Protected Areas and Effective Biodiversity Conservation Le Saout, Soizic; Hoffmann, Michael; Shi, Yichuan ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
11/2013, Letnik:
342, Številka:
6160
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Although protected areas (PAs) cover 13% of Earth's land (1), substantial gaps remain in their coverage of global biodiversity (2). Thus, there has been emphasis on strategic expansion of the global ...PA network (3-5). However, because PAs are often understaffed, underfunded, and beleaguered in the face of external threats (6, 7), efforts to expand PA coverage should be complemented by appropriate management of existing PAs. Previous calls for enhancing PA management have focused on improving operational effectiveness of each PA e.g., staffing and budgets (6). Little guidance has been offered on how to improve collective effectiveness for meeting global biodiversity conservation goals (3). We provide guidance for strategically allocating management efforts among and within existing PAs to strengthen their collective contribution toward preventing global species extinctions.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become one of the core driving forces for the future development of the medical industry, but patients are skeptical about the use of AI in medical care. Based on the ...intergroup threat theory (ITT), this study verified that patients would regard AI as an external group, triggering the perceived threat of the external group, which results in avoidance behaviors in the treatment (experiment 1:
= 446) and diagnosis (experiment 2:
= 330) scenarios. The results show that despite AI can provide expert-level accuracy in medical care, patients are still more likely to rely on human doctors and experience more negative emotions as AI is more involved in medical care (experiment 1). Furthermore, patients pay more attention to threats at the individual level related to themselves, such as realistic threats related to privacy issues and symbolic threats related to the neglect of personal characteristics. In contrast, realistic threats and symbolic threats at the group level had less effect on patients in the medical scenario (experiment 2).
Over the past decades, a number of national policies and international conventions have been implemented to promote the expansion of the world's protected area network, leading to a diversification ...of protected area strategies, types and designations. As a result, many areas are protected by more than one convention, legal instrument, or other effective means which may result in a lack of clarity around the governance and management regimes of particular locations. We assess the degree to which different designations overlap at global, regional and national levels to understand the extent of this phenomenon at different scales. We then compare the distribution and coverage of these multi-designated areas in the terrestrial and marine realms at the global level and among different regions, and we present the percentage of each county's protected area extent that is under more than one designation. Our findings show that almost a quarter of the world's protected area network is protected through more than one designation. In fact, we have documented up to eight overlapping designations. These overlaps in protected area designations occur in every region of the world, both in the terrestrial and marine realms, but are more common in the terrestrial realm and in some regions, notably Europe. In the terrestrial realm, the most common overlap is between one national and one international designation. In the marine realm, the most common overlap is between any two national designations. Multi-designations are therefore a widespread phenomenon but its implications are not well understood. This analysis identifies, for the first time, multi-designated areas across all designation types. This is a key step to understand how these areas are managed and governed to then move towards integrated and collaborative approaches that consider the different management and conservation objectives of each designation.
Human population growth and economic development threaten the integrity of freshwater ecosystems globally, reducing their ability to support biodiversity and provide ecosystem services. However, our ...knowledge of freshwater biodiversity is fragmented due to bias in conservation research toward primarily terrestrial or charismatic taxonomic groups. Here, we utilize the most comprehensive assessment of freshwater biodiversity for an entire continent to examine the implications of this shortfall. Results indicate that groups that have been the focus of most conservation research are poor surrogates for patterns of both richness and threat for many freshwater groups, and that the existing protected area network underrepresents freshwater species. Areas of highest species richness and threat are congruent with areas where reliance on ecosystem services by humans and pressures placed on freshwater ecosystems are high. These results have implications for targets to reduce biodiversity loss and safeguard associated ecosystem services on which millions of people depend globally.
Biodiversity conservation is the cornerstone for sustainable development. Bold conservation targets provide the last opportunities to halt the human-driven mass extinction. Recently, bold ...conservation targets have been proposed to protect 30% or 50% of Earth. However, little is known about its potential impacts on cropland. We identify potential cropland losses when 30% and 50% of global terrestrial area is given back to nature by 2030/2050, at three spatial scales (global, biome and country) and using two approaches (“nature-only landscapes” and “shared landscapes”). We find that different targets, applied scales and approaches will lead to different cropland losses: (1) At the global scale, it is possible to protect 50% of the Earth while having minimum cropland losses. (2) At biome scale, 0.64% and 8.54% cropland will be lost globally in 2030 and 2050 under the nature-only approach while by contrast, the shared approach substantially reduces the number of countries confronted by cropland losses, demanding only 0% and 2.59% of global cropland losses in 2030 and 2050. (3) At the national scale, the nature-only approach causes losses of 3.58% and 10.73% of global cropland in 2030 and 2050, while the shared approach requires 0.77% and 7.55% cropland in 2030 and 2050. Our results indicate that bold conservation targets could be considered, especially when adopting the shared approach, and we suggest adopting ambitious targets (protecting at least 30% by 2030) at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) to ensure a sustainable future for Earth.
