Context
Naturally recovering secondary forests are frequently re-cleared before they can recover to pre-disturbance conditions. Identifying landscape factors associated with persistence success will ...help planning cost-efficient and effective forest restoration.
Objectives
The ability of secondary forest to persist is an often undervalued requisite for long-term ecosystem restoration. Here we identify the landscape context for naturally regenerated forests to persist through time within central Panama.
Methods
We developed a random forest classification (RFC) calibration method to identify areas with high (≥ 90%) and low (< 90%) likelihood of forest persistence success based on their spatial relation with nine landscape explanatory variables.
Results
The RFC model discriminated between secondary forests areas that persisted and did not persisted with an error rate of 2%. By tuning, we obtained a precision of 0.94 (94%) in the validation test. The two most important explanatory variables involved in the persistence dynamic were elevation and distance to the nearest rural area. Naturally regenerated forests lasted longer in patches that were closer to both Gatun and Alajuela Lakes as to protected areas, but further from rural communities, roads, urban areas and in patches with higher elevation and steeper slopes.
Conclusion
By tracking remote sensed, landscape context metrics of easy collection, we developed a prediction map of central Panama areas with high (≥ 90%) and low (> 90%) probability of natural forest regeneration and persistence success within the next 30 years. This map represents a basis for management decisions and future investigations for effective, long-term forest-landscape restoration.
Resistance surfaces are often used to fill gaps in our knowledge surrounding animal movement and are frequently the basis for modeling connectivity associated with conservation initiatives. However, ...the methods for quantifying resistance surfaces are varied and there is no general consensus on the appropriate choice of environmental data or analytical approaches. We provide a comprehensive review of the literature on this topic to highlight methods used and identify knowledge gaps. Our review includes 96 papers that parameterized resistance surfaces (sometimes using multiple approaches) for a variety of taxa. Data types used included expert opinion (
n
= 76), detection (
n
= 23), relocation (
n
= 8), pathway (
n
= 2), and genetic (
n
= 28). We organized the papers into three main analytical approaches; one-stage expert opinion, one-stage empirical, and two-stage empirical, each of which was represented by 43, 22, and 36 papers, respectively. We further organized the empirical approaches into five main resource selection functions; point (
n
= 16), matrix (
n
= 38), home range (
n
= 3), step (
n
= 1), and pathway (
n
= 1). We found a general lack of justification for choice of environmental variables and their thematic and spatial representation, a heavy reliance on expert opinion and detection data, and a tendency to confound movement behavior and resource use. Future research needs include comparative analyses on the choice of environmental variables and their spatial and thematic scales, and on the various biological data types used to estimate resistance. Comparative analyses amongst analytical processes is also needed, as well as transparency in reporting on uncertainty in parameter estimates and sensitivity of final resistance surfaces, especially if the resistance surfaces are to be used for conservation and planning purposes.
Landscapes have long been viewed as ‘multifunctional’, integrating ecological, economic, sociocultural, historical, and aesthetic dimensions. Landscape science and public awareness in Europe have ...been progressing in leaps and bounds. The challenges involved in landscape-related issues and fields, however, are multiple and refer to landscape stewardship and protection, as well as to the development of comprehensive theoretical and methodological approaches, in tandem with public sensitization and participatory governance and in coordination with appropriate top-down planning and policy instruments. Landscape-scale approaches are fundamental to the understanding of past and present cultural evolution, and are now considered to be an appropriate spatial framework for the analysis of sustainability. Methods and tools of landscape analysis and intervention have also gone a long way since their early development in Europe and the United States. Although significant progress has been made, there remain many issues which are understudied or not investigated at all—at least in a Mediterranean context. This Special Issue addresses the application of landscape theory and practice in the Eastern Mediterranean and mainly, but not exclusively, reports on the outcomes of an international conference held in Jordan, in December 2015, with the title “Landscapes of Eastern Mediterranean: Challenges, Opportunities, Prospects and Accomplishments”. The focus of this Special Issue, landscapes of the Eastern Mediterranean region, thus constitutes a timely area of research interest, not only because these landscapes have so far been understudied, but also as a rich site of strikingly variegated, long-standing multicultural human–environmental interactions. These interactions, resting on and taking shape through millennia of continuity in tradition, have been striving to adapt to technological advances, while currently juggling with manifold and multilayered socioeconomic and climate–environmental crises.
Context
Intensification and specialisation of agriculture and forest use has led to profound structural and compositional changes in European landscapes. In particular, sharp, narrow edges adjacent ...to relatively homogenous vegetation types progressively replace transitional habitats, crucial for a plethora of species and ecological processes
. Quercus robur
and
Q. petraea
regeneration niches make them best adapted to such transitional habitats. However, contemporary oaks’ importance, including their regeneration, is usually considered within limits of forest habitats.
Objective
Defining habitats, landscape patterns and processes fostering oak regeneration and ‘oakscape’ development.
Methods
We assessed the state-of-the art of the topical literature with respect to various aspects of oak regeneration based on a refined list of 234 titles from the Web of Science database.
Results
The review confirmed that the vast majority of studies focus on forest habitats, disregarding the fact that substantial part of acorns are being carried away and seeded by birds in non-forest habitats.
