Rapidly developing countries contain both the bulk of intact natural areas and biodiversity, and the greatest untapped natural resource stocks, placing them at the forefront of "green" economic ...development opportunities. However, most lack scientific tools to create development plans that account for biodiversity and ecosystem services, diminishing the real potential to be sustainable. Existing methods focus on biodiversity and carbon priority areas across large geographies (e.g., countries, states/provinces), leaving out essential services associated with water supplies, among others. These hydrologic ecosystem services (HES) are especially absent from methods applied at large geographies and in data-limited contexts. Here, we present a novel, spatially explicit, and relatively simple methodology to identify countrywide HES priority areas. We applied our methodology to the Gabonese Republic, a country undergoing a major economic transformation under a governmental commitment to balance conservation and development goals. We present the first national-scale maps of HES priority areas across Gabon for erosion control, nutrient retention, and groundwater recharge. Priority sub-watersheds covered 44% of the country's extent. Only 3% of the country was identified as a priority area for all HES simultaneously, highlighting the need to conserve different areas for each different hydrologic service. While spatial tradeoffs occur amongst HES, we identified synergies with two other conservation values, given that 66% of HES priority areas intersect regions of above average area-weighted (by sub-watersheds) total forest carbon stocks and 38% intersect with terrestrial national parks. Considering implications for development, we identified HES priority areas overlapping current or proposed major roads, forestry concessions, and active mining concessions, highlighting the need for proactive planning for avoidance areas and compensatory offsets to mitigate potential conflicts. Collectively, our results provide insight into strategies to protect HES as part of Gabon's development strategy, while providing a replicable methodology for application to new scales, geographies, and policy contexts.
Human impacts on wildlife stem from both our footprint on the landscape and the presence of people in wildlife habitat. Each may influence wildlife at very different spatial and temporal scales, yet ...efforts to disentangle these two classes of anthropogenic disturbance in their effects on wildlife have remained limited, as have efforts to predict the spatial extent of human presence and its impacts independently of human footprint. We used camera trap data from a 1400-km2 grid spanning wildlands and residential development in central California to compare the effects of human presence (human detections on camera) and footprint (building density) on mammalian predators. We then developed a model predicting the spatial extent of human presence and its impacts across the broader landscape. Occupancy modeling and temporal activity analyses showed that human presence and footprint had non-equivalent and often opposing effects on wildlife. Larger predators (pumas Puma concolor, bobcats Lynx rufus, coyotes Canis latrans) were less active where human footprint was high but avoided high human presence temporally rather than spatially. Smaller predators (striped skunks Mephitis mephitis, Virginia opossums Didelphis virginiana) preferred developed areas but exhibited reduced activity where human presence was high. A spatial model, based on readily available landscape covariates (parking lots, trails, topography), performed well in predicting human activity outside of developed areas, and revealed high human presence even in remote protected areas that provide otherwise intact wildlife habitat. This work highlights the need to integrate multiple disturbance types when evaluating the impacts of anthropogenic activity on wildlife.
•We identified targeted locations for collaborative investment across boundaries.•Increased investment based on cost effectiveness will improve sediment reduction.•Sediment load could be reduced by ...22% relative to the baseline in one subwatershed.•Incorporating climate change shifted model-generated activity locations slightly.•This analysis informs the type, amount, and location of conservation investments.
In this study, we evaluated the water quality and quantity impacts of five restoration and land protection scenarios in the Truckee River watershed, in the context of regulatory goals. We used spatially explicit biophysical models to create scenarios with targeted places where the greatest water quality and supply benefits could be realized. We quantified how these scenarios would impact the sediment load, nitrogen load, phosphorous load, and annual water yield with hydrologic models. The scenarios included a “Business as usual” based on existing conservation plans (2015–2020) and four additional model-generated scenarios: a “Targeted” scenario using the “Business as usual” budget, two targeted “Increased budget” scenarios, and a “Targeted-climate smart” scenario adjusted based on climate change. We expected the model-generated scenarios to have a greater impact on biophysical factors than “Business as Usual,” and that the “Increased budget” scenarios would reach water quality regulatory goals. The “Targeted” scenario produced a small improvement in water quality over “Business as usual,” but did not meet regulatory goals. The “Increased budget” scenarios could meet water quality goals in one additional subwatershed if the budget is allocated to the most cost-effective activities to reduce sediment. Incorporating climate change caused the targeted locations of activities to shift in space, but the overall impact on biophysical factors was similar. This study demonstrates how science-based planning with stakeholder input can inform conservation investments across existing boundaries and lead to greater water quality improvements. By identifying where to implement different types of conservation activities and how much to invest, as well as revealing shortcomings in current assumptions about which activities to implement, this study can enable smarter and more effective land management investments.
