Assessment of the Conservation Measures Partnership's effort to improve conservation outcomes through adaptive management

Conservation practice has demonstrated an increasing desire for accountability of actions, particularly with respect to effectiveness, efficiency, and impact to clearly identified objectives. This has been accompanied by increased attention to achieving adaptive management. In 2002, practitioners representing several prominent conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) launched a community of practice called the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP). The partnership CMP has worked to establish standards of conservation practice to improve accountability of conservation actions through adaptive management. The focal organizing framework for CMP has been the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation (OS). We evaluated, through an online survey and personal interviews, the first decade of CMP and the OS. The CMP has garnered a positive reputation among agencies, NGOs, and funders and has succeeded in developing a large user base of the OS. However, CMP has not fully achieved its goal of making the OS standard operating procedure for the largest NGOs (e.g., The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund), despite it being widely used within these organizations. This lack of institutionalization is attributable to multiple causes, including an increase in the number of partially overlapping decision‐support frameworks and challenges achieving full‐cycle adaptive management. Users strongly believed the OS fosters better conservation practice and highly valued the OS for improving their practice. A primary objective of the OS is to assist practitioners to achieve full‐cycle adaptive management to better integrate learning into improving the effectiveness and efficiency of actions. However, most practitioners had not yet achieved cycle completion for their projects. To improve the effectiveness of CMP, OS, and conservation practice in general, we recommend collaborative efforts among the proponents of multiple decision‐support frameworks to foster strong institutional adoption of a common set of adaptive‐management standards for conservation accountability.     

Standardized reporting of the costs of management interventions for biodiversity conservation

Effective conservation management interventions must combat threats and deliver benefits at costs that can be achieved within limited budgets. Considerable effort has focused on measuring the potential benefits of conservation interventions, but explicit quantification of the financial costs of implementation is rare. Even when costs have been quantified, haphazard and inconsistent reporting means published values are difficult to interpret. This reporting deficiency hinders progress toward a collective understanding of the financial costs of management interventions across projects and thus limits the ability to identify efficient solutions to conservation problems or attract adequate funding. We devised a standardized approach to describing financial costs reported for conservation interventions. The standards call for researchers and practitioners to describe the objective and outcome, context and methods, and scale of costed interventions, and to state which categories of costs are included and the currency and date for reported costs. These standards aim to provide enough contextual information that readers and future users can interpret the cost data appropriately. We suggest these standards be adopted by major conservation organizations, conservation science institutions, and journals so that cost reporting is comparable among studies. This would support shared learning and enhance the ability to identify and perform cost‐effective conservation.     

Addressing transboundary conservation challenges through marine spatial prioritization

The Adriatic and Ionian Region is an important area for both strategic maritime development and biodiversity conservation in the European Union (EU). However, given that both EU and non‐EU countries border the sea, multiple legal and regulatory frameworks operate at different scales, which can hinder the coordinated long‐term sustainable development of the region. Transboundary marine spatial planning can help overcome these challenges by building consensus on planning objectives and making the trade‐offs between biodiversity conservation and its influence on economically important sectors more explicit. We address this challenge by developing and testing 4 spatial prioritization strategies with the decision‐support tool Marxan, which meets targets for biodiversity conservation while minimizing impacts to users. We evaluated these strategies in terms of how priority areas shift under different scales of target setting (e.g., regional vs. country level). We also examined the trade‐off between cost‐efficiency and how equally solutions represent countries and maritime industries (n = 14) operating in the region with the protection‐equality metric. We found negligible differences in where priority conservation areas were located when we set targets for biodiversity at the regional versus country scale. Conversely, the prospective impacts on industries, when considered as costs to be minimized, were highly divergent across scenarios and biased the placement of protection toward industries located in isolation or where there were few other industries. We recommend underpinning future marine spatial planning efforts in the region through identification of areas of national significance, transboundary areas requiring cooperation between countries, and areas where impacts on maritime industries require careful consideration of the trade‐off between biodiversity conservation and socioeconomic objectives.     

