Assessing the role of economic actors in the production of private and public goods in three EU agricultural landscapes

The study analyses the contribution of relevant economic actors to the provision of private and public goods in agricultural landscapes. A method consisting of a multi-sectoral perspective and an integrated approach based on the analytic network process (ANP) and the use of selected local stakeholders is applied. The usefulness of the method is demonstrated in three European case studies in Austria, Italy and Spain. The results show that agriculture and tourism are the sectors that contribute the most and the least, respectively, to the provision of goods and services in agricultural landscapes. Moreover, the results underscore that policy instruments towards such provision need to be targeted differently in different areas and must take into account the different roles of the local actors involved.     

Same but different: sources of natural resource management advice for lifestyle oriented rural landholders

Amenity migration to attractive and accessible non-metropolitan areas changes social and environmental relations with consequences for natural resource management and landscape composition and trajectories. Lifestyler oriented rural landholders are often cast as a problem for land management and extension. Managers and some researchers see them as a cause of landscape and social fragmentation and report difficulties in engaging such landowners on natural resource management issues and responsibilities. In contrast, limited existing research indicates that lifestylers do join and form networks of personal and other contacts for advice and support in land management. We contribute to this research with a survey of rural landholders in southeastern New South Wales (NSW). We explicitly compare the sources of advice for land management for lifestylers with those of farmers. We focus on the types of sources available to rural landholders in Australian regions and their relative importance to these two landholder groups. We find that lifestylers and farmers are different in their sources of advice but that both prefer personal sources rather than sources such as agencies. We reflect on the significance of the differences for engagement with lifestyle oriented rural landowners and for understanding landscape change.     

The spatial links tool: Automated mapping of habitat linkages in variegated landscapes

The removal, alteration and fragmentation of habitat in many parts of the world has led to a loss of biodiversity. Within the prevailing societal limitations the process is not easily reversed. Attempts are being made to minimise the fragmentation of remaining habitat by strategically reversing or managing habitat loss. Although their relative usefulness is a topic of debate among ecologists, habitat corridors are seen as one way of maintaining spatially dependent ecological processes within landscapes where habitat has been seriously depleted. Corridors can only be effective if they significantly contribute to the species sustaining processes of gene flow, resource access or the colonisation of vacant patches. We present a spatial habitat modelling methodology for evaluating the contribution and potential contribution of connecting paths to landscape connectivity. We have developed the spatial links tool (SLT), which maps link value across a region. The SLT combines connectivity measures from metapopulation ecology with the least cost path algorithm from graph theory, and can be applied to continuously variable landscape data. Combined with expert judgement, link value maps can be used to delineate habitat corridors. The approach capitalises on some synergies between ecological relevance and computational efficiency to produce an easily applied heuristic tool that has been successfully applied in NSW Australia.     

江西三清山花岗岩峰林地质公园特征及评价

三清山位处扬子板块与华夏板块结合带,区内花岗岩受北东、北西和北东东向三条断裂控制,形成典型的三角形断块山,地貌处于幼年晚期至壮年早期发育阶段.园区内花岗岩峰峦、峰丛、峰墙、峰柱、石芽及造型石等微地貌景观发育,类型齐全,分布集中,集结了花岗岩峰林地貌的精华,为世界罕见;兼具千年道教文化和秀美自然风光,具有极高的科研、科普和旅游观赏价值.     

Linking Ecological Science to Decision-Making: Delivering Environmental Monitoring Information as Societal Feedback

The paper describes the Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network's (EMAN) operational and program response to certain challenges of environmental monitoring in Canada, in particular, efforts to improve the ability of the network to deliver relevant information to decision makers. In addition to its familiar roles, environmental monitoring should deliver feedback to society on environmental changes associated with development patterns, trends, processes and interventions. In order for such feedback to be effective, it must be relevant, timely, useful and accessible: all characteristics that are defined by the user, not the provider. Demand driven environmental monitoring is explored through EMAN's experiences with Canada's Biosphere Reserves, the NatureWatch Program and the Canadian Community Monitoring Network.     

Human Impacts on Regional Avian Diversity and Abundance

Abstract: Patterns of association between humans and biodiversity typically show positive, negative, or negative quadratic relationships and can be described by 3 hypotheses: biologically rich areas that support high human population densities co‐occur with areas of high biodiversity (productivity); biodiversity decreases monotonically with increasing human activities (ecosystem stress); and biodiversity peaks at intermediate levels of human influence (intermediate disturbance). To test these hypotheses, we compared anthropogenic land cover and housing units, as indices of human influence, with bird species richness and abundance across the Midwestern United States. We modeled richness of native birds with 12 candidate models of land cover and housing to evaluate the empirical evidence. To assess which species were responsible for observed variation in richness, we repeated our model‐selection analysis with relative abundance of each native species as the response and then asked whether natural‐history traits were associated with positive, negative, or mixed responses. Native avian richness was highest where anthropogenic land cover was lowest and housing units were intermediate based on model‐averaged predictions among a confidence set of candidate models. Eighty‐three of 132 species showed some pattern of association with our measures of human influence. Of these species approximately 40% were negatively associated, approximately 6% were positively associated, and approximately 7% showed evidence of an intermediate relationship with human influence measures. Natural‐history traits were not closely related to the direction of the relationship between abundance and human influence. Nevertheless, pooling species that exhibited any relationship with human influence and comparing them with unrelated species indicated they were significantly smaller, nested closer to the ground, had shorter incubation and fledging times, and tended to be altricial. Our results support the ecosystem‐stress hypothesis for the majority of individual species and for overall species diversity when focusing on anthropogenic land cover. Nevertheless, the great variability in housing units across the land‐cover gradient indicates that an intermediate‐disturbance relationship is also supported. Our findings suggest preemptive conservation action should be taken, whereby areas with little anthropogenic land cover are given conservation priority. Nevertheless, conservation action should not be limited to pristine landscapes because our results showed that native avian richness and the relative abundance of many species peaked at intermediate housing densities and levels of anthropogenic land cover.     