Stressors associated with human activities interact in complex ways to affect marine ecosystems, yet we lack spatially explicit assessments of cumulative impacts on ecologically and economically key ...components such as marine predators. Here we develop a metric of cumulative utilization and impact (CUI) on marine predators by combining electronic tracking data of eight protected predator species (n=685 individuals) in the California Current Ecosystem with data on 24 anthropogenic stressors. We show significant variation in CUI with some of the highest impacts within US National Marine Sanctuaries. High variation in underlying species and cumulative impact distributions means that neither alone is sufficient for effective spatial management. Instead, comprehensive management approaches accounting for both cumulative human impacts and trade-offs among multiple stressors must be applied in planning the use of marine resources.
Great leaps forward in scientific understanding are often spurred by innovations in technology. The explosion of miniature sensors that are driving the boom in consumer electronics, such as smart ...phones, gaming platforms, and wearable fitness devices, are now becoming available to ecologists for remotely monitoring the activities of wild animals. While half a century ago researchers were attaching balloons to the backs of seals to measure their movement, today ecologists have access to an arsenal of sensors that can continuously measure most aspects of an animal's state (e.g., location, behavior, caloric expenditure, interactions with other animals) and external environment (e.g., temperature, salinity, depth). This technology is advancing our ability to study animal ecology by allowing researchers to (1) answer questions about the physiology, behavior, and ecology of wild animals in situ that would have previously been limited to tests on model organisms in highly controlled settings, (2) study cryptic or wideâranging animals that have previously evaded investigation, and (3) develop and test entirely new theories. Here we explore how ecologists are using these tools to answer new questions about the physiological performance, energetics, foraging, migration, habitat selection, and sociality of wild animals, as well as collect data on the environments in which they live.
Ecosystem fragmentation and habitat loss have been the focus of landscape management due to restrictions on contemporary connectivity and dispersal of populations. Here, we used an individual ...approach to determine the drivers of genetic differentiation in caribou of the Canadian Rockies. We modelled the effects of isolation by distance, landscape resistance and predation risk and evaluated the consequences of individual migratory behaviour (seasonally migratory vs. sedentary) on gene flow in this threatened species. We applied distance‐based and reciprocal causal modelling approaches, testing alternative hypotheses on the effects of geographic, topographic, environmental and local population‐specific variables on genetic differentiation and relatedness among individuals. Overall, gene flow was restricted to neighbouring local populations, with spatial coordinates, local population size, groups and elevation explaining connectivity among individuals. Landscape resistance, geographic distances and predation risk were correlated with genetic distances, with correlations threefold higher for sedentary than for migratory caribou. As local caribou populations are increasingly isolated, our results indicate the need to address genetic connectivity, especially for populations with individuals displaying different migratory behaviours, whilst maintaining quality habitat both within and across the ranges of threatened populations.