Dispersal ecology of deadwood organisms and connectivity conservation

Limited knowledge of dispersal for most organisms hampers effective connectivity conservation in fragmented landscapes. In forest ecosystems, deadwood‐dependent organisms (i.e., saproxylics) are negatively affected by forest management and degradation globally. We reviewed empirically established dispersal ecology of saproxylic insects and fungi. We focused on direct studies (e.g., mark‐recapture, radiotelemetry), field experiments, and population genetic analyses. We found 2 somewhat opposite results. Based on direct methods and experiments, dispersal is limited to within a few kilometers, whereas genetic studies showed little genetic structure over tens of kilometers, which indicates long‐distance dispersal. The extent of direct dispersal studies and field experiments was small and thus these studies could not have detected long‐distance dispersal. Particularly for fungi, more studies at management‐relevant scales (1–10 km) are needed. Genetic researchers used outdated markers, investigated few loci, and faced the inherent difficulties of inferring dispersal from genetic population structure. Although there were systematic and species‐specific differences in dispersal ability (fungi are better dispersers than insects), it seems that for both groups colonization and establishment, not dispersal per se, are limiting their occurrence at management‐relevant scales. Because most studies were on forest landscapes in Europe, particularly the boreal region, more data are needed from nonforested landscapes in which fragmentation effects are likely to be more pronounced. Given the potential for long‐distance dispersal and the logical necessity of habitat area being a more fundamental landscape attribute than the spatial arrangement of habitat patches (i.e., connectivity sensu strict), retaining high‐quality deadwood habitat is more important for saproxylic insects and fungi than explicit connectivity conservation in many cases.     

Exposing ecological and economic costs of the research‐implementation gap and compromises in decision making

The frequently discussed gap between conservation science and practice is manifest in the gap between spatial conservation prioritization plans and their implementation. We analyzed the research‐implementation gap of one zoning case by comparing results of a spatial prioritization analysis aimed at avoiding ecological impact of peat mining in a regional zoning process with the final zoning plan. We examined the relatively complex planning process to determine the gaps among research, zoning, and decision making. We quantified the ecological costs of the differing trade‐offs between ecological and socioeconomic factors included in the different zoning suggestions by comparing the landscape‐level loss of ecological features (species occurrences, habitat area, etc.) between the different solutions for spatial allocation of peat mining. We also discussed with the scientists and planners the reasons for differing zoning suggestions. The implemented plan differed from the scientists suggestion in that its focus was individual ecological features rather than all the ecological features for which there were data; planners and decision makers considered effects of peat mining on areas not included in the prioritization analysis; zoning was not truly seen as a resource‐allocation process and not emphasized in general minimizing ecological losses while satisfying economic needs (peat‐mining potential); and decision makers based their prioritization of sites on site‐level information showing high ecological value and on single legislative factors instead of finding a cost‐effective landscape‐level solution. We believe that if the zoning and decision‐making processes are very complex, then the usefulness of science‐based prioritization tools is likely to be reduced. Nevertheless, we found that high‐end tools were useful in clearly exposing trade‐offs between conservation and resource utilization.     

A multispecies test of source–sink indicators to prioritize habitat for declining populations

For species at risk of decline or extinction in source–sink systems, sources are an obvious target for habitat protection actions. However, the way in which source habitats are identified and prioritized can reduce the effectiveness of conservation actions. Although sources and sinks are conceptually defined using both demographic and movement criteria, simplifications are often required in systems with limited data. To assess the conservation outcomes of alternative source metrics and resulting prioritizations, we simulated population dynamics and extinction risk for 3 endangered species. Using empirically based habitat population models, we linked habitat maps with measured site‐ or habitat‐specific demographic conditions, movement abilities, and behaviors. We calculated source–sink metrics over a range of periods of data collection and prioritized consistently high‐output sources for conservation. We then tested whether prioritized patches identified the habitats that most affected persistence by removing them and measuring the population response. Conservation decisions based on different source–sink metrics and durations of data collection affected species persistence. Shorter time series obscured the ability of metrics to identify influential habitats, particularly in temporally variable and slowly declining populations. Data‐rich source–sink metrics that included both demography and movement information did not always identify the habitats with the greatest influence on extinction risk. In some declining populations, patch abundance better predicted influential habitats for short‐term regional persistence. Because source–sink metrics (i.e., births minus deaths; births and immigrations minus deaths and emigration) describe net population conditions and cancel out gross population counts, they may not adequately identify influential habitats in declining populations. For many nonequilibrium populations, new metrics that maintain the counts of individual births, deaths, and movement may provide additional insight into habitats that most influence persistence.     

