Worldwide, changing climates and land use practices are escalating woody-plants encroachment into grasslands, reducing biodiversity and altering ecosystem functions. The loss of alpine grasslands is a major conservation concern as they harbor many rare and endemic species. Alpine meadows in Northwest Yunnan, China, represent a global biodiversity hotspot with high species richness, beta diversity, and endemism. Shrubs have expanded greatly in the region and threaten alpine meadow biodiversity. To measure rates of meadow loss due to shrub encroachment and identify its mechanisms, we reconstructed alpine land cover, climate, and land use change from 1950 to 2009 across Northwest Yunnan using satellite data, ground surveys, and interviews. Between 1990 and 2009, at least 39% of the alpine meadows converted to woody shrubs. The patterns of change suggest that a regime shift is occurring. Despite multiple perturbations to the climate and land use systems starting in the 1950s, alpine meadows remained resilient to shrub expansion until the late 1980s. Shrublands rapidly expanded then due to feedback mechanisms involving climate, woody cover, and grazing. Fire may no longer be an effective tool for controlling shrub expansion. This regime shift threatens both endemic meadow biodiversity and local livelihoods. More generally, these trends serve as a warning sign for the greater Himalayan region where similar vegetation changes could greatly affect livelihoods, hydrology, and climate.
File: Brandt-et-al-BiolCons2013.pdf
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How to best site reserves is a leading question for conservation biologists. Recently, reserve selection has emphasized efficient conservation: maximizing conservation goals given the reality of limited conservation budgets, and this work indicates that land market can potentially undermine the conservation benefits of reserves by increasing property values and development probabilities near reserves. Here we propose a reserve selection methodology which optimizes conservation given both a budget constraint and land market feedbacks by using a combination of econometric models along with stochastic dynamic programming. We show that amenity based feedbacks can be accounted for in optimal reserve selection by choosing property price and land development models which exogenously estimate the effects of reserve establishment. In our empirical example, we use previously estimated models of land development and property prices to select parcels to maximize coarse woody debris along 16 lakes in Vilas County, WI, USA. Using each lake as an independent experiment, we find that including land market feedbacks in the reserve selection algorithm has only small effects on conservation efficacy. Likewise, we find that in our setting heuristic (minloss and maxgain) algorithms perform nearly as well as the optimal selection strategy. We emphasize that land market feedbacks can be included in optimal reserve selection; the extent to which this improves reserve placement will likely vary across landscapes.
File: Butsic_etal_2013_JEM.pdf
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The concept of naturalness was developed to assess to what degree landscapes represent a natural state. Protected areas are often regarded as the remnants of untouched landscapes although many landscapes commonly perceived as pristine have a long history of human impact. Here, we introduced a historical perspective into the concept of naturalness and the analysis of the effectiveness of protected areas by analyzing historical trajectories in land-cover and forest communities for the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Michigan's Upper Peninsula (USA). Distribution of land-cover and forest community types was reconstructed for pre-settlement time (around 1850), the height of agricultural expansion (1928), and modern conditions (2000). Naturalness of the landscape was assessed by analyzing similarity between pre-settlement and current conditions and by assessing landscape continuity (1850-1928-2000). We compared changes in the strictly protected park core zone with those in the inland buffer zone with ongoing sustainable logging, and a not protected area adjacent to the park. Forest was the dominant land-cover type over the entire study period. We detected a gradient in land-cover continuity from the core zone (81 % continuity) to the inland buffer zone (74 %) and the area outside the park (66 %). Northern hardwood was the dominating forest type in all time points with high continuity (76 %). In contrast, pine forests show a more dynamic pattern with more than 50 % of the initial forests switching to non-forest or early succession forest types by 1928. More than half of the study area was considered as ''natural virgin'' (no changes in land-cover and forest community type) with a higher portion within the park than in the adjacent area. In contrast, areas with low naturalness are more abundant outside the park. Our study demonstrates the value of integrating historical information into naturalness assessments and the results provide useful information for future park management. More broadly speaking, our study advances research on the effectiveness of protected areas, by going beyond simple measures of averted deforestation, and introducing approaches to directly measure naturalness.
