Context Housing growth can alter suitability o matrix habitats around protected areas, strongl affecting movements of organisms and, consequently threatening connectivity of protected area networks Objectives Our goal was to quantify distribution an growth of housing around the U.S. Fish and Wildlif Service National Wildlife Refuge System. This i important information for conservation planning particularly given promotion of habitat connectivit as a climate change adaptation measure Methods We quantified housing growth from 194 to 2000 and projected future growth to 2030 withi three distances from refuges, identifying very lo housing density open space, ‘‘opportunity areas’ (contiguous areas with 6.17 houses/km ), bot nationally and by USFWS administrative region Additionally, we quantified number and area of habita corridors within these opportunity areas in 2000 Results Our results indicated that the number an area of open space opportunity areas generall decreased with increasing distance from refuges an with the passage of time. Furthermore, total area i habitat corridors was much lower than in opportunit areas. In addition, the number of corridors sometime exceeded number of opportunity areas as a result o habitat fragmentation, indicating corridors are likel vulnerable to land use change. Finally, regional differences were strong and indicated some refuge may have experienced so much housing growt already that they are effectively too isolated to adap to climate change, while others may require extensiv habitat restoration work Conclusions Wildlife refuges are increasingly isolate by residential housing development, potentiall constraining the movement of wildlife and, therefore their ability to adapt to a changing climate.
File: Hamilton_etal_2016_LandscapeEcology.pdf
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Coastal areas provide nesting habitat for marine turtles that is critical for the persistence of their populations. However, many coastal areas are highly affected by coastal development, which affects the reproductive success of marine turtles. Knowing the extent to which nesting areas are exposed to these threats is essential to guide management initiatives. This information is particularly important for coastal areas with both high nesting density and dense human development, a combination that is common in the United States. We assessed the extent to which nesting areas of the loggerhead (Caretta caretta), the green (Chelonia mydas), the Kemp’s ridley (Lepidochelys kempii), and leatherback turtles (Dermochelys coria-cea) in the continental United States are exposed to coastal development and identified conser-vation hotspots that currently have high reproductive importance and either face high exposure to coastal development (needing intervention), or have low exposure to coastal development, and are good candidates for continued and future protection. Night- time light, housing, and population density were used as proxies for coastal development and human disturbance. About 81.6% of nesting areas were exposed to housing and human population, and 97.8% were exposed to light pollution. Further, most (>65%) of the very high- and high- density nesting areas for each species/subpopulation, except for the Kemp’s ridley, were exposed to coastal development. Forty- nine nesting sites were selected as conservation hotspots; of those high- density nesting sites, 49% were sites with no/low exposure to coastal development and the other 51% were exposed to high- density coastal development. Conservation strategies need to account for ~66.8% of all marine turtle nesting areas being on private land and for nesting sites being exposed to large numbers of seasonal residents.
File: Fuentes_et_al-2016-Ecological_Applications.pdf
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Context Wildfires destroy thousands of building every year in the wildland urban interface. However fire typically only destroys a fraction of the building within a given fire perimeter, suggesting more coul be done to mitigate risk if we understood how t configure residential landscapes so that both peopl and buildings could survive fire Objectives Our goal was to understand the relativ importance of vegetation, topography and spatia arrangement of buildings on building loss, within th fire’s landscape context Methods We analyzed two fires: one in San Diego CA and another in Boulder, CO. We analyzed Googl Earth historical imagery to digitize buildings expose to the fires, a geographic information system t measure some of the explanatory variables, an FRAGSTATS to quantify landscape metrics. Usin logistic regression we conducted an exhaustive mode search to select the best models Results The type of variables that were importan varied across communities. We found complex spatia effects and no single model explained building los everywhere, but topography and the spatial arrangemen of buildings explained most of the variability i building losses. Vegetation connectivity was mor important than vegetation type Conclusions Location and spatial arrangement o buildings affect which buildings burn in a wildfire which is important for urban planning, building siting landscape design of future development, and to target fire prevention, fuel reduction, and homeowner educatio efforts in existing communities. Landscap context of buildings and communities is an importan aspect of building loss, and if taken into consideration could help communities adapt to fire.
