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Conserving the Stage: Climate Change and the Geophysical Underpinnings of Species Diversity
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Conservationists have proposed methods for adapting to climate change that assume species distributions are primarily explained by climate variables. The key idea is to use the understanding of species-climate relationships to map corridors and to identify regions of faunal stability or high species turnover. An alternative approach is to adopt an evolutionary timescale and ask ultimately what factors control total diversity, so that over the long run the major drivers of total species richness can be protected. Within a single climatic region, the temperate area encompassing all of the Northeastern U.S. and Maritime Canada, we hypothesized that geologic factors may take precedence over climate in explaining diversity patterns.
If geophysical diversity does drive regional diversity, then conserving geophysical settings may offer an approach to conservation that protects diversity under both current and future climates. Here we tested how well geology predicts the species diversity of 14 US states and three Canadian provinces, using a comprehensive new spatial dataset. Results of linear regressions of species diversity on all possible combinations of 23 geophysical and climatic variables indicated that four geophysical factors; the number of geological classes, latitude, elevation range and the amount of calcareous bedrock, predicted species diversity with certainty (adj. R2 = 0.94). To confirm the species-geology relationships we ran an
independent test using 18,700 location points for 885 rare species and found that 40% of the species were restricted to a single geology. Moreover, each geology class supported 5–95 endemic species and chi-square tests confirmed that calcareous bedrock and extreme elevations had significantly more rare species than expected by chance (P,0.0001), strongly corroborating the regression model. Our results suggest that protecting geophysical settings will conserve the stage for current and future biodiversity and may be a robust alternative to species-level predictions.
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Reconciling nature conservation and traditional farming practices: a spatially explicit framework to assess the extent of High Nature Value farmlands in the European countryside
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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).
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Effect of Risk Aversion on Prioritizing Conservation Projects
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Agencies making decisions about what threat mitigation actions to take to save which species frequently face the dilemma of whether to invest in actions with high probability of success and guaranteed benefits or to choose projects with a greater risk of failure that might provide higher benefits if they succeed. The answer to this dilemma lies in the decision maker’s aversion to risk—their unwillingness to accept uncertain outcomes. Little guidance exists on how risk preferences affect conservation investment priorities. Using a prioritization approach based on cost effectiveness, we compared 2 approaches: a conservative probability threshold approach that excludes investment in projects with a risk of management failure greater than a fixed level, and a variance-discounting heuristic used in economics that explicitly accounts for risk tolerance and the probabilities of management success and failure. We applied both approaches to prioritizing projects for 700 of New Zealand’s threatened species across 8303 management actions. Both decision makers’ risk tolerance and our choice of approach to dealing with risk preferences drove the prioritization solution (i.e., the species selected for management). Use of a probability threshold minimized uncertainty, but more expensive projects were selected than with variance discounting, which maximized expected benefits by selecting the management of species with higher extinction risk and higher conservation value. Explicitly incorporating risk preferences within the decision making process reduced the number of species expected to be safe from extinction because lower risk tolerance resulted in more species being excluded from management, but the approach allowed decision makers to choose a level of acceptable risk that fit with their ability to accommodate failure. We argue for transparency in risk tolerance and recommend that decision makers accept risk in an adaptive management framework to maximize benefits and avoid potential extinctions due to inefficient allocation of limited resources.
Keywords: conservation decisionmaking,cost-effectiveness analysis, management effectiveness,Project Prioritization Protocol, risk analysis, risk tolerance, threatened species, uncertainty
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Carbon sequestration in the U.S. forest sector from 1990 to 2010
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From 1990 through 2005, the forest sector (including forests and wood products) sequestered an average 162 Tg C year1 . In 2005, 49% of the total forest sector sequestration was in live and dead trees, 27% was
in wood products in landfills, with the remainder in down dead wood, wood products in use, and forest floor and soil. The pools with the largest carbon stocks were not the same as those with the largest sequestration rates, except for the tree pool. For example, landfilled wood products comprise only 3% of total stocks but account for 27% of carbon sequestration. Conversely, forest soils comprise 48% of total stocks but account for only 2% of carbon sequestration. For the tree pool, the spatial pattern of carbon stocks was dissimilar to that of carbon flux. On an area basis, tree carbon stocks were highest in the Pacific Northwest, while changes were generally greatest in the upper Midwest and the Northeast. Net carbon sequestration in the forest sector in 2005 offset 10% of U.S. CO2 emissions. In the near future, we project that U.S. forests will continue to sequester carbon at a rate similar to that in recent years. Based on a comparison of our estimates to a compilation of land-based estimates of non-forest carbon sinks from the literature, we estimate that the conterminous U.S. annually sequesters 149–330 Tg C year1. Forests, urban trees, and wood products are responsible for 65–91% of this sink.