Who is a hydrocitizen? The use of dialogic arts methods as a research tool with water professionals in West Yorkshire,UK

ABSTRACT

There is currently a recognition of the need for more collaborative approaches to water management, which involve communities of place as proactive stewards of their local water environments. However, the desire for such participatory approaches sits awkwardly with the primarily technocratic orientation and practices of the responsible professional organisations in the water sector. Professionals sometimes struggle to communicate with, or respond to, communities stressed by flood and other impacts. This paper examines the concept of “hydrocitizenship” in relation to the engagement between professional stakeholders interested and involved in water landscape management, regulation and associated issues, and communities in the River Aire corridor, Yorkshire, UK. The case study-based research used innovative, arts-based exploratory approaches that aimed to examine participants’ relationships with water and how local environmental concerns about policy and water could be revealed. Group conversations and interviews were used as a strategy both to develop mutual understandings between participants and to inform the creation of public performances which stimulated further discussion and reflection. The paper focuses on reporting the role and experience of stakeholders, and identifies the emergence of unexpected synergies, where performance became the means of two-way communication between the different groups involved in the research. In particular, a flexible, creative and playful approach captured the imagination and gained interactions and creative collaborations within local communities and stakeholder groups. The paper concludes by reflecting on possible extensions of this work in other contexts.     

Land‐use history as a guide for forest conservation and management

Conservation efforts to protect forested landscapes are challenged by climate projections that suggest substantial restructuring of vegetation and disturbance regimes in the future. In this regard, paleoecological records that describe ecosystem responses to past variations in climate, fire, and human activity offer critical information for assessing present landscape conditions and future landscape vulnerability. We illustrate this point drawing on 8 sites in the northwestern United States, New Zealand, Patagonia, and central and southern Europe that have undergone different levels of climate and land‐use change. These sites fall along a gradient of landscape conditions that range from nearly pristine (i.e., vegetation and disturbance shaped primarily by past climate and biophysical constraints) to highly altered (i.e., landscapes that have been intensely modified by past human activity). Position on this gradient has implications for understanding the role of natural and anthropogenic disturbance in shaping ecosystem dynamics and assessments of present biodiversity, including recognizing missing or overrepresented species. Dramatic vegetation reorganization occurred at all study sites as a result of postglacial climate variations. In nearly pristine landscapes, such as those in Yellowstone National Park, climate has remained the primary driver of ecosystem change up to the present day. In Europe, natural vegetation–climate–fire linkages were broken 6000–8000 years ago with the onset of Neolithic farming, and in New Zealand, natural linkages were first lost about 700 years ago with arrival of the Maori people. In the U.S. Northwest and Patagonia, the greatest landscape alteration occurred in the last 150 years with Euro‐American settlement. Paleoecology is sometimes the best and only tool for evaluating the degree of landscape alteration and the extent to which landscapes retain natural components. Information on landscape‐level history thus helps assess current ecological change, clarify management objectives, and define conservation strategies that seek to protect both natural and cultural elements.     

Fit-for-Purpose Institutions? An Evaluation of Biodiversity Conservation in the Agricultural Landscape of the Tasmanian Midlands,Australia

Biodiversity loss is a globally significant problem. Institutional failure to halt this loss suggests current arrangements are not fit for the purpose of conserving biodiversity. The objective of this paper is to diagnose institutional fitness for conserving biodiversity in the Tasmanian Midlands of Australia, a highly modified agricultural landscape with critically endangered biodiversity values. This paper presents and applies a novel diagnostic framework that adopts a broad view of institutional fit, drawing on concepts from adaptive governance, institutional theory, and public administration, and finds four areas of poor fit that can guide reform efforts. The first is a narrow framing of biodiversity objectives, leading to neglect of key social and ecological concerns. Second, the interplay of current arrangements fails to buffer key economic and political drivers, and compromises adaptive capacity. Third, limited government authority and embedded power relations raise questions about the effectiveness and fairness of current approaches. Finally, the reluctance of governments to devolve authority and decision-making powers to self-organizing networks constrains adaptation. This suite of fit problems constrains achievement of biodiversity conservation, particularly in dealing with landscape multifunctionality, the need to balance private landholder rights and responsibilities, and the need to consider how to respond to emerging novel and hybrid ecosystems.     

Human–wildlife coexistence in a changing world

Human–wildlife conflict (HWC) is a key topic in conservation and agricultural research. Decision makers need evidence-based information to design sustainable management plans and policy instruments. However, providing objective decision support can be challenging because realities and perceptions of human–wildlife interactions vary widely between and within rural, urban, and peri-urban areas. Land users who incur costs through wildlife argue that wildlife-related losses should be compensated and that prevention should be subsidized. Supporters of human–wildlife coexistence policies, such as urban-dwelling people, may not face threats to their livelihoods from wildlife. Such spatial heterogeneity in the cost and benefits of living with wildlife is germane in most contemporary societies. This Special Section features contributions on wildlife-induced damages that range from human perspectives (land use, psychology, governance, local attitudes and perceptions, costs and benefits, and HWC and coexistence theory) to ecological perspectives (animal behavior). Building on current literature and articles in this section, we developed a conceptual model to help frame HWC and coexistence dimensions. The framework can be used to determine damage prevention implementation levels and approaches to HWC resolution. Our synthesis revealed that inter- and transdisciplinary approaches and multilevel governance approaches can help stakeholders and institutions implement sustainable management strategies that promote human–wildlife coexistence.