Assessing landscape connectivity is important to understand the ecology of landscapes and to evaluate alternative conservation strategies. The question is though, how to quantify connectivity appropriately, especially when the information available about the suitability of the matrix surrounding habitat is limited. Our goal here was to investigate the effects of matrix representation on assessments of the connectivityamong habitat patches and of the relative importance of individual patches for the connectivity within a habitat network. We evaluated a set of 50 9 50 km2 test areas in the Carpathian Mountains and considered three different matrix representations (binary, categorical and continuous) using two types of connections among habitat patches (shortest lines and least-cost paths). We compared connections, and the importance of patches, based on (1) isolation, (2) incidencefunctional, and (3) graph measures. Our results showed that matrix representation can greatly affect assessments of connections (i.e., connection length, effective distance, and spatial location), but not patch prioritization. Although patch importance was not much affected by matrix representation, it was influenced by the connectivity measure and its parameterization. We found the biggest differences in the case of the integral index of connectivity and equally weighted patches, but no consistent pattern in response to changing dispersal distance. Connectivity assessments in more fragmented landscapes were more sensitive to the selection of matrix representation. Although we recommend using continuous matrix representation whenever possible, our results indicated that simpler matrix representations can be also used as a proxy to delineate those patches that are important for overall connectivity, but not to identify connections among habitat patches.
File: Ziolkowska_etal_LandscapeEcol_2014.pdf
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Sacred natural sites have played important social and cultural roles in many cultures around the world for centuries. More recently, scientists have shown that sacred sites act as de facto protected areas. However, the potential for sacred sites to be integrated into conservation strategies depends on the motivations of people to protect them. The objective of this study is to understand people's relationships with village-level sacred forests in northwest Yunnan, China. We conducted 201 standardized open-ended interviews of both men and women over 18 years of age from six communities in the area near the city of Shangrila. While this region of Yunnan is undergoing dramatic socio-economic changes that can contribute to changes in cultural values, we find no evidence that people's appreciation for sacred forests is declining. Our results show that the forests hold primarily religious meaning for people, people visit the forests regularly, and, while younger people know less about the forests, they do not differ in terms of use and appreciation, indicating that the value of the areas is not decreasing. Because people primarily view these sacred forests as religious sites and do not directly associate them with ecological value, we suggest that direct integration of these areas into conservation strategies may not be appropriate.
File: Allendorf-etal-2014-BioCons.pdf
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Knowing if a forest disturbance is caused by timber harvest or a natural event is crucial for carbon cycle assessments, econometric analyses of timber harvesting, and other research questions. However, while remote sensing of forest disturbance in general is very well developed, discerning between different types of forest disturbances remains challenging. In this work, we developed an algorithm to separate windfall disturbance from clear-cut harvesting using Landsat data. The method first extracts training data primarily based on Tasseled Cap transformed bands and histogram thresholds with minimal user input. We then used a support-vector machine classifier to separate disturbed areas into 'windfall' and 'clear-cut harvests'.Wetested our algorithmin the temperate forest zone of European Russia and the southern boreal forest zone of the United States. The forest-cover change classifications were highly accurate (~90%) and windfall classification accuracies were greater than 75% in both study areas. Accuracieswere generally higher for larger disturbance patches. At the Russia study site about 60% of all disturbances were caused by windfall, versus 40% at the U.S. study site. Given the similar levels of accuracy in both locations and the ease of application, the algorithm has the potential to fill a research gap in mapping wind disturbance using Landsat data in both temperate and boreal forests that are subject to frequent wind events.
File: Baumann_etal_2014_RSE.pdf
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Conservation plans are a common management tool, but are rarely evaluated for their influence on conservation actions. We assessed four statewide conservation plans and 371 local land protection projects developed by a state land management agency in the United States. We asked whether completion of statewide plans and approval of local projects were associated with changes in the amount, location, and landcover composition of subsequently protected lands. We found a weak relationship between statewide plans and land protection actions. Completion of two of four plans was associated with an increase in land protection statewide or within plan boundaries. However, 58% of lands protected within 20 years of plan completion were outside plan boundaries. Further, the proportion of statewide land protection activity focused inside plan boundaries was lower or not different after plan completion for three of four plans. Conversely, for >90% of local land protection projects, most land protection occurred after formal project approval compared to before, with much of that activity occurring almost immediately. Forests and wetlands were protected more often than planned, while pasture and crop lands were protected less often than planned. We suggest that conservation plans are most likely to influence land protection actions when dependable, multi-year funding for land protection is present, when public, institutional, and political support for implementation are strong; and when agencies commit to an implementation strategy that links broad-scale plans to specific, local land protection projects and is actionable within the framework of existing administrative rules governing agency land protection.
