Human activity causes abrupt changes in resource availability across the landscape. In order to persist in human-altered landscapes organisms need to shift their habitat use accordingly. Little is ...known about the mechanisms by which whole communities persist in human-altered landscapes, including the role of complementary habitat use. We define complementary habitat use as the use of different habitats at different times by the same group of species during the course of their activity period. We hypothesize that complementary habitat use is a mechanism through which native bee species persist in human-altered landscapes. To test this idea, we studied wild bee communities in agro-natural landscapes and explored their community-level patterns of habitat and resource use over space and time. The study was conducted in six agro-natural landscapes in the eastern United States, each containing three main bee habitat types (natural habitat, agricultural fields, and old fields). Each of the three habitats exhibited a unique seasonal pattern in amount, diversity, and composition of floral resources, and together they created phenological complementarity in foraging resources for bees. Individual bee species as well as the bee community responded to these spatiotemporal patterns in floral availability and exhibited a parallel pattern of complementary habitat use. The majority of wild bee species, including all the main crop visitors, used fallow areas within crops early in the season, shifted to crops in mid-season, and used old-field habitats later in the season. The natural-forest habitat supported very limited number of bees, mostly visitors of non-crop plants. Old fields are thus an important feature in these arable landscapes for maintaining crop pollination services. Our study provides a detailed examination of how shifts in habitat and resource use may enable bees to persist in highly dynamic agro-natural landscapes, and points to the need for a broad cross-habitat perspective in managing these landscapes.
Tsunami has changed the landscape of the area, the environmental order (spatial planning), and the structure of the Ulee Lheue Coastal area. The tsunami threat is substantial since the site's ...position is very close to the source of the disaster. The shape of the area is flat and does not have any protection (both natural and structural) to protect the land. Planning criteria in tsunami areas are essential to know and learn from previous disasters. Tsunami disasters have different characteristics in each site; thus, planning is mismanaged and ineffectively conducted. Planning is performed by applying the tsunami mitigation approach and the theory of landscape connectivity. One of the mitigation plans is planning a natural landscape in the form of vegetation. The vegetation in the research case study is in the coastal area of Uleu Lheue, which was still lacking after the tsunami hit this area in 2004. There are only mangroves in some areas, sea pine, tamarind trees, and low shrubs. Therefore, in planning a mitigation-based site, it is necessary to arrange vegetation to reduce the impact of a tsunami and condition the environment around the area. This research aims to integrate natural landscape planning based on tsunami mitigation and find natural vegetation or natural protection as a tsunami disaster mitigation and as a criterion in planning a coastal area based on tsunami disaster mitigation. From the results of the tsunami study, it is recommended that the case study area be freed from new development and mitigation strategies with buffers in the form of using vegetation zones (mangroves and the like). The planning applied using vegetation indicated to reduce the effects of the tsunami that hit the design area, among others, the tree category: Pandanus Odoratissimus, Casuarina equisetifolia, Hibiscus Tiliaceus, Tamarindus indica, Anacardium occidentale, bakau, nypah and waru.
The article presents the results of systematisation and mapping of the natural landscapes of Belarus, which domestic researchers have been engaged since the 1960s. During this time, considerable ...cartographic and literary material concerning the peculiarities of distribution, a set of classification units and zoning units, approaches to their allocation and mapping has been accumulated. However, the appearance at the beginning of the 21st century of new research methods along with the possibility of using modern technologies determined the need to refine and detail many cartographic landscape developments. At the same period (2006–2015), a series of 1 : 500 000 scale wall-mounted physical and geographical maps was created in Belarus and updated information was obtained about the features of the territorial distribution of a number of components of nature. The appearance of such information, along with the available data of remote sensing of the Earth and the possibility of application of geoinformation technologies, also allowed the development of new, detailed versions of maps of natural landscapes, both for institutions of higher and general secondary education using 6 classification units. One of them – map for institutions of higher education on a scale of 1: 500 000 – served as the basis for the analysis and identification of patterns of spatial distribution of natural territorial complexes in the rank of subtypes, groups of genera, genera and species of landscapes. An increase in the number of main classification units was found – genera (from 20 to 22) and species (from 105 to 107) – within the 2 subtypes, as well as a significant change in their area, boundaries and features of spatial distribution. The obtained results served as a basis for clarifying the distribution of regional complexes, which led to the compilation of a new version of the landscape zoning scheme. It was revealed that the number of provinces remained the same, their borders were clarified (the areas changed within 1–5 %) and names. The number of landscape districts has decreased from 56 to 53, their borders, areas and names have changed significantly.
Visual aesthetic evaluations, which impact decision-making and well-being, recruit the ventral visual pathway, subcortical reward circuitry, and parts of the medial prefrontal cortex overlapping with ...the default-mode network (DMN). However, it is unknown whether these networks represent aesthetic appeal in a domain-general fashion, independent of domain-specific representations of stimulus content (artworks versus architecture or natural landscapes). Using a classification approach, we tested whether the DMN or ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOT) contains a domain-general representation of aesthetic appeal. Classifiers were trained on multivoxel functional MRI response patterns collected while observers made aesthetic judgments about images from one aesthetic domain. Classifier performance (high vs. low aesthetic appeal) was then tested on response patterns from held-out trials from the same domain to derive a measure of domain-specific coding, or from a different domain to derive a measure of domain-general coding. Activity patterns in category-selective VOT contained a degree of domain-specific information about aesthetic appeal, but did not generalize across domains. Activity patterns from the DMN, however, were predictive of aesthetic appeal across domains. Importantly, the ability to predict aesthetic appeal varied systematically; predictions were better for observers who gave more extreme ratings to images subsequently labeled as “high” or “low.” These findings support a model of aesthetic appreciation whereby domain-specific representations of the content of visual experiences in VOT feed in to a “core” domain-general representation of visual aesthetic appeal in the DMN. Whole-brain “searchlight” analyses identified additional prefrontal regions containing information relevant for appreciation of cultural artifacts (artwork and architecture) but not landscapes.
