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Buried by bad decisions
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From the text: Alas, research shows that when human beings make decisions, they tend to focus on what they are getting and forget about what we are forgoing.
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Biodiversity Risks from Fossil Fuel Extraction
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The overlapping of biodiverse areas and fossil fuel reserves indicates high-risk regions.
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Editorial: The “New Conservation”
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EDITORIAL: OPENING PARAGRAPHS A powerful but chimeric movement is rapidly gaining recognition and supporters. Christened the “new conservation,” it promotes economic development, poverty alleviation, and corporate partnerships as surrogates or substitutes for endangered species listings, protected areas, and other mainstream conservation tools. Its proponents claim that helping economically disadvantaged people to achieve a higher standard of living will kindle their sympathy and affection for nature. Because its goal is to supplant the biological diversity–based model of traditional conservation with something entirely different, namely an economic growth–based or humanitarian movement, it does not deserve to be labeled conservation.
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Faustian bargains? Restoration realities in the context of biodiversity offset policies
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The science and practice of ecological restoration are increasingly being called upon to compensate for the loss of biodiversity values caused by development projects. Biodiversity offsetting—compensating for losses of biodiversity at an impact site by generating ecologically equivalent gains elsewhere—therefore places substantial faith in the ability of restoration to recover lost biodiversity. Furthermore, the increase in offset-led restoration multiplies the consequences of failure to restore, since the promise of effective restoration may increase the chance that damage to biodiversity is permitted. But what evidence exists that restoration science and practice can reliably, or even feasibly, achieve the goal of ‘no net loss’ of biodiversity, and under what circumstances are successes and failures more likely? Using recent reviews of the restoration ecology literature, we examine the effectiveness of restoration as an approach for offsetting biodiversity loss, and conclude that many of the expectations set by current offset policy for ecological restoration remain unsupported by evidence. We introduce a conceptual model that illustrates three factors that limit the technical success of offsets: time lags, uncertainty and measurability of the value being offset. These factors can be managed to some extent through sound offset policy design that incorporates active adaptive management, time discounting, explicit accounting for uncertainty, and biodiversity banking. Nevertheless, the domain within which restoration can deliver ‘no net loss’ offsets remains small. A narrowing of the gap between the expectations set by offset policies and the practice of offsetting is urgently required and we urge the development of stronger links between restoration ecologists and those who make policies that are reliant upon restoration science. Keywords:Compensatory habitat - Conservation policy - Mitigation banking - Environmental risk - No net loss - Restoration success
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Evolution of climate niches in European mammals?
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Our ability to predict consequences of climate change is severely impaired by the lack of knowledge on the ability of species to adapt to changing environmental conditions. We used distribution data for 140 mammal species in Europe, together with data on climate, land cover and topography, to derive a statistical description of their realized climate niche. We then compared climate niche overlap of pairs of species, selected on the basis of phylogenetic information. In contrast to expectations, related species were not similar in their climate niche. Rather, even species pairs that had a common ancestor less than 1Ma already display very high climate niche distances. We interpret our finding as a strong inter- specific competitive constraint on the realized niche, rather than a rapid evolution of the fundamental niche. If correct, our results imply a very limited usefulness of climate niche models for the prediction of future mammal distributions.
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Effects of tree mortality caused by a bark beetle outbreak on the ant community in the San Bernardino National Forest
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Ants are used as bioindicators of the effects of disturbance on ecosystems for several reasons. First, ants are generally responsive to alteration of the biomass and diversity of the local plant community (Kalif et al., 2001) and other environmental variables (Underwood & Fisher, 2006). Second, because they occupy fixed nest locations, ants are affected by conditions on a very small scale, so that their presence and abundance are a better indicator of local conditions than are the presence or abundance of more mobile animals (Stephens & Wagner, 2006; Underwood & Fisher, 2006). Ants play important ecosystem roles and are therefore often a relevant choice for monitoring (Ho ̈lldobler & Wilson, 1990). They make up a significant percentage of the animal biomass in many ecosystems, they can be crucial to processes such as soil mixing and nutrient transport (Gentry & Stiritz, 1972), and they are important players in nutrient cycling and energy flow. Ants can also strongly influence the plant community via seed dispersal and granivory (Christian, 2001; Barrow et al., 2007). While the diversity of a given taxon is often not a reliable indicator of the diversity of other groups (Lawton et al., 1998; Bennett et al., 2009; Maleque et al., 2009; Wike et al., 2010), ant diversity is known to reflect the diversity of other invertebrates in ecosystems recovering from a disturbance in some cases (Andersen & Majer, 2004).The use of ants as bioindicators must be undertaken with caution (Underwood & Fisher, 2006). Different ant communities do not always respond to a disturbance in the same way (Arnan et al., 2009). In addition, broad measures of a bioindicator taxon, such as species richness or abundance, are potentially misleading. For instance, while it is popular to measure the species richness of bioindicator groups, the ant species richness of different habitats has been observed to respond differently to similar disturbances (Farji-Brener et al., 2002; Ratchford et al., 2005; Barrow et al., 2007), and ant species richness often does not respond at all unless disturbances are extreme (Andersen & Majer, 2004).Nonetheless, changes in the ant community can provide useful information about the responses of the ecosystem as a whole.
