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\"Ecosystems today are dynamic and complex, leaving conservationists faced with the paradox of conserving moving targets. New approaches to conservation are now required that aim to conserve ecological function and process, rather than attempt to protect static snapshots of biodiversity. To do this effectively, long-term information on ecosystem variability and resilience is needed. While there is a wealth of such information in palaeoecology, archaeology, and historical ecology, it remains an underused resource by conservation ecologists. In bringing together the disciplines of neo- and palaeoecology and integrating them with conservation biology, this novel text illustrates how an understanding of long-term change in ecosystems can in turn inform and influence their conservation and management in the Anthropocene. By looking at the history of traditional management, climate change, disturbance, and land-use, the book describes how a long-term perspective on landscape change can inform current and pressing conservation questions such as whether elephants should be culled, how best to manage fire, and whether ecosystems can or should be \"re-wilded\".\"-- Provided by publisher.

ContextProtected areas (PAs) are essential for biodiversity conservation and the provision of ecosystem services (ES), representing 15% of the earth’s surface and targeted to increase until 17% by 2020. But previous studies showed different results on the effectiveness of PAs in preserving ES and biodiversity, which has implications for landscape conservation.Objectives(1) To know whether the spatial distribution of ES (carbon stocks and water provision), biodiversity (woody and bird richness) and conservation variables (threatened bird richness, habitats and geology) varies between PAs (with different protection status) and buffer zones; and (2) to quantify and compare the percentage of high values (hotspots) of ES, biodiversity and conservation variables inside PAs (with different protection status) and buffer zones.MethodsWe analyzed 108 PAs from a Mediterranean region using linear mixed models with ES, biodiversity and conservation variables as response factors, and type of zone (PA vs buffer) and protection status as fixed factors.ResultsWe found higher values of carbon stocks in PAs than in buffer zones. We also found more coverage of community-interest habitats, priority-habitats and geological-interest sites in PAs than in buffer zones. However, PAs with higher degree of protection did not provide higher levels of ecosystem services and biodiversity, or vice versa. We found more hotspots of woody richness, bird richness and threatened bird richness in buffer zones than in PAs.ConclusionsThis study highlights the importance of landscape planning in conservation, which should include PAs within broader landscapes by considering also their buffer zones and non-PAs. It also emphasizes the importance of integrating ES and biodiversity to define effective conservation policies.

John Yeon (1910-1994) devoted his life to designing and preserving the spectacular terrain of the Pacific Northwest. John Yeon Landscape explores his roles as planner, landscape architect, and conservation activist. The son of a lumber baron who raised the money for and oversaw the construction of one of America's first scenic highways, the Columbia River Gorge Highway, Yeon tackled conservation causes with the eye of a landscape designer. He single-handedly protected two of the most prominent features of the Oregon Coast: Neahkahnie Mountain and Chapman Point. Stemming from an intimate understanding of both landscape and the timber business, Yeon's writing and advocacy played an important role in the establishment of Olympic National Park. And in the Columbia River Gorge, he led a national committee dedicated to its conservation as well as buying 78 acres of land there, transforming it into the Shire. This private, picturesque landscape showcased the beauty of the gorge and even served as the birthplace of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Act. Exhibition: Portland Art Museum, Portland, USA (13.05. - 03.09.2017).

