-
Reconciling nature conservation and traditional farming practices: a spatially explicit framework to assess the extent of High Nature Value farmlands in the European countryside
-
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).
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Scenarios of future land use change around United States’ protected areas
-
Land use change around protected areas can diminish their conservation value, making it important to
predict future land use changes nearby. Our goal was to evaluate future land use changes around protected
areas of different types in the United States under different socioeconomic scenarios. We analyzed
econometric-based projections of future land use change to capture changes around 1260 protected
areas, including National Forests, Parks, Refuges, and Wilderness Areas, from 2001 to 2051, under different
land use policies and crop prices. Our results showed that urban expansion around protected areas
will continue to be a major threat, and expand by 67% under business-as-usual conditions.
Concomitantly, a substantial number of protected areas will lose natural vegetation in their surroundings.
National land-use policies or changes in crop prices are not likely to affect the overall pattern of land use,
but can have effects in certain regions. Discouraging urbanization through zoning, for example, can
reduce future urban pressures around National Forests and Refuges in the East, while the implementation
of an afforestation policy can increase the amount of natural vegetation around some Refuges throughout
the U.S. On the other hand, increases in crop prices can increase crop/pasture cover around some protected
areas, and limit the potential recovery of natural vegetation. Overall, our results highlight that future
land-use change around protected areas is likely to be substantial but variable among regions and
protected area types. Safeguarding the conservation value of protected areas may require serious consideration of threats and opportunities arising from future land use.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Impacts of mountaintop mining on terrestrial ecosystem integrity: identifying landscape thresholds for avian species in the central Appalachians, United States
-
Reclaimed mine-dominated landscapes (less forest and more grassland/shrubland cover) elicited more negative (57 %) than positive (39 %) species responses. Negative thresholds for each landscape metric generally occurred at lower values than positive thresholds, thus negatively responding species were
detrimentally affected before positively responding species benefitted. Forest interior birds generally
responded negatively to landscape metric thresholds, interior edge species responses were mixed, and early
successional birds responded positively. The forest interior guild declined most at 4 % forest loss, while
the shrubland guild increased greatest after 52 % loss
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change
-
Between 1C and 2C increases in global mean temperatures most species, ecosystems and landscapes will be impacted and adaptive capacity will become limited. With the already ongoing high rate of climate change, the decline in biodiversity will therefore accelerate and simultaneously many ecosystem services will become less abundant.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Conservation threats: biofuel
-
Biofuels: Europe’s largest conservation charity has launched a campaign to heighten the threat to wildlife habitats and biodiversity from plantations of fuel crops. Nigel Williams reports. 1st paragraph: Europe embraced the theoretical potential that biofuels might offer both in terms of climate change and renewable sources of energy, as enthusiastically as anywhere else, but the dawning reality has hit harder here than in many other areas with the realisation that it is a crowded continent with limited scope for home-grown material.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Climate-induced changes in the small mammal communities of the Northern Great Lakes Region
-
We use museum and other collection records to document large and extraordinarily rapid
changes in the ranges and relative abundance of nine species of mammals in the northern
Great Lakes region (white-footed mice, woodland deer mice, southern red-backed voles,
woodland jumping mice, eastern chipmunks, least chipmunks, southern flying squirrels,
northern flying squirrels, common opossums). These species reach either the southern or
the northern limit of their distributions in this region. Changes consistently reflect
increases in species of primarily southern distribution (white-footed mice, eastern
chipmunks, southern flying squirrels, common opossums) and declines by northern
species (woodland deer mice, southern red-backed voles, woodland jumping mice, least
chipmunks, northern flying squirrels). White-footed mice and southern flying squirrels
have extended their ranges over 225 km since 1980, and at particularly well-studied sites
in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, small mammal assemblages have shifted from numerical
domination by northern species to domination by southern species. Repeated resampling
at some sites suggests that southern species are replacing northern ones rather than
simply being added to the fauna. Observed changes are consistent with predictions from
climatic warming but not with predictions based on recovery from logging or changes in
human populations. Because of the abundance of these focal species (the eight rodent