The World Heritage Convention could make a bigger and more systematic contribution to global wilderness conservation by: (1) ensuring the World Heritage List includes full coverage of Earth's ...wilderness areas with outstanding universal value and (2) more effectively protecting the ecological integrity of existing World Heritage sites. Here, we assess current coverage of globalâscale wilderness areas within natural World Heritage sites and identify broad gaps where new wilderness sites should be identified for inclusion in the World Heritage List. We also consider how existing mechanisms under the Convention can improve the ecological integrity of existing sites by expanding or buffering them, and by promoting connectivity between World Heritage sites, between World Heritage sites and other protected areas, or both. We suggest that the Convention should consider a new mechanism called a âWorld Heritage Wilderness Complexâ to facilitate a wilderness approach. Finally, we map three landscapes and one seascape to illustrate how World Heritage Wilderness Complexes might be implemented.
The role of artificial intelligence (AI)‐based DoctorBots in improving healthcare and the medical industry is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades. However, contrary to the ...general view that AI can gradually replace human work, user acceptance of DoctorBots has become an obstacle to the development of AI medical diagnosis. Building on the service robot acceptance model (sRAM), this study investigates the potential of the functional, socioemotional, and relational elements of DoctorBots to reconcile the personalization–privacy paradox, thus enhancing user acceptance. Via two scenario‐based experiments with 398 participants, this study reveals that the negative influence of the personalization–privacy paradox on user acceptance is exacerbated when users' technology anxiety is high. In addition, an online survey of 400 DoctorBot users indicates that ease of use, subjective social norms, social presence, and rapport are effective in addressing both nonpersonalization (NPC) and privacy concerns (PVC). These findings suggest that the healthcare industry can leverage DoctorBots to implement self‐diagnosis. Specifically, DoctorBots' functional elements are effective in mitigating users' NPC, and their relational elements are effective in extenuating users' PVC.
•We examined TM/ETM+ availability and land cover mapping in G200 ecoregions.•The availability of Landsat TM/ETM+ data for those ecoregions is very poor.•Only 26 of 142 ecoregions belong to research ...hotspots of land cover mapping.•28/36 ecoregions have greater/poor than 80/50% accuracy in a 30m map.•A significant gap of observation and understanding of these ecoregions from space.
Land cover provides objective and multi scale information on the extent and conditions of habitats both currently and retrospectively. Over four decades since the launch of the first land-observation satellite – Landsat-1 in 1972, a tremendous number of earth observation images have been acquired and archived. Here we examined land cover mapping in 142 critical terrestrial ecoregions (identified by WWF Global 200) from three aspects: Landsat Thematic Mapper and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (TM/ETM+) data availability, literature and existing global land cover map. We found that: (1) the availability of Landsat TM/ETM+ for historical land-cover change analysis in those ecoregions is poor. Only 17 ecoregions and 38 ecoregions have sufficient number of seasonal images in the Landsat archive for change analysis at 10-year and 5-year intervals, respectively. (2) Only 26 of 142 ecoregions belong to research hotspots of land cover mapping based on a spatialized literature database. (3) From a 30m global land cover map (which is FROM-GLC, Finer Resolution Observation and Monitoring – Global Land Cover), only 28 ecoregions have greater than 80% map accuracy while 36 ecoregions have poorer than 50% map accuracy. Our finding suggests a significant gap of observation and understanding of these critical ecoregions from space, and an urgent need to meet the requirement of the conservation science community, in order for land cover data to fulfil its potential to timely monitor the loss of biodiversity from space, improve our knowledge of the state of conservation, and inform better decision making.
Natural World Heritage Sites (NWHS), via their formal designation through the United Nations, are globally recognized as containing some of the Earth's most valuable natural assets. Understanding ...changes in their ecological condition is essential for their ongoing preservation. Here we use two newly available globally consistent data sets that assess changes in human pressure (Human Footprint) and forest loss (Global Forest Watch) over time across the global network of terrestrial NWHS. We show that human pressure has increased in 63% of NWHS since 1993 and across all continents except Europe. The largest increases in pressure occurred in Asian NWHS, many of which were substantially damaged such as ManasWildlifeSanctuary. Forest loss occurred in 91% of NWHS that contain forests, with a global mean loss of 1.5% per site since 2000, with the largest areas of forest lost occurring in the Americas. For example WoodBuffaloNationalPark and RíoPlátanoBiosphereReserve lost 2581km2 (11.7%) and 365km2 (8.5%) of their forest respectively. We found that on average human pressure increased faster and more forest loss occurred in areas surrounding NWHS, suggesting they are becoming increasingly isolated and are under threat from processes occurring outside their borders. While some NWHS such as the SinharajaForestReserve and ManaPoolsNationalPark showed minimal change in forest loss or human pressure, they are in the minority and our results also suggest many NWHS are rapidly deteriorating and are more threatened than previously thought.
•This is the first global quantitative assessment of how humanity is negatively affecting Natural World Heritage Sites (NWHS).•Increases in human pressure and forest loss are occurring across the vast majority of forested NWHS.•NWHS are becoming isolated by substantial increases in human pressure and forest loss in the landscapes surrounding them.•We provide crucial baseline information which is neccessary for the ongoing preservation of NWHS.
•Biodiversity status of protected areas governed by indigenous peoples and local communities does not fit one standard formula•The contribution of local protected area governance is complementary to ...state governance•Community governed areas in Australia and Brazil show slower rate of forest loss than other protected area governance types and significantly larger mean size•Namibia’s community protected areas have higher terrestrial coverage and represent higher ecoregional protection equality than other governance types
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