Conclusions
The common acceptance of the simplistic landscape mosaic model, based on segregated homogenous vegetation categories and clear-cut lines separating patches, impedes proper assessment of landscape changes, referring to ‘untypical’, transitional habitats—the true oaks’ domain. Hence, restoring and sustaining European ‘oakscape’ should result from the overall landscape management, based on a better adapted gradient approach to landscape studies. Applying such an approach, we identified a set of habitats fostering successful oak regeneration and recruitment without direct human support, contributing to the contemporary ‘oakscape’, represented mostly by non-forest, either natural or anthropogenic habitats.
Recently, in addition to the popular concept of “ecosystem services” (ES), the term “landscape services” (LS) has come into use. We are examining the question of whether a stronger focus on LS would ...be useful, particularly with regard to case studies carried out in Germany. Important reasons for introducing the term LS include the prominent role of spatial aspects, the reference to landscape elements and the landscape character, and the relevance of LS for landscape planning. We found no strong arguments for replacing the concept of ES by LS; however, we do prefer a situation-related use of both concepts. We propose the following definition: Landscape services are the contributions of landscapes and landscape elements to human well-being.
How “drowned town” literature, road movies, energy landscape photography, and “death train” narratives represent the brutality of industrial infrastructures. In this book, Michael Truscello looks at ...the industrial infrastructure not as an invisible system of connectivity and mobility that keeps capitalism humming in the background but as a manufactured miasma of despair, toxicity, and death. Truscello terms this “infrastructural brutalism”—a formulation that not only alludes to the historical nexus of infrastructure and the concrete aesthetic of Brutalist architecture but also describes the ecological, political, and psychological brutality of industrial infrastructures. Truscello explores the necropolitics of infrastructure—how infrastructure determines who may live and who must die—through the lens of artistic media. He examines the white settler nostalgia of “drowned town” fiction written after the Tennessee Valley Authority flooded rural areas for hydroelectric projects; argues that the road movie represents a struggle with liberal governmentality; considers the ruins of oil capitalism, as seen in photographic landscapes of postindustrial waste; and offers an account of “death train narratives” ranging from the history of the Holocaust to postapocalyptic fiction. Finally, he calls for “brisantic politics,” a culture of unmaking that is capable of slowing the advance of capitalist suicide. “Brisance” refers to the shattering effect of an explosive, but Truscello uses the term to signal a variety of practices for defeating infrastructural power. Brisantic politics, he warns, would require a reorientation of radical politics toward infrastructure, sabotage, and cascading destruction in an interconnected world.
Context
Current diversity and species composition of ecological communities can often not exclusively be explained by present land use and landscape structure. Historical land use may have ...considerably influenced ecosystems and their properties for decades and centuries.
Objectives
We analysed the effects of present and historical landscape structure on plant and arthropod species richness in temperate grasslands, using data from comprehensive plant and arthropod assessments across three regions in Germany and maps of current and historical land cover from three time periods between 1820 and 2016.
Methods
We calculated local, grassland class and landscape scale metrics for 150 grassland plots. Class and landscape scale metrics were calculated in buffer zones of 100 to 2000 m around the plots. We considered effects on total species richness as well as on the richness of species subsets determined by taxonomy and functional traits related to habitat use, dispersal and feeding.
Results
Overall, models containing a combination of present and historical landscape metrics showed the best fit for several functional groups. Comparing three historical time periods, data from the 1820/50s was among the most frequent significant time periods in our models (29.7% of all significant variables).
Conclusions
Our results suggest that the historical landscape structure is an important predictor of current species richness across different taxa and functional groups. This needs to be considered to better identify priority sites for conservation and to design biodiversity-friendly land use practices that will affect landscape structure in the future.
Context
Landscape metrics represent powerful tools for quantifying landscape structure, but uncertainties persist around their interpretation. Urban settings add unique considerations, containing ...habitat structures driven by the surrounding built-up environment. Understanding urban ecosystems, however, should focus on the habitats rather than the matrix.
Objectives
We coupled a multivariate approach with landscape metric analysis to overcome existing shortcomings in interpretation. We then explored relationships between landscape characteristics and modelled ecosystem service provision.
Methods
We used principal component analysis and cluster analysis to isolate the most effective measures of landscape variability and then grouped habitat patches according to their attributes, independent of the surrounding urban form. We compared results to the modelled provision of three ecosystem services. Seven classes resulting from cluster analysis were separated primarily on patch area, and secondarily by measures of shape complexity and inter-patch distance.
Results
When compared to modelled ecosystem services, larger patches up to 10 ha in size consistently stored more carbon per area and supported more pollinators, while exhibiting a greater risk of soil erosion. Smaller, isolated patches showed the opposite, and patches larger than 10 ha exhibited no additional areal benefit.
Conclusions
Multivariate landscape metric analysis offers greater confidence and consistency than analysing landscape metrics individually. Independent classification avoids the influence of the urban matrix surrounding habitats of interest, and allows patches to be grouped according to their own attributes. Such a grouping is useful as it may correlate more strongly with the characteristics of landscape structure that directly affect ecosystem function.
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