In many of the world’s natural areas, humans now play, work, or live alongside wildlife with measurable effects on their physiology, behavior, and ecology. In particular, there is growing evidence of ...human-induced changes in the energetics, movement, and space use of many wildlife species, including large bodied predators, suggesting that fear of humans is a common phenomenon. For large carnivores, movement can be energetically expensive such that slight variations in the physical landscape can have profound impacts on the energy cost of movement. Large carnivores also face significant mortality risk from the human “super predator”, and resulting fear-based changes in space use may exert energetic costs by affecting how, where, and to what extent carnivores move when in proximity to humans. In this dissertation, I integrate these two factors to understand how competing demands around energy and risk shape the behavior and spatial ecology of free-ranging pumas (Puma concolor). In particular, I quantify the joint effect of the physical and risk landscapes on the fine-scale movement of pumas and evaluate whether short-term costs drive landscape-level patterns of space use. I also examine whether pumas optimize energy economy when traveling on challenging terrain and the degree to which they cope with increased movement costs near humans. Results show that the combination of the physical and risk landscapes drives short-term movement costs for pumas, and that short-term costs, particularly those stemming from human-induced risk, scale up to influence long-term space use at the landscape scale. Further, pumas use energetically efficient movement pathways where possible, however, in areas of increasing risk from humans they adopt energetically sub-optimal paths characterized by high energy but low efficiency movement behavior. This pattern reflects a trade-off between risk avoidance and the energy costs of movement that results in a constriction of overall space use for individuals experiencing consistently high movement costs. These findings demonstrates that, along with physical terrain, predation risk plays a primary role in shaping an animal’s “energy landscape” and suggests that fear of humans may be a major factor affecting wildlife movements worldwide. In addition, I evaluate the concurrent effects of the human footprint (development) and presence (activity) on wildlife behavior as well as model where and when the immediate presence of people, and thus disturbance, is likely to be greatest outside developed areas. Results demonstrate that, for many species, human presence and human footprint are not equivalent in their impacts on wildlife habitat use and behavior, with these two forms of anthropogenic disturbance in many cases having opposing effects on occupancy and/or activity. In particular, several carnivores, including pumas, avoided developed areas but were more likely to occupy sites with high human presence (potentially due to increased access to trails) by increasing nocturnality. By contrast, synanthropic species were more likely to occupy sites with higher building density, consistent with use of anthropogenic resources, but were substantially less detectable in areas with high human presence. Further, I found that human presence beyond developed areas to be extensive and concentrated in protected areas suggesting human impacts on wildlife may be more widespread in the region than anticipated. Given the prevalence of development and human activity in wildlands, complete avoidance of people is likely impossible for many species in the region and thus negative impacts on wildlife from human disturbance is likely high. The research presented in this dissertation provides an important extension of recent attempts to quantify the effects of the landscape on animal movement costs by highlighting that, without accounting for predation risk, “energetic landscapes” may overlook much of the energetic cost of navigating complex environments, especially those dominated by humans. In addition, human activity is increasing in most natural ecosystems, and this work underscores the need to rigorously quantify human activity and clarify its effects on wildlife behavior in landscapes where presence of people is widespread.
Abstract
Aim
We investigated the effects of disease on the local abundances and distributions of species at continental scales by examining the impacts of white‐nose syndrome, an infectious disease ...of hibernating bats, which has recently emerged in
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merica.
Location
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merica and
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urope.
Methods
We used four decades of population counts from 1108 populations to compare the local abundances of bats in
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merica before and after the emergence of white‐nose syndrome to the situation in
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urope, where the disease is endemic. We also examined the probability of local extinction for six species of hibernating bats in eastern
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merica and assessed the influence of winter colony size prior to the emergence of white‐nose syndrome on the risk of local extinction.
Results
White‐nose syndrome has caused a 10‐fold decrease in the abundance of bats at hibernacula in
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merica, eliminating large differences in species abundance patterns that existed between
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urope and
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merica prior to disease emergence. White‐nose syndrome has also caused extensive local extinctions (up to 69% of sites in a single species). For five out of six species, the risk of local extinction was lower in larger winter populations, as expected from theory, but for the most affected species, the northern long‐eared bat (
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yotis septentrionalis
), extinction risk was constant across winter colony sizes, demonstrating that disease can sometimes eliminate numerical rarity as the dominant driver of extinction risk by driving both small and large populations extinct.
Main conclusions
Species interactions, including disease, play an underappreciated role in macroecological patterns and influence broad patterns of species abundance, occurrence and extinction.
The spatial scale at which organisms respond to human activity can affect both ecological function and conservation planning. Yet little is known regarding the spatial scale at which distinct ...behaviors related to reproduction and survival are impacted by human interference. Here we provide a novel approach to estimating the spatial scale at which a top predator, the puma (Puma concolor), responds to human development when it is moving, feeding, communicating, and denning. We find that reproductive behaviors (communication and denning) require at least a 4 larger buffer from human development than non-reproductive behaviors (movement and feeding). In addition, pumas give a wider berth to types of human development that provide a more consistent source of human interference (neighborhoods) than they do to those in which human presence is more intermittent (arterial roads with speeds >35 mph). Neighborhoods were a deterrent to pumas regardless of behavior, while arterial roads only deterred pumas when they were communicating and denning. Female pumas were less deterred by human development than males, but they showed larger variation in their responses overall. Our behaviorally explicit approach to modeling animal response to human activity can be used as a novel tool to assess habitat quality, identify wildlife corridors, and mitigate human-wildlife conflict.
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