species make up 96.5% of capture records of all forest-dwelling rodents in the region and
70% of capture records of all forest-dwelling small mammals) and the dominating
ecological roles they play, these changes substantially affect the composition and
structure of forest communities. They also provide an unusually clear example of change
that is likely to be the result of climatic warming in communities that are experienced by
large numbers of people.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Ecosystem services: From theory to implementation
-
Around the world, leaders are increasingly recognizing ecosystems as natural capital assets that supply life-support services of tremendous value. The challenge is to turn this recognition into incentives and institutions that will guide wise investments in natural capital, on a large scale. Advances are required on three key fronts, each featured here: the science of ecosystem production functions and service mapping; the design of appropriate finance, policy, and governance systems; and the art of implementing these in diverse biophysical and social contexts. Scientific understanding of ecosystem production functions is improving rapidly but remains a limiting factor in incorporating natural capital into decisions, via systems of national accounting and other mechanisms. Novel institutional structures are being established for a broad array of services and places, creating a need and opportunity for systematic assessment of their scope and limitations. Finally, it is clear that formal sharing of experience, and defining of priorities for future work, could greatly accelerate the rate of innova- tion and uptake of new approaches.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Elevation-dependent influence of snow accumulation on forest greening
-
Rising temperatures and declining water availability have influenced the ecological function of mountain forests over the past half-century. For instance, warming in spring and summer and shifts towards earlier snowmelt are associated with an increase in wildfire activity and tree mortality in mountain forests in the western United States (1,2). Temperature increases are expected to continue during the twenty-first century in mountain ecosystems across the globe (3,4), with uncertain consequences. Here, we examine the influence of interannual variations in snowpack accumulation on forest greenness in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, between 1982 and 2006. Using observational records of snow accumulation and satellite data on vegetation greenness we show that vegetation greenness increases with snow accumulation. Indeed, we show that variations in maximum snow accumulation explain over 50% of the interannual variability in peak forest greenness across the Sierra Nevada region. The extent to which snow accumulation can explain variations in greenness varies with elevation, reaching a maximum in the water-limited mid- elevations, between 2,000 and 2,600 m. In situ measurements of carbon uptake and snow accumulation along an elevational transect in the region confirm the elevation dependence of this relationship. We suggest that mid-elevation mountain forest ecosystems could prove particularly sensitive to future increases in temperature and concurrent changes in snow accumulation and melt.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Atmospheric CO2 forces abrupt vegetation shifts locally, but not globally
-
It is possible that anthropogenic climate change will drive the Earth system into a qualitatively different state1. Although different types of uncertainty limit our capacity to assess this risk 2, Earth system scientists are particularly concerned about tipping elements, large-scale components of the Earth system that can be switched into qualitatively different states by small perturbations. Despite growing evidence that tipping elements exist in the climate system1,3, whether large-scale vegetation systems can tip into alternative states is poorly understood4. Here we show that tropical grassland, savanna and forest ecosystems, areas large enough to have powerful impacts on the Earth system, are likely to shift to alternative states. Specifically, we show that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration will force transitions to vegetation states characterized by higher biomass and/or woody-plant dominance. The timing of these critical transitions varies as a result of between-site variance in the rate of temperature increase, as well as a dependence on stochastic variation in fire severity and rainfall. We further show that the locations of bistable vegetation zones (zones where alternative vegetation states can exist) will shift as climate changes. We conclude that even though large-scale directional regime shifts in terrestrial ecosystems are likely, asynchrony in the timing of these shifts may serve to dampen, but not nullify, the shock that these changes may represent to the Earth system.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere
-
Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence. The plausibility of a planetary-scale ‘tipping point’ highlights the need to improve biological forecasting by detecting early warning signs of critical transitions on global as well as local scales, and by detecting feedbacks that promote such transitions. It is also necessary to address root causes of how humans are forcing biological changes.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