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Biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning change along environmental stress gradients
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Positive relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has been observed in many studies, but how this relationship is affected by environmental stress is largely unknown. To explore this influence, we measured the biomass of microalgae grown in microcosms along two stress gradients, heat and salinity, and compared our results with 13 published case studies that measured biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships under varying environmental conditions. We found that positive effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning decreased with increasing stress intensity in absolute terms. However, in relative terms, increasing stress had a stronger negative effect on low-diversity communities. This shows that more diverse biotic communities are functionally less susceptible to environmental stress, emphasises the need to maintain high levels of biodiversity as an insurance against impacts of changing environmental conditions and sets the stage for exploring the mechanisms underlying biodiversity effects in stressed ecosystems.
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Classification of Climate Change-Induced Stresses on Biological Diversity
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Conservation actions need to account for and be adapted to address changes that will occur under global climate change. The identification of stresses on biological diversity (as defined in the Convention on Biological Diversity) is key in the process of adaptive conservation management. We considered any impact of climate change on biological diversity a stress because such an effect represents a change (negative or positive) in key ecological attributes of an ecosystem or parts of it. We applied a systemic approach and a hierarchical framework in a comprehensive classification of stresses to biological diversity that are caused directly by global climate change. Through analyses of 20 conservation sites in 7 countries and a review of the literature, we identified climate-change-induced stresses. We grouped the identified stresses according to 3 levels of biological diversity: stresses that affect individuals and populations, stresses that affect biological communities, and stresses that affect ecosystem structure and function. For each stress category, we differentiated 3 hierarchical levels of stress: stress class (thematic grouping with the coarsest resolution, 8); general stresses (thematic groups of specific stresses, 21); and specific stresses (most detailed definition of stresses, 90). We also compiled an overview of effects of climate change on ecosystem services using the categories of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and 2 additional categories. Our classification may be used to identify key climate-change-related stresses to biological diversity and may assist in the development of appropriate conservation strategies. The classification is in list format, but it accounts for relations among climate-change-induced stresses.
Keywords: adaptation, conservation, strategies,adaptive management,climatechange,conservation planning, conservation targets, hierarchical framework, threats to biological diversity
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Assessing potential climate change effects on vegetation using a linked model approach
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We developed a process that links the mechanistic power of dynamic global vegetation models with the detailed vegetation dynamics of state-and-transition models to project local vegetation shifts driven by projected climate change. We applied our approach to central Oregon (USA) ecosystems using three climate change scenarios to assess potential future changes in species composition and community structure. Our results suggest that: (1) legacy effects incorporated in state-and-transition models realistically dampen climate change effects on vegetation; (2) species-specific response to fire built into state-and- transition models can result in increased resistance to climate change, as was the case for ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests, or increased sensitivity to climate change, as was the case for some shrublands and grasslands in the study area; and (3) vegetation could remain relatively stable in the short term, then shift rapidly as a consequence of increased disturbance such as wildfire and altered environmental conditions. Managers and other land stewards can use results from our linked models to better anticipate potential climate-induced shifts in local vegetation and resulting effects on wildlife habitat.
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Biodiversity management in the face of climate change: A review of 22 years of recommendations
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Climate change creates new challenges for biodiversity conservation. Species ranges and ecological dynamics are already responding to recent climate shifts, and current reserves will not continue to support all species they were designed to protect. These problems are exacerbated by other global changes. Scholarly articles recommending measures to adapt conservation to climate change have proliferated over the last 22 years. We systematically reviewed this literature to explore what potential solutions it has identified and what consensus and direction it provides to cope with climate change. Several consistent recommendations emerge for action at diverse spatial scales, requiring leadership by diverse actors. Broadly, adaptation requires improved regional institutional coordination, expanded spatial and temporal perspective, incorporation of climate change scenarios into all planning and action, and greater effort to address multiple threats and global change drivers simultaneously in ways that are responsive to and inclusive of human communities. However, in the case of many recommendations the how, by whom, and under what conditions they can be implemented is not specified. We synthesize recommendations with respect to three likely conservation pathways: regional planning; site-scale management; and modification of existing conservation plans. We identify major gaps, including the need for (1) more specific, operational examples of adaptation principles that are consistent with unavoidable uncertainty about the future; (2) a practical adaptation planning process to guide selection and integration of recommendations into existing policies and programs; and (3) greater integration of social science into an endeavor that, although dominated by ecology, increasingly recommends extension beyond reserves and into human-occupied landscapes.
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