Wilderness areas are natural landscape elements that are relatively undisrupted by human activity and play a critical role in maintaining ecological equilibrium, preserving naturalness, and ensuring ...ecosystem resilience. Since 2000, monitoring of global wilderness areas has increased owing to the availability of spatial map data and remote sensing imagery related to human activity and/or human footprint. Progress has been made in the remote sensing of wilderness areas by relying on available historical literature (e.g., published papers, books, and reports). However, to our knowledge, a synthesis of wilderness area research from a remote sensing perspective has not yet been performed. In this preliminary review, we discuss the concept of wilderness in different historical eras and systematically summarize dynamic wilderness monitoring at local, national, and global scales, available remotely sensed indicators, disparities and commonalities in identification methods, and mapping uncertainties. Finally, since this field remains in its initial stage owing to a lack of unified standards and vertical/horizontal comparisons, we present insights into future research directions, particularly with regard to remote sensing. The findings of this review may help to improve the overall understanding of current wilderness patterns (i.e., increases/decreases) and the mechanisms by which they change, as well as provide guidance for global nature conservation programs.
•Wilderness is a flexible concept that evolves to fit the changing times.•Reviewed progresses in mapping wilderness at different scales.•Wilderness identification at different scales is characterized by relatively consistent methods and attributes.•Integrating geo-big data with participatory methods is a useful direction for wilderness mapping.
Literature about health group walks typically focuses on explaining health and wellbeing outcomes. Less attention has been paid to how encounters with the natural landscape are experienced during ...these walks. This paper is based on an ethnographic study of a health walk group in a rural area of the UK that encapsulated health, social and environmental connections. It examines how walkers describe and make sense of their connections with natural landscapes. Mobility practices and contingent factors are found to mediate walkers' exposure to and experience of the natural landscape. Theories underpinning connections with the natural landscape and place are used to review the findings. Implications for health walks and further research are considered.
Landscapes are shaped over time by the changing imaginaries that result from new representations of nature and the value associated with it. This paper discusses the evolving discourses which have ...shaped the perception of the landscape in two socially and ecologically significant contexts in Chile. The first is the central-southern region of the country, a large portion of which is now devoted to commercial forestry plantations. The second is the Patagonia-Aysén region, where since the 1990s, colonization of a land defined by a tradition of livestock rearing has evolved into a process epitomized by the slogan "Aysén, Life Reserve." The representation that was made of central-southern Chile in the 50' and 60' as a deforested and degraded land was the justification for promoting a new form of land occupation: the monoculture forest, designed and executed by a specific law. Forty years on from the passing of this law, the plantations of central-southern Chile have undergone a process of naturalization. In this case, the exaltation of nature has been permanent (before and after the changes doing by this law). The only thing that changes is the definition of nature, which ended up including forest plantations. That is, discourses influence perceptions and these lead to new practices in the study area and beyond. In Patagonia-Aysén, by the other side, there has been a marked shift in the rhetoric surrounding land. This has been particularly noticeable in the case of government bodies and private ecotourism companies, which have constructed an imaginary in line with a new model of economic development for the area. In a break with tradition, both the public and private sectors are beginning to shift their investment away from agricultural and livestock exploitation and toward ecotourism and conservation projects. In both cases, we analyse the manner in which transformations in perceptions and representations of landscape bring about new forms of land use, and how new focuses of value and social interest, forged within wider environmental discourses, have brought with them unexpected social consequences, like depopulation, economic transformations, cultural changes, etc. Thus, the aim of this work is to expose and discuss the reality and scope of new green discourses and their influence on the perception of natural landscapes in the Chilean neoliberal context.
Human activity causes abrupt changes in resource availability across the landscape. In order to persist in human-altered landscapes organisms need to shift their habitat use accordingly. Little is ...known about the mechanisms by which whole communities persist in human-altered landscapes, including the role of complementary habitat use. We define complementary habitat use as the use of different habitats at different times by the same group of species during the course of their activity period. We hypothesize that complementary habitat use is a mechanism through which native bee species persist in human-altered landscapes. To test this idea, we studied wild bee communities in agro-natural landscapes and explored their community-level patterns of habitat and resource use over space and time. The study was conducted in six agro-natural landscapes in the eastern United States, each containing three main bee habitat types (natural habitat, agricultural fields, and old fields). Each of the three habitats exhibited a unique seasonal pattern in amount, diversity, and composition of floral resources, and together they created phenological complementarity in foraging resources for bees. Individual bee species as well as the bee community responded to these spatiotemporal patterns in floral availability and exhibited a parallel pattern of complementary habitat use. The majority of wild bee species, including all the main crop visitors, used fallow areas within crops early in the season, shifted to crops in mid-season, and used old-field habitats later in the season. The natural-forest habitat supported very limited number of bees, mostly visitors of non-crop plants. Old fields are thus an important feature in these arable landscapes for maintaining crop pollination services. Our study provides a detailed examination of how shifts in habitat and resource use may enable bees to persist in highly dynamic agro-natural landscapes, and points to the need for a broad cross-habitat perspective in managing these landscapes.
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