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University of Massachusetts
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The University of Massachusetts is a world-class public research university committed to advancing knowledge and transforming lives. Through its world-class educational programs, groundbreaking research enterprise, and its impactful community service and industry engagement activities, UMass harnesses the revolutionary spirit of Massachusetts to deliver an unparalleled student experience.
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Untangling human and environmental effects on geographical gradients of mammal species richness: a global and regional evaluation
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1. Different hypotheses (geographical, ecological, evolutionary or a combination of them) have been suggested to account for the spatial variation in species richness. However, the relative importance of environment and human impacts in explaining these patterns, either globally or at the biogeographical region level, remains largely unexplored.
2. Here, we jointly evaluate how current environmental conditions and human impacts shape global and regional gradients of species richness in terrestrial mammals. 3. We processed IUCN global distributional data for 3939 mammal species and a set of seven environmental and two human impact variables at a spatial resolution of 965 9 965 km. We used simple, multiple and partial regression techniques to evaluate environmental and human effects on species richness.
4. Actual evapotranspiration (AET) is the main driver of mammal species richness globally. Together with our results at the biogeographical realm level, this lends strong support for the water-energy hypothesis (i.e. global diversity gradients are best explained by the interaction of water and energy, with a latitudinal shift in the relative importance of ambient energy vs. water availability as we move from the poles to the equator).
5. While human effects on species richness are not easily detected at a global scale due to the large proportion of shared variance with the environment, these effects significantly emerge at the regional level. In the Nearctic, Palearctic and Oriental regions, the independent contribu- tion of human impacts is almost as important as current environmental conditions in explain- ing richness patterns. The intersection of human impacts with climate drives the geographical variation in mammal species richness in the Palearctic, Nearctic and Oriental regions. Using a human accessibility variable, we show, for the first time, that the zones most accessible to humans are often those where we find lower mammal species richness.
Key-words: human accessibility, human footprint, macroclimate, macroecology, terrestrial vertebrates, water–energy dynamics
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Untangling the confusion around land carbon science and climate change mitigation policy
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Depletion of ecosystem carbon stocks is a significant source of atmospheric CO2 and reducing land-based emissions and maintaining land carbon stocks contributes to climate change mitigation. We summarize current understanding about human perturbation of the global carbon cycle, examine three scientific issues and consider implications for the interpretation of international climate change policy decisions, concluding that considering carbon storage on land as a means to ‘offset’ CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels (an idea with wide currency) is scientifically flawed. The capacity of terrestrial ecosystems to store carbon is finite and the current sequestration potential primarily reflects depletion due to past land use. Avoiding emissions from land carbon stocks and refilling depleted stocks reduces atmospheric CO2 concentration, but the maximum amount of this reduction is equivalent to only a small fraction of potential fossil fuel emissions.
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Upcoming Centennial BioBlitz 2016 events in the National Capital Region
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James Pieper- Regional Natural Resource Specialist, NPS, Office of Natural Resources and Science
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2016 Spotlight on National Park Resources
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Urban Forestry Grants Revitalize Communities
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DOVER, Del. — The Delaware Urban and Community Forestry Program has awarded $135,193 for 36 tree projects through its annual grant program, which offers up to $5,000 for projects on public land and community open space. All municipalities, homeowner associations, and certified nonprofits in Delaware can apply. Since it began, the program has provided over 588 grants for more than $1.86 million and planted more than 16,000 trees. The goal is to help communities increase tree canopy and promote the natural benefits of trees: cleaner air and water, increased property values and civic pride, and reduced storm water runoff and flooding.
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Urban land teleconnections and sustainability
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This paper introduces urban land teleconnections as a conceptual framework that explicitly links land changes to underlying urbanization dynamics. We illustrate how three key themes that are currently addressed separately in the urban sustainability and land change literatures can lead to incorrect conclusions and misleading results when they are not examined jointly: the traditional system of land classification that is based on discrete categories and reinforces the false idea of a rural–urban dichotomy; the spatial quantification of land change that is based on place-based relationships, ignoring the connections between distant places, especially between urban functions and rural land uses; and the implicit assumptions about path dependency and sequential land changes that underlie current conceptualizations of land transitions. We then examine several environmental “grand challenges” and discuss how urban land teleconnections could help research communities frame scientific inquiries. Finally, we point to existing analytical approaches that can be used to advance development and application of the concept.
coupled human–natural systems | land change science
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UrbanBatsgcb12884.pdf
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UrbanEcosys60sMatter.pdf
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UrbanEcosysBird.pdf
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