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Novel climates, no-analog communities, and ecological surprises
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No-analog communities (communities that are compositionally unlike any found today) occurred frequently in the past and will develop in the greenhouse world of the future. The well documented no-analog plant communities of late-glacial North America are closely linked to “novel” climates also lacking modern analogs, characterized by high seasonality of temperature. In climate simulations for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change A2 and B1 emission scenarios, novel climates arise by 2100 AD, primarily in tropical and subtropical regions. These future novel climates are warmer than any present climates globally, with spatially variable shifts in precipitation, and increase the risk of species reshuffling into future no-analog communities and other ecological surprises. Most ecological models are at least partially parameterized from modern observations and so may fail to accurately predict ecological responses to these novel climates. There is an urgent need to test the robustness of ecological models to climate conditions outside modern experience.
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Resources
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Climate Science Documents
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Partners launch ‘Nature’s Network’ to guide conservation from Maine to Virginia
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The North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC) brought together partners from 13 states to develop a regional conservation design that can help communities work with nature to sustain wildlife and people throughout the Northeast.
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News & Events
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Priority Resources and Species: Next Phase
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Presentation to facilitate discussion around how to identify priority resources and species and what to implement in the next phase of conservation design project.
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Cooperative
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Past SC Meetings and Materials
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July 13-15, 2015 Appalachian LCC Steering Committee Meeting
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Protected areas in Borneo may fail to conserve tropical forest biodiversity under climate change
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Protected areas (PAs) are key for conserving rainforest species, but many PAs are becoming increasingly
isolated within agricultural landscapes, which may have detrimental consequences for the forest biota
they contain. We examined the vulnerability of PA networks to climate change by examining connectivity
of PAs along elevation gradients. We used the PA network on Borneo as a model system, and examined
changes in the spatial distribution of climate conditions in future. A large proportion of PAs will not
contain analogous climates in future (based on temperature projections for 2061–2080), potentially
requiring organisms to move to cooler PAs at higher elevation, if they are to track climate changes. For
the highest warming scenario (RCP8.5), few (11–12.5%; 27–30/240) PAs were sufficiently topographically
diverse for analogous climate conditions (present-day equivalent or cooler) to remain in situ. For the
remaining 87.5–89% (210–213/240) of PAs, which were often situated at low elevation, analogous climate
will only be available in higher elevation PAs. However, over half (60–82%) of all PAs on Borneo are too
isolated for poor dispersers (<1 km per generation) to reach cooler PAs, because there is a lack of connecting
forest habitat. Even under the lowest warming scenario (RCP2.6), analogous climate conditions will
disappear from 61% (146/240) of PAs, and a large proportion of these are too isolated for poor dispersers
to reach cooler PAs. Our results suggest that low elevation PAs are particularly vulnerable to climate
change, and management to improve linkage of PAs along elevation gradients should be a conservation
priority
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Resources
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Climate Science Documents
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Protected Areas: Goals, Limitations, and Design
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This reference focuses on the functions, design, and limitations of protected areas and the processes of conservation planning.
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Technical Resources
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Marxan Training Resources
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Marxan Training Suggested Readings
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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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Resources
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Climate Science Documents
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Scaling up from gardens: biodiversity conservation in urban environments
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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.
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Resources
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Climate Science Documents
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Seeing the landscape for the trees: Metrics to guide riparian shade management in river catchments
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Rising water temperature (Tw) due to anthropogenic climate change may have serious conse- quences for river ecosystems. Conservation and/or expansion of riparian shade could counter warming and buy time for ecosystems to adapt. However, sensitivity of river reaches to direct solar radiation is highly het- erogeneous in space and time, so benefits of shading are also expected to be site specific. We use a network of high-resolution temperature measurements from two upland rivers in the UK, in conjunction with topo- graphic shade modeling, to assess the relative significance of landscape and riparian shade to the thermal behavior of river reaches. Trees occupy 7% of the study catchments (comparable with the UK national aver- age) yet shade covers 52% of the area and is concentrated along river corridors. Riparian shade is most ben- eficial for managing Tw at distances 5–20 km downstream from the source of the rivers where discharge is modest, flow is dominated by near-surface hydrological pathways, there is a wide floodplain with little land- scape shade, and where cumulative solar exposure times are sufficient to affect Tw. For the rivers studied, we find that approximately 0.5 km of complete shade is necessary to off-set Tw by 18C during July (the month with peak Tw) at a headwater site; whereas 1.1 km of shade is required 25 km downstream. Further research is needed to assess the integrated effect of future changes in air temperature, sunshine duration, direct solar radiation, and downward diffuse radiation on Tw to help tree planting schemes achieve
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Resources
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Climate Science Documents
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Six Common Mistakes in Conservation Priority Setting
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A vast number of prioritization schemes have been developed to help conservation navigate tough decisions about the allocation of finite resources. However, the application of quantitative approaches to setting priorities in conservation frequently includes mistakes that can undermine their authors’ intention to be more rigorous and scientific in the way priorities are established and resources allocated. Drawing on well-established principles of decision science, we highlight 6 mistakes commonly associated with setting priorities for conservation: not acknowledging conservation plans are prioritizations; trying to solve an ill- defined problem; not prioritizing actions; arbitrariness; hidden value judgments; and not acknowledging risk of failure. We explain these mistakes and offer a path to help conservation planners avoid making the same mistakes in future prioritizations.
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Reports & Documents
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Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy Presentation
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Focus on assembling an ecologically connected network of landscapes and seascapes.
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Cooperative
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Past SC Meetings and Materials
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July 13-15, 2015 Appalachian LCC Steering Committee Meeting