The use of waste basic oxygen furnace slag and hydrogen peroxide to degrade 4-chlorophenol

A new treatment method is developed to degrade 4-chlorophenol (4-cp) and its oxidation intermediates. The experimental results of this research demonstrate that 4-cp and its oxidation intermediates can be decomposed completely by basic oxygen furnace slag (BOF slag) with hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) in an acid solution. The factors that effect the treatment efficiency were studied including initial concentration of 4-cp, pH of the solution, concentration of H₂O₂ and amount of BOF slag. The BOF slags are final waste materials in the steel making process. The major components of BOF slag are CaO, SiO₂, Fe₂O₃, FeO, MgO and MnO. As the BOF slag in an acid solution, FeO and Fe₂O₃ can be dissociated to produce ferrous ion and ferric ion. Ferrous ion reacts with hydrogen peroxide to form “Fenton's reagent” which can produce hydroxyl radicals (OH^.). Hydroxyl radical possession of high oxidation ability can oxidize organic chemicals effectively. Results show that 100 mg/l of 4-cp is decomposed completely within 30 min by 438.7 g/l BOF slag with 8.2 mM hydrogen peroxide in pH=2.8±0.2 solution. The COD value of the solution is reduced from 290 to 90 mg/l. The factors studied which affect the 4-cp decomposition efficiency were the hydrogen peroxide concentration, BOF slag concentration, pH of the solution and initial concentration of 4-cp. Because large amounts of Fe₂O₃ and FeO are present in the BOF slag, the BOF slag not only has a high treatment efficiency, but also can be used repeatedly.     

Modelling the impact of thermal adaptation of soil microorganisms and crop system on the dynamics of organic matter in a tropical soil under a climate change scenario

No consensus currently exists about how climate change should affect the status of soil organic matter (SOM) in the tropics. In this study, we analyse the impact of climate change on the underlying mechanisms controlling SOM dynamics in a ferralsol under two contrasting tropical crops: maize (C4 plant) and banana (C3 plant). We model the effect of microbial thermal adaptation on carbon (C) mineralisation at the crop system scale and introduce it in the model STICS, which was previously calibrated for the soil-crop systems tested in this study. Microbial thermal adaptation modelling is based on a reported theory for thermal acclimation of plant and soil respiration. The climate is simulated from 1950 to 2099 for the tropical humid conditions of Guadeloupe (French Antilles), using the ARPEGE model and the IPCC emission scenario A1B. The model predicts increases of 3.4 °C for air temperature and 1100 mm yr⁻¹ for rainfall as a response to an increase of 375 ppm for atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration in the 2090-2099 decade compared with the 1950-1959 decade. The results of the STICS model indicate that the crop affects the response of SOM to climate change by controlling the change in several variables involved in C dynamics: C input, soil temperature and soil moisture. SOM content varies little until 2020, and then it decreases faster for maize than for banana. The decrease is weakened under the hypothesis of thermal adaptation, and this effect is greater for maize (−180 kg C ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ without adaptation and −140 kg C ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ with adaptation) than for banana (−60 kg C ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ and −40 kg C ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹, respectively). The greater SOM loss in maize is mainly due to the negative effect of warming on maize growth decreasing C input from residues. Climate change has a small effect on banana growth, and SOM loss is linked to its effect on C mineralisation. For both crops, annual C mineralisation increases until 2040, and then it decreases continuously. Thermal adaptation reduces the initial increase in mineralisation, but its effect is lower on the final decrease, which is mainly controlled by substrate limitation. No stabilisation in SOM status is attained at the end of the analysed period because C mineralisation is always greater than C input. Model predictions indicate that microbial thermal adaptation modifies, but does not fundamentally change the temporal pattern of SOM dynamics. The vegetation type (C3 or C4) plays a major role in SOM dynamics in this tropical soil because of the different impact of climate change on crop growth and then on C inputs.     

元江流域干热河谷草地植物群落结构特征与相似性分析

选择元江干热河谷典型草地群落,采用标准样地调查法,对流域上、中、下游干热河谷草地植物群落的分布特征、群落结构、种群习性等特征开展研究,结果表明：（1）元江流域上游祥云和中下游红河干热河谷草地群落中出现的植物种类最多,元江流域干热河谷草地植物群落是以灌木为主、多年生草本为辅的结构类型。（2）元江流域干热河谷草地群落中,扭黄茅（Heteropogon contortus）为优势种群,次优种群随流域环境的改变而不同。（3）元江流域干热河谷草地植物群落之间的相似性系数均在0.00～0.25之间,处于极不相似水平,种群的扩散受流域河谷通道作用影响较小。（4）种群的扩散和定居受海拔高度的影响,随着海拔高度的变化,植物群落的组成也发生变化,形成不同的群落结构。