To conserve ecological connectivity (the ability to support animal movement, gene flow, range shifts, and other ecological and evolutionary processes that require large areas), conservation professionals need coarse-grained maps to serve as decision-support tools or vision statements and fine-grained maps to prescribe site-specific interventions. To date, research has focused primarily on fine-grained maps (linkage designs) covering small areas. In contrast, we devised 7 steps to coarsely map dozens to hundreds of linkages over a large area, such as a nation, province, or ecoregion. We provide recommendations on how to perform each step on the basis of our experiences with 6 projects: California Missing Linkages (2001), Arizona Wildlife Linkage Assessment (2006), California Essential Habitat Connectivity (2010), Two Countries, One Forest (northeastern United States and southeastern Canada) (2010), Washington State Connected Landscapes (2010), and the Bhutan Biological Corridor Complex (2010). The 2 most difficult steps are mapping natural landscape blocks (areas whose conservation value derives from the species and ecological processes within them) and determining which pairs of blocks can feasibly be connected in a way that promotes conservation.Decision rules for mapping natural landscape blocks and determining which pairs of blocks to connect must reflect not only technical criteria, but also the values and priorities of stakeholders. We recommend blocks be mapped on the basis of a combination of naturalness, protection status, linear barriers, and habitat quality for selected species. We describe manual and automated procedures to identify currently functioning or restorable linkages. Once pairs of blocks have been identified, linkage polygons can be mapped by least-cost modeling, other approaches from graph theory, or individual-based movement models. The approaches we outline make assumptions explicit, have outputs that can be improved as underlying data are improved, and help implementers focus strictly on ecological connectivity. Para conservar la conectividad ecologica (la habilidad para soportar movimiento de animales, flujo de genes, cambios de rango de distribucion y otros procesos ecológicos y evolutivos que requieren áreas extensas), los profesionales de la conservación necesitan mapas de grano grueso que sirvan como herramientas de soporte para la toma de decisiones y mapas de grano fino para recomendar intervenciones en sitios especificos. A la fecha, la investigación se ha centrado principalmente en mapas de grano fino (diseño de conexiones) que abarcan areas pequeüas. En contraste, diseüamos 7 pasos para hacer mapas de grano grueso de docenas hasta centenas de conexiones en un área extensa, como un pais, provincia ecorregión. Proporcionamos recomendaciones de cómo llevar a cabo cada paso con base en nuestrasexperiencias con oproyectos: Conexiones Faltantes en California (2001), Evaluatión de la Conexión de Vida Silvestre en Arizona (2006), Conectividad de Hábitat Esencial de California (2010), Dos Paises-Un Bosque (noreste de Estados Unidos y sureste de Canadá) (2010), Paisajes Conectados del Estado de Washington (2010), y el Complejo del Corredor Biologico de Bután (2010). Los dos pasos mas difidles son el mapeo de los bloques de paisaje natural (áreas donde el valor de conservatión se dériva de las especies y sus procesos ecológicos) y la déterminatión de los pares de bloques que son factibles de conectarse de manera que promueva la conservatión. Las réglas de decisión para el mapeo de bloques de paisaje natural y la déterminatión de cuales pares de bloques sern conectados debe reflejar no solo criterios técnicos, sino también los valores yprioridades de los actores involucrados. Recomendamos que los bloques sean mapeados con base en una combination de naturalidad, estatus de protection, barreras lineales, y calidad del habitat para especies selectas. Describimos procedimientos manualesy automatizados para identificar las conexiones restaurables ofuncionales actualmente. Una vez que los pares de bloques han sido identificados, lospoligonos de conexion pueden ser mapeados por modelaje de costo minimo, otros métodos de teoria dégrafas modelos de movimiento basados en individuos. Los métodos que delineamos hacen suposiciones explicitas, tienen resultados que pueden ser mejorados a medida que mejoran los datos subyacentes y ayudan a que los implementadores se concentren estrictamente en la conectividad ecologica.

ContextConservation planning is increasingly using “coarse filters” based on the idea of conserving “nature’s stage”. One such approach is based on ecosystems and the concept of ecological integrity, although myriad ways exist to measure ecological integrity.ObjectivesTo describe our ecosystem-based index of ecological integrity (IEI) and its derivative index of ecological impact (ecoImpact), and illustrate their applications for conservation assessment and planning in the northeastern United States.MethodsWe characterized the biophysical setting of the landscape at the 30 m cell resolution using a parsimonious suite of settings variables. Based on these settings variables and mapped ecosystems, we computed a suite of anthropogenic stressor metrics reflecting intactness (i.e., freedom from anthropogenic stressors) and resiliency metrics (i.e., connectivity to similar neighboring ecological settings), quantile-rescaled them by ecosystem and geographic extent, and combined them in a weighted linear model to create IEI. We used the change in IEI over time under a land use scenario to compute ecoImpact.ResultsWe illustrated the calculation of IEI and ecoImpact to compare the ecological integrity consequences of a 70-year projection of urban growth to an alternative scenario involving securing a network of conservation core areas (reserves) from future development.ConclusionsIEI and ecoImpact offer an effective way to assess ecological integrity across the landscape and examine the potential ecological consequences of alternative land use and land cover scenarios to inform conservation decision making.