File: Gimmi-Radeloff-EnvMgmnt-2013.pdf
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Land-use change around protected areas can reduce their effective size and limit their ability to conserve biodiversity because land-use change alters ecological processes and the ability of organisms to move freely among protected areas. The goal of our analysis was to inform conservation planning efforts for a nationwide network of protected lands by predicting future land use change. We evaluated the relative effect of three economic policy scenarios on land use surrounding the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's National Wildlife Refuges. We predicted changes for three land-use classes (forest/range, crop/pasture, and urban) by 2051. Our results showed an increase in forest/range lands (by 1.9% to 4.7% depending on the scenario), a decrease in crop/pasture between 15.2% and 23.1%, and a substantial increase in urban land use between 28.5% and 57.0%. The magnitude of land-use change differed strongly among different USFWS administrative regions, with the most change in the Upper Midwestern US (approximately 30%), and the Southeastern and Northeastern US (25%), and the rest of the U.S. between 15 and 20%. Among our scenarios, changes in land use were similar, with the exception of our restricted-urban-growth scenario, which resulted in noticeably different rates of change. This demonstrates that it will likely be difficult to influence land-use change patterns with national policies and that understanding regional land-use dynamics is critical for effective management and planning of protected lands throughout the U.S.
File: Hamilton_etal_2013_PLOS1.pdf
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The growth of human populations around protected areas accelerates land conversion and isolation, negatively impacting biodiversity and ecosystem function, and can be exacerbated by immigration. It is often assumed that immigration around protected areas is driven by attraction in the form of economic bene?ts, but in many cases, people may be pushed from their areas of origin toward protected areas. Mitigating the effects of immigration around protected areas necessitates understanding the actual mechanisms causing it, which can be aided by analysis of patterns of land-cover change. Our goal was to identify the reasons for human population growth and land-cover change around the protected areas in the greater Serengeti ecosystem (henceforth ''the park''), and to relate agricultural conversion from 1984-2003 to trends in human demography. We found that conversion of natural habitats to agriculture was greatest closer to the park (up to 2.3% per year), coinciding with the highest rates of human population growth (3.5% per year). Agricultural conversion and population growth were greatest where there was less existing agriculture, and population density was lowest. Lack of unfarmed land farther from the park, coupled with greater poverty near the park, suggest that movement away from areas with high population densities and land scarcity was likely driving immigration near the park, where arable land was available. Our results are essential for conservation planning for one of Africa's hallmark ecosystems, and should encourage further examination of population growth and land-cover trends near protected areas throughout the developing world
File: EstesA_BioCons_LCLUC_Serengeti.pdf
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The effectiveness of protected areas can diminish during times of pronounced socio-economic and insti- tutional change. Our goals were to assess the effectiveness of Romanian protected areas at stemming unsanctioned logging, and to assess post-socialist logging in their surrounding landscapes, during a time of massive socio-economic and institutional change. Our results suggest that forest cover remained fairly stable shortly before and after 1990, but forest disturbance rates increased sharply in two waves after 1995 and 2005. We found substantial disturbances inside protected areas, even within core reserve areas. Moreover, disturbances in the matrix surrounding protected areas were even lower than inside protected area boundaries. We suggest that these rates are largely the result of high logging rates, triggered by rapid ownership and institutional changes. These trends compromise the goals of Romania's protected area network, lead to an increasing loss of forest habitat, and more isolated and more fragmented protected areas. The effectiveness of Romania's protected area network in terms of its ability to safeguard biodiver- sity is therefore most likely decreasing.
File: Knorn_etal_BioCons_Romania.pdf
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Aim Understanding what constituted species' ranges prior to large-scale human in?uence, and how past climate and land use change have affected range dynamics, provides conservation planners with important insights into how species may respond to future environmental change. Our aim here was to reconstruct the Holocene range of European bison (Bison bonasus) by combining a time-calibrated species distribution models (SDM) with a dynamic vegetation model. Location Europe. Method We used European bison occurrences from the Holocene in a maximum entropy model to assess bison range dynamics during the last 8000 years. As predictors, we used bioclimatic variables and vegetation reconstructions from the generalized dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS. We compared our range maps with maps of farmland and human population expansion to identify the main species range constraints. Results The Holocene distribution of European bison was mainly determined by vegetation patterns, with bison thriving in both broadleaved and coniferous forests, as well as by mean winter temperature. The heartland of European bison was in Central and Eastern Europe, whereas suitable habitat in Western Europe was scarce. While environmentally suitable regions were overall stable, the expansion of settlements and farming severely diminished available habitat. Main conclusions European bison habitat preferences may be wider than previously assumed, and our results suggest that the species had a more eastern and northern distribution than previously reported. Vegetation and climate transformation during the Holocene did not affect the bison's range substantially. Conversely, human population growth and the spread of farming resulted in drastic bison habitat loss and fragmentation, likely reaching a tipping point during the last 1000 years. Combining SDM and dynamic vegetation models can improve range reconstructions and projections, and thus help to identify resilient conservation strategies for endangered species.