File: Carter_etal_2014_BiologicalConservation.pdf
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Old-growth forests around the world are vanishing rapidly and have been lost almost completely from the European temperate forest region. Poor management practices, often triggered by socioeconomic and institutional change, are the main causes of loss. Recent trends in old-growth forest cover in Romania, where some of the last remaining tracts of these forests within Europe are located, are revealed by satellite image analysis. Forest cover declined by 1.3 % from 2000 to 2010. Romania's protected area network has been expanded substantially since the country's accession to the European Union in 2007, and most of the remaining old-growth forests now are located within protected areas. Surprisingly though, 72% of the old-growth forest disturbances are found within protected areas, highlighting the threats still facing these forests. It appears that logging in old-growth forests is, at least in part, related to institutional reforms, insuf?cient protection and ownership changes since the collapse of communism in 1989. The majority of harvesting activities in old-growth forest areas are in accordance with the law. Without improvements to their governance, the future of Romania's old-growth forests and the important
File: Knorn_EnvCons_2013_0.pdf
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A major challenge for biodiversity conservation is to mitigate the effects of future environmental change, such as land use, in important areas for biodiversity conservation. In the United States, recent conservation efforts by The Nature Conservancy and partners have identified and mapped the nation's Areas of Biodiversity Significance (ABS), representing the best remaining habitats for the full diversity of native species and ecosystems, and thus the most important and suitable areas for the conservation of native biodiversity. Our goal was to understand the potential consequences of future land use changes on the nation's ABS, and identify regions where ABS are likely to be threatened due to future land use expansion. For this, we used an econometric-based model to forecast land use changes between 2001 and 2051 across the conterminous U.S. under alternative scenarios of future land use change. Our model predicted a total of 100,000 to 160,000 km2 of natural habitats within ABS replaced by urban, crop and pasture expansion depending on the scenario (5% to 8% habitat loss across the conterminous U.S.), with some regions experiencing up to 30% habitat loss. The majority of the most threatened ABS were located in the Eastern half of the country. Results for our different scenarios were generally fairly consistent, but some regions exhibited notable difference from the baseline under specific policies and changes in commodity prices. Overall, our study suggests that key areas for conserving United States' biodiversity are likely threatened by future land use change, and efforts trying to preserve the ecological and conservation values of ABS will need to address the potential intensification of human land uses.
File: Martinuzzi_Ecosphere_2013.pdf
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Infrastructure is increasingly part of wildlife habitats. However, it is not clear how infrastructure affects habitat quality for wildlife adapted to natural disturbances. While potentially providing suitable habitat such as early-successional forest, infrastructure also enables human access, which may modify animal' movements, especially where hunted species are concerned. To investigated the effect of infrastructure for moose (Alces alces, n = 138), a heavily harvested species, we modelled circadian distances and movement rates over the year as a function of moose' distance to the nearest road, house and power line in different human-modified landscapes in Sweden (latitude 57-67). Distances between moose and roads followed a circadian pattern. Animals were more likely to be closer to roads between 18:00 in the evening and 6:00 in the morning (i.e., during times when traffic volumes are generally lower). Moose moved relatively faster when 125 m or closer to a road, or alternatively, were closer to roads when more active. We did not find these relationships between moose and houses or power lines. With respect to roads, our results suggest that moose may make a temporal adjustment. During hours when humans are less active, road-near habitats may be sought out. We suggest considering different resolutions to study the impact of different infrastructure types. We recommend future research to investigate animal movement and behaviour in relation to infrastructure to understand the utilization of human-modified habitats over time, and thus providing key information for wildlife management and conservation, particularly for species that are adapted to disturbed landscapes.