File: Alexandre_etal_LE_2016.pdf
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File: Alexandre_et_al-2016-Ecological_Applications.pdf
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1. Biodiversity conservation is a primary function of protected areas. However, protected areas also attract people, and therefore, land use has intensified at the boundaries of these lands globally. In the USA, since the 1970s, housing growth at the boundaries (<1 km) of protected areas has increased at a rate far higher than on more distant private lands. Here, we designed our analyses to address our central hypothesis that increasing housing density in and near protected areas will increasingly alter their avian communities 2. We quantified the relationship between abundance and richness of protected-area avian species of greatest conservation need, land-cover affiliates (e.g. species associated with natural land cover such as forest breeders) and synanthropes (e.g. species associated with humans) with housing density on the boundary of protected areas and on more distant private lands from 1970 to 2010 in three ecoregions of the USA. We accomplished this using linear mixed-model analyses, data from the US Census Bureau and 90 routes of the North American Breeding Bird Survey 3. Housing density at the boundary of protected areas tended to be strongly negatively related with the abundance and richness of species of greatest conservation need and land-cover affiliates (upwards of 88% of variance explained) and strongly positively related with synanthropes (upwards of 83% of variance explained). The effect size of these relationships increased in most cases from 1970 to 2010 and was greatest in the densely developed eastern forests. In the more sparsely populated West, we found similar, though weaker, associations 4. Housing density on private lands more distant from protected areas had similar, but more muted negative effects 5. Synthesis and applications. Our results illustrate that as housing density has increased along the boundary of protected areas, the conservation benefit of these lands has likely diminished. We urge conservation planners to prioritize the purchase of private-land inhold-ings in order to maximize the extent of unfragmented natural lands within protected areas. Further, we strongly recommend that land-use planners implement boundary management strategies to alter the pattern of human access to protected areas, cluster development to con-centrate the footprint of rural housing, and establish conservation agreements through local land trusts to buffer protected areas from the effects of development along protected-area boundaries. To maximize the conservation benefit of protected areas, we suggest that housing development should be restricted within 1 km of their boundaries.
File: Wood_et_al-2015-Journal_of_Applied_Ecology.pdf
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Wildfire management now emphasizes fire-adapted communities that coexist wit wildfires, although it is unclear how communities will progress to this goal. Hazard research suggests that response to wildfire—specifically, rebuilding after fire—ma be a crucial opportunity for homeowner and community adaptation. We explor rebuilding after the 2010 Fourmile Canyon Fire from Boulder, CO, that destroye 165 homes, to better understand individual and community adaptation after wildfire We examined changes in perception of fire risk and structural characteristics an vegetation mitigation of rebuilt homes, to examine how homes, homeowners, an communities changed after fire. We found evidence that adaptation is occurring as well as evidence that it is not. Overall, rebuilding was slow. More than 3 2 year after the fire, only 30% of those who had lost homes had rebuilt. Postfire rebuildin will only change a fraction of homes, but it is a critical process to understand
File: Mockrin_etal_2015_Soc&NatRes.pdf
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The number of communities exposed to and affected by wildfire, particularly in the Wildland Urban Interface, is increasing, and both losses from and prevention of wildfire entail substantial economic costs. However, little is known about post-wildfire response by communities after structures are lost. Our goal was to characterize patterns and rates of rebuilding and new development after wildfires across the conterminous United States. We analyzed all wildfires that occurred across the conterminous United States from 2000 to 2005. We mapped 38,440 structures prior to fires, out of which 3,604 were burned, and 39,120 structures after fires, out of which 2,403 were new development and 1,881 were rebuilt. Nationally, rebuilding rates were low; only 25% of burned homes were rebuilt within five years, but rates were higher in the West, the South, and in Kansas. New development rates inside fire perimeters were similar to development rates in surrounding areas unaffected by fire. As a result, the number of structures within the fire perimeters was higher within 5 years of the fire than before, indicating that people want to live in wildland areas and are either willing to face the risks or not aware of them.