File: Kuemmerle_etal_2012_DD.pdf
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Human-wildlife con?icts like wildlife-vehicle collisions pose major challenges for the management and conservation of mobile wildlife in human-dominated landscapes, particularly when large species are involved. Mitigation measures to reduce risk of collisions may be based on information given by wildlife movement and collision data. To test whether movement and collision data indicate different spatiotem- poral risk zones, we predicted year-around probabilities of road-crossings of GPS-marked female moose (Alces alces) (n = 102), and compared them with spatiotemporal patterns of police recorded moose-vehi- cle collisions (n = 1158). Probability of moose road-crossings peaked in May, June, and between mid November and the beginning of January, i.e. during moose migration. Moose-vehicle collisions were more likely during autumn and winter. Comparing environmental attributes of crossing and collision sites showed signi?cant differences. The likelihood of collisions increased with the abundance of human-mod- i?ed areas and higher allowed speed, and was lower on forest roads. We found that animal movement data alone are insuf?cient to predict collision risk zones, while analyses of collision data alone overesti- mate the collision risk in certain habitats. Our ?ndings suggest that higher collision risk is largely due to low light and poor road surface conditions rather than to more animal road-crossings. This suggests that efforts to reduce wildlife collisions should focus on driver attitudes and road conditions rather than ani- mal movement, and any efforts to model the collision risk will require actual collision data, and not just movement data.
File: Neumann_etAl_BioCons_moose-roads.pdf
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Habitat connectivity is important for the survival of species that occupy habitat patches too small to sus- tain an isolated population. A prominent example of such a species is the European bison (Bison bonasus), occurring only in small, isolated herds, and whose survival will depend on establishing larger, well-con- nected populations. Our goal here was to assess habitat connectivity of European bison in the Carpathi- ans. We used an existing bison habitat suitability map and data on dispersal barriers to derive cost surfaces, representing the ability of bison to move across the landscape, and to delineate potential con- nections (as least-cost paths) between currently occupied and potential habitat patches. Graph theory tools were then employed to evaluate the connectivity of all potential habitat patches and their relative importance in the network. Our analysis showed that existing bison herds in Ukraine are isolated. How- ever, we identi?ed several groups of well-connected habitat patches in the Carpathians which could host a large population of European bison. Our analysis also located important dispersal corridors connecting existing herds, and several promising locations for future reintroductions (especially in the Eastern Car- pathians) that should have a high priority for conservation efforts. In general, our approach indicates the most important elements within a landscape mosaic for providing and maintaining the overall connec- tivity of different habitat networks and thus offers a robust and powerful tool for conservation planning.
File: Potential_habitat_connectivity.pdf
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Forest cover change is one of the most important land cover change processes globally, and old-growth forests continue to disappear despite many efforts to protect them. At the same time, many countries are on a trajectory of increasing forest cover, and secondary, plantation, and scrub forests are a growing proportion of global forest cover. Remote sensing is a crucial tool for understanding how forests change in response to forest protection strategies and economic development, but most forest monitoring with satellite imagery does not distinguish old-growth forest from other forest types. Our goal was to measure changes in forest types, and especially old-growth forests, in the biodiversity hotspot of northwest Yunnan in southwest China. Northwest Yunnan is one of the poorest regions in China, and since the 1990s, the Chinese government has legislated strong forest protection and fostered the growth of ecotourism-based economic development. We used Landsat TM/ETM+ and MSS images, Support Vector Machines, and a multi-temporal composite classi?cation technique to analyze change in forest types and the loss of old-growth forest in three distinct periods of forestry policy and ecotourism development from 1974 to 2009. Our analysis showed that logging rates decreased substantially from 1974 to 2009, and the proportion of forest cover increased from 62% in 1990 to 64% in 2009. However, clearing of high-diversity old-growth forest accelerated, from approximately 1100 hectares/year before the logging ban (1990 to 1999), to 1550 hectares/year after the logging ban (1999 to 2009). Paradoxically, old-growth forest clearing accelerated most rapidly where ecotourism was most prominent. Despite increasing overall forest cover, the proportion of old-growth forests declined from 26% in 1990, to 20% in 2009. The majority of forests cleared from 1974 to 1990 returned to either a nonforested land cover type (14%) or non-pine scrub forest (66%) in 2009, and our results suggest that most non-pine scrub forest was not on a successional trajectory towards high-diversity forest stands. That means that despite increasing forest cover, biodiversity likely continues to decline, a trend obscured by simple forest versus non-forest accounting. It also means that rapid development may pose inherent risks to biodiversity, since our study area arguably represents a best-case scenario for balancing development with maintenance of biodiversity, given strong forest protection policies and an emphasis on ecotourism development
File: brandt2012.pdf
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