File: Neumann_etal_2013_LUP.pdf
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The breakdown of socialismcausedmassive socio-economic and institutional changes thatled to substantial agricultural land abandonment. The goal of our study was to identify the determinants of agricultural land abandonment in post-Soviet Russia during the ?rst decade of transition from a state-controlled economy to a market-driven economy (1990-2000). We analyzed the determinants of agricultural land abandonment for approximately 150,550 km2 of land area in the provinces (oblasts) of Kaluga, Rjazan, Smolensk, Tula and Vladimir in European Russia. Based on the economic assumptions of pro?t maximization, we integrated maps of abandoned agricultural land from ?ve ?185 kmx 185 km Landsat TM/ETM+ footprints with socio-economic, environmental and geographic variables, and we estimated logistic regressions at the pixel level to identify the determinants of agricultural land abandonment. Our results showed that a higher likelihood of agricultural land abandonment was signi?cantly associated with lower average grain yields in the late 1980s and with higher distances from the nearest settlements, municipality centers, and settlements withmore than 500 citizens. Hierarchical partitioning showed that the average grain yields in the late 1980s had the greatest power to explain agricultural land abandonment in our models, followed by the locational attributes of the agricultural land. We hypothesize that the termination of 90% of state subsidies for agriculture from 1990 to 2000 was an important underlying cause for the decrease of cultivation in economically and environmentally marginal agriculture areas. Thus, whereas the spatial patterns corresponded to the land rent theory of von Thuenen, it was primarily the macro-scale driving forces that fostered agricultural abandonment. Our study highlighted the value of spatially explicit statistical models for studying the determinants of land-use and land-cover change in large areas.
File: Prishchepov2.pdf
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Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) is the main cause of the global biodiversity crisis and protected areas are critical to prevent habitat loss. Rapid changes in institutional and socio-economic conditions, such as the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991, often trigger widespread LULCC. Yet, it is unclear how effective protected areas are in safeguarding habitat within them during such periods of rapid LULCC. Our goal here was to map changes in forest cover and agricultural lands from 1984 to 2010 in order to assess the effectiveness of two strictly protected areas, Oksky and Mordovsky State Nature Reserves, in temperate European Russia. We analyzed dense time series of Landsat images for three Landsat footprints and applied a support vector machine classification and trajectory-based change detection to map forest disturbance. We then used matching statistics to quantify the effectiveness of the protected areas. Our analyses highlighted considerable post-Soviet LULCC in European Russia. The LULCC maps revealed disturbances on 5.02% of the total forest area, with strongly declining disturbance rates in post-Soviet times. We also found that 39.89% of the agricultural land used in 1988 was abandoned after 1991, leading to widespread forest regrowth. Oksky and Mordovsky State Nature Reserves had a significantly lower probability of forest disturbance (? 0.1 to ? 3.5% lower) in comparison to their surrounding areas. This suggests that protected areas were relatively effective in limiting human-induced forest disturbance in European Russia, despite lower levels of control and an eroding infrastructure for nature protection. Moreover, we found drastic land-cover changes, particularly forest regrowth, in the surroundings of these protected areas, highlighting conservation opportunities. Protected areas can play a key role in biodiversity conservation during periods of rapid LULCC, and remote sensing coupled with matching statistics provide important tools for monitoring the success and failure of conservation efforts.
File: Sieber_etal_2013_RSE.pdf
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Land use is driven by socio-economic factors that must be understood in order to mitigate habitat loss. Econometric land-use models describe how land use is affected by socio-economic factors, such as financial returns to different uses of land, and they can be linked to biological models to provide new insight for conservation. Our goal was to evaluate the effects of future land use change on the habitat of forest breeding bird species in northern Wisconsin. Specifically, we estimated the effects of land use change on the amount of habitat available and compared the effects of economic policy scenarios on bird habitat. To do this, we coupled a spatially-explicit econometric model of land use change on private lands with models of northern Wisconsin forest bird potential habitat, comparing a 50-yr baseline projection with a scenario providing incentives for forest growth and a high urban growth scenario. The baseline scenario suggests an average of 438,705 ha of forest lost (10%), with 1.9% of that saved under the Forest Incentive scenario, and a 1.6% greater loss for the Urban Growth scenario. Under baseline projections boreal birds experienced the least amount of habitat loss (2-3%), and deciduous forest birds the most (6-8%). For some species, the projected loss of habitat exacerbates ongoing long-term declining population trend. Coupled economic-ecological models can be used to evaluate alternative incentive programs and to explore the complex interactions between policy, land use change, and broad spatial scale ecological processes that are highly relevant to conservation.
File: Beaudry-etal-ConsBio-2013_0.pdf
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