\"Highlights critical design projects from around the world that radically engage the fragile issues of drought, flooding, and contamination, revealing opportunistic, adaptive design strategies in response to the mounting global crisis. Water Index is a collective vision of the future that provides solutions for every continent and spans the disciplines of urban design, landscape architecture and architecture.\"-- From back book cover.

Conservation strategies to tackle habitat loss and fragmentation require actions at the local (e.g., improving/expanding existing habitat patches) and landscape level (e.g., creating new habitat in the matrix). However, the relative importance of these actions for biodiversity is still poorly understood, leading to debate on how to prioritize conservation activities. Here, we assess the relative importance of local vs. landscape-level attributes in determining the use of woodlands by bats in fragmented landscapes; we also compare the role of habitat amount in the surrounding landscape per se vs. a combination of both habitat amount and configuration and explore whether the relative importance of these attributes varies with species mobility and landscape context. We conducted acoustic surveys in 102 woodland patches in the UK that form part of the WrEN project (www.wren-project.com), a large-scale natural experiment designed to study the effects of 160 yr of woodland creation on biodiversity and inform landscape-scale conservation. We used multivariate analysis and a model-selection approach to assess the relative importance of local (e.g., vegetation structure) and landscape-level (e.g., amount/configuration of surrounding land types) attributes on bat occurrence and activity levels. Species mobility was an important trait determining the relative importance of local vs. landscape-level attributes for different bat species. Lower mobility species were most strongly influenced by local habitat quality; the landscape became increasingly important for higher mobility species. At the landscape-scale, a combination of habitat amount and configuration appeared more important than habitat amount alone for lower mobility species, while the opposite was observed for higher mobility species. Regardless of species mobility, landscape-level attributes appeared more important for bats in a more homogeneous and intensively farmed landscape. Conservation strategies involving habitat creation and restoration should take into account the mobility of target species and prioritize landscape-level actions in more homogeneous and intensively farmed landscapes where habitat loss and fragmentation have been more severe.

The decline of biodiversity from anthropogenic landscape modification is among the most pressing conservation problems worldwide. In North America, long-term population declines have elevated the recovery of the grassland avifauna to among the highest conservationpriorities. Because the vast majority of grasslands of the Great Plains are privately owned, the recovery of these ecosystems and bird populations within them depend on landscape-scale conservation strategies that integrate social, economic, and biodiversity objectives. The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is a voluntary program for private agricultural producers administered by the United States Department of Agriculture that provides financial incentives to take cropland out of production and restore perennial grassland. We investigated spatial patterns of grassland availability and restoration to inform landscape-scale conservation for a comprehensive community of grassland birds in the Great Plains. The research objectives were to (1) determine how apparent habitat loss has affected spatial patterns of grassland bird biodiversity, (2) evaluate the effectiveness of CRP for offsetting the biodiversity declines of grassland birds, and (3) develop spatially explicit predictions to estimate the biodiversity benefit of adding CRP to landscapes impacted by habitat loss. We used the Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions program to evaluate hypotheses for the effects of habitat loss and restoration on both the occupancy and species richness of grassland specialists within a continuum-modeling framework. We found the odds of community occupancy declined by 37% for every 1 SD decrease in grassland availability [loge(km²)] and increased by 20% for every 1 SD increase in CRP land cover [loge(km²)]. There was 17% turnover in species composition between intact grasslands and CRP landscapes, suggesting that grasslands restored by CRP retained considerable, but incomplete, representation of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. Spatially explicit predictions indicated that absolute conservation outcomes were greatest at high latitudes in regions with high biodiversity, whereas the relative outcomes were greater at low latitudes in highly modified landscapes. By evaluating community-wide responses to landscape modification and CRP restoration at bioregional scales, our study fills key information gaps for developing collaborative strategies, and for balancing conservation of avian biodiversity and social well-being in the agricultural production landscapes of the Great Plains.