File: Alexandre_etal_IJWF_2015.pdf
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As people encroach increasingly on natural areas, one question is how this affects avian biodiversity. The answer to this is partly scale-dependent. At broad scales, human populations and biodiversity concentrate in the same areas and are positively associated, but at local scales people and biodiversity are negatively associated with biodiversity. We investigated whether there is also a systematic temporal trend in the relationship between bird biodiversity and housing development. We used linear regression to examine associations between forest bird species richness and housing growth in the conterminous United States over 30 years. Our data sources were the North American Breeding Bird Survey and the 2000 decennial U.S. Census. In the 9 largest forested ecoregions, housing density increased continually over time. Across the conterminous United States, the association between bird species richness and housing density was positive for virtually all guilds except ground nesting birds. We found a systematic trajectory of declining bird species richness as housing increased through time. In more recently developed ecoregions, where housing density was still low, the association with bird species richness was neutral or positive. In ecoregions that were developed earlier and where housing density was highest, the association of housing density with bird species richness for most guilds was negative and grew stronger with advancing decades. We propose that in general the relationship between human settlement and biodiversity over time unfolds as a 2-phase process. The first phase is apparently innocuous; associations are positive due to coincidence of low-density housing with high biodiversity. The second phase is highly detrimental to biodiversity, and increases in housing density are associated with biodiversity losses. The long-term effect on biodiversity depends on the final housing density. This general pattern can help unify our understanding of the relationship of human encroachment and biodiversity response.
File: Pidgeon_etal_ConsBio_2014_0.pdf
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Protected areas are a cornerstone for biodiversity conservation, but they also provide amenities that attract housing development on inholdings and adjacent private lands. We explored how this development affects biodiversity within and near protected areas among six ecological regions throughout the United States. We quantified the effect of housing density within, at the boundary, and outside protected areas, and natural land cover within protected areas, on the proportional abundance and proportional richness of three avian guilds within protected areas. We developed three guilds from the North American Breeding Bird Survey, which included Species of Greatest Conservation Need, land cover affiliates (e.g., forest breeders), and synanthropic species associated with urban environments. We gathered housing density data for the year 2000 from the U.S. Census Bureau, and centered the bird data on this year. We obtained land cover data from the 2001 National Land Cover Database, and we used single- and multiple-variable analyses to address our research question. In all regions, housing density within protected areas was positively associated with the proportional abundance or proportional richness of synanthropes, and negatively associated with the proportional abundance or proportional richness of Species of Greatest Conservation Need. These relationships were strongest in the eastern forested regions and the central grasslands, where more than 70% and 45%, respectively, of the variation in the proportional abundance of synanthropes and Species of Greatest Conservation Need were explained by housing within protected areas. Furthermore, in most regions, housing density outside protected areas was positively associated with the proportional abundance or proportional richness of synanthropes and negatively associated with the proportional abundance of land cover affiliates and Species of Greatest Conservation Need within protected areas. However, these effects were weaker than housing within protected areas. Natural land cover was high with little variability within protected areas, and consequently, was less influential than housing density within or outside protected areas explaining the proportional abundance or proportional richness of the avian guilds. Our results indicate that housing development within, at the boundary, and outside protected areas impacts avian community structure within protected areas throughout the United States.
File: Wood_etal_2014_EcoApps.pdf
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The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area in which human settlements adjoin or intermix with ecosystems. Although research on the WUI has been focused on wildfire risk to settlements, we argue here that there is a need to quantify the extent of areas in which human settlements interact with adjoining ecosystems, regardless of their ability to support fire spread. Besides wildfires, human settlements affect neighboring ecosystems through biotic processes, including exotic species introduction, wildlife subsidization, disease transfer, landcover conversion, fragmentation, and habitat loss. The effects of WUI settlements on ecosystems are two tiered, starting with habitat modification and fragmentation and progressing to various diffusion processes in which direct and indirect effects of anthropogenic activities spread into neighboring ecosystems at varying scales. New scientific, management, and policy tools are needed in order to better understand the WUI as a unique social-ecological zone and to mitigate negative consequences of its continued growth.
File: BarMassada_etal_2014_BioScience.pdf
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