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Conservation VALUE OF ROADLESS AREAS FOR VULNERABLE FISH AND Wildlife Species in the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, Montana
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The Crown of the Continent Ecosystem is one of the most spectacular landscapes
in the world and most ecologically intact ecosystem remaining in the
contiguous United States. Straddling the Continental Divide in the heart of the
Rocky Mountains, the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem extends for >250
miles from the fabled Blackfoot River valley in northwest Montana north to Elk
Pass south of Banff and Kootenay National Parks in Canada. It reaches from
the short-grass plains along the eastern slopes of the Rockies westward nearly
100 miles to the Flathead and Kootenai River valleys. The Crown sparkles with
a variety of dramatic landscapes, clean sources of blue waters, and diversity of
plants and animals.Over the past century, citizens and government leaders have worked hard to
save the core of this splendid ecosystem in Montana by establishing world-class
parks and wildernesses – coupled with conservation of critical wildlife habitat
on state and private lands along the periphery. These include jewels such as
Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall-Scapegoat-Great Bear Wilderness,
the first-ever Tribal Wilderness in the Mission Mountains, numerous State of
Montana Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs), and vital private lands through
land trusts such as The Nature Conservancy. Their combined efforts have
protected 3.3 million acres and constitute a truly impressive commitment to
conservation. It was a remarkable legacy and great gift …but, in the face of new
challenges, it may not have been enough.
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Assemblage Time Series Reveal Biodiversity Change but Not Systematic Loss
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The extent to which biodiversity change in local assemblages contributes to global biodiversity
loss is poorly understood. We analyzed 100 time series from biomes across Earth to ask how diversity
within assemblages is changing through time. We quantified patterns of temporal a diversity, measured
as change in local diversity, and temporal b diversity, measured as change in community composition.
Contrary to our expectations, we did not detect systematic loss of a diversity. However, community
composition changed systematically through time, in excess of predictions from null models.
Heterogeneous rates of environmental change, species range shifts associated with climate change,
and biotic homogenization may explain the different patterns of temporal a and b diversity.
Monitoring and understanding change in species composition should be a conservation priority.
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Carbon Mitigation by Biofuels or by Saving and Restoring Forests?
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The carbon sequestered by restoring forests is greater than the emissions avoided by the use of the liquid biofuels.
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Carbon debt of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) grasslands converted to bioenergy production
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Over 13 million ha of former cropland are enrolled in the US Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), providing well-recognized biodiversity, water quality, and carbon (C) sequestration benefits that could be lost on conversion back to agricultural production. Here we provide measurements of the greenhouse gas consequences of converting CRP land to continuous corn, corn–soybean, or perennial grass for biofuel production. No-till soybeans preceded the annual crops and created an initial carbon debt of 10.6 Mg CO2 equivalents (CO2e)·ha−1 that included agronomic inputs, changes in C stocks, altered N2O and CH4 fluxes, and foregone C sequestration less a fossil fuel offset credit. Total debt, which includes future debt created by additional changes in soil C stocks and the loss of substantial future soil C sequestration, can be constrained to 68 Mg CO2e·ha−1 if subsequent crops are under permanent no-till management. If tilled, however, total debt triples to 222 Mg CO2e·ha−1 on account of further soil C loss. Projected C debt repayment periods under no-till management range from 29 to 40 y for corn– soybean and continuous corn, respectively. Under conventional tillage repayment periods are three times longer, from 89 to 123 y, respectively. Alternatively, the direct use of existing CRP grasslands for cellulosic feedstock production would avoid C debt entirely and provide modest climate change mitigation immediately. Incentives for permanent no till and especially permission to harvest CRP biomass for cellulosic biofuel would help to blunt the climate impact of future CRP conversion.
land-use change | renewable energy | carbon balance | agriculture | nitrous oxide
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Comment: Don’t judge species on their origins
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SUMMARY: Conservationists should assess organisms on environmental impact rather than on whether they are natives, argue Mark Davis and 18 other ecologists. FROM THE TEXT: Nativeness is not a sign of evolutionary fitness or of a species having positive effects.The insect currently suspected to be killing
more trees than any other in North Americais the native mountain pine beetle Dendroctonus ponderosae. Classifying biota according to their adherence to cultural standards of belonging, citizenship, fair play and
morality does not advance our understanding of ecology. Over the past few decades, this perspective has led many conservation and restoration efforts down paths that make little ecological or economic sense
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Comment: Time to Model all Life on Earth
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To help transform our understanding of the biosphere, ecologists — like climate scientists — should simulate whole ecosystems, argue Drew Purves and colleagues. FROM THE TEXT: General circulation models, which simulatethe physics and chemistry of Earth’s land, ocean and atmosphere, embody scientists’ best understanding of how the climate system works and are crucial to making predictions and shaping policies. We think that analogous general ecosystem models (GEMs) could radically improve understanding of the biosphere and inform policy decisions about biodiversity and conservation.
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