal forests
Drought-induced tree mortality is expected to increase worldwide under projected future climate changes (1–4). The Canadian boreal forests, which occupy about 30% of the boreal forests worldwide and 77% of Canada’s total forested land, play a critical role in the albedo of Earth’s surface (5) and in its global carbon budget (6). Many of the previously reported regional-scale impacts of drought on tree mortality have affected low- and middle-latitude tropical regions (2) and the temperate forests of the western United States (3), but no study has examined high-latitude boreal regions with multiple species at a regional scale using long-term forest permanent sampling plots (7–9). Here, we estimated tree mortality in natural stands throughout Canada’s boreal forests using data from the permanent sampling plots and statistical models. We found that tree mortality rates increased by an overall average of 4.7%yr−1 from 1963 to 2008, with higher mortality rate increases in western regions than in eastern regions (about 4.9 and 1.9% yr−1 ,respectively).The water stress created by regional drought may be the dominant contributor to these widespread increases in tree mortality rates across tree species, sizes, elevations, longitudes and latitudes. Western Canada seems to have been more sensitive to drought than eastern Canada.
1.5°C or 2°C: a conduit’s view from the science-policy interface at COP20 in Lima, Peru
An average global 2°C warming compared to pre-industrial times is commonly understood as the most important target in climate policy negotiations. It is a temperature target indicative of a fiercely debated threshold between what some consider acceptable warming and warming that implies dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system and hence to be avoided. Although this 2°C target has been officially endorsed as scientifically sound and justified in the Copenhagen Report issued by the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2009, the large majority of countries (over two-thirds) that have signed and ratified the UNFCCC strongly object to this target as the core of the long-term goal of keeping temperatures below a certain danger level. Instead, they promote a 1.5°C target as a more adequate limit for dangerous interference. At COP16 in Cancun, parties to the convention recognized the need to consider strengthening the long-term global goal in the so-called 2013–2015 Review, given improved scientific knowledge, including the possible adoption of the 1.5°C target. In this perspective piece, I examine the discussions of a structured expert dialogue (SED) between selected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) authors, myself included, and parties to the convention to assess the adequacy of the long-term goal. I pay particular attention to the uneven geographies and power differentials that lay behind the ongoing political debate regarding an adequate target for protecting ecosystems, food security, and sustainable development.
Phase 1 Report: Conservation Planning and Design for Appalachian LCC PDF
Conservation planning is concerned with spatially identifying and prioritizing lands and waters important for functioning ecosystems and biodiversity. It is a science utilizing geographic information systems and large datasets to generate scenario-based maps of conservation potential. These scenarios can balance social, economic, and regulatory constraints with processes that occur over time and space. The planning process itself, as well as final products, helps practitioners prioritize where and when to take conservation action.
Phase 1 Report: Conservation Planning and Design for Appalachian LCC PDF
Conservation planning is concerned with spatially identifying and prioritizing lands and waters important for functioning ecosystems and biodiversity. It is a science utilizing geographic information systems and large datasets to generate scenario-based maps of conservation potential. These scenarios can balance social, economic, and regulatory constraints with processes that occur over time and space. The planning process itself, as well as final products, helps practitioners prioritize where and when to take conservation action.
