Conservation planning addresses the development and expansion of protected areas and requires data on for instance species, habitats, and biodiversity. Data on threats is often minimal, although ...necessary in conservation planning. In principle, threats should guide which conservation actions to take and where, and how to allocate resources. The lack of threat information may also limit the validity of areas to be conserved, if the condition of areas is degraded by threats unknown. The protocol described here outlines the methodology for a systematic review to explore how threats are theoretically and methodologically understood and used in conservation plans across freshwater, marine and terrestrial environments. Our primary research question is: how have threats informed conservation planning? Studies will be categorized according to the types of threats and conservation features used, theoretical and methodological approaches applied, geographical context, and biome. The results are expected to increase our understanding about how threats can and should be addressed in conservation planning.
Coastal mineral resources are promoted as a sustainable option to meet increasing metal demands. However, shallow-water mining contradicts international conservation and sustainability goals and its ...regulative legislation is still being developed. In the absence of thorough comparisons of different mining practices, there are no justifications in favour of shallow-water mining.
Conservation policies and environmental impact assessments commonly target threatened species and habitats. Nevertheless, macroecological research provides reasons why also common species should be ...considered. We investigate the consequences of focussing solely on legally protected species and habitats in a spatial conservation planning context using a comprehensive, benthic marine data set from the northern Baltic Sea. Using spatial prioritization and surrogacy analysis, we show that the common approach in conservation planning, where legally listed threatened species and habitats are the focus of conservation efforts, could lead to poor outcomes for common species (and therefore biodiversity as a whole), allowing them to decline in the future. If conservation efforts were aimed solely at threatened species, common species would experience a loss of 62% coverage. In contrast, if conservation plans were based only on common species, threatened species would suffer a loss of 1%. Threatened species are rare and their ecological niches distinct, making them poor surrogates for biodiversity. The best results are achieved by unified planning for all species and habitats. The minimal step towards acknowledging common species in conservation planning would be the inclusion of the richness of common species, complemented by information on indicator species or species of high importance for ecosystem functioning. The trade-off between planning for rare and common species should be evaluated, to minimize losses to biodiversity.
Spatial (conservation) prioritization integrates data on the distributions of biodiversity, costs and threats. It produces spatial priority maps that can support ecologically well‐informed land use ...planning in general, including applications in environmental impact avoidance outside protected areas. Here we describe novel methods that significantly increase the utility of spatial priority ranking in large analyses and with interactive planning.
Methodologically, we describe a novel algorithm for implementing spatial priority ranking, novel alternatives for balancing between biodiversity features, fast tiled FFT transforms for connectivity calculations based on dispersal kernels, and a novel analysis output, the flexibility map.
Marking by N the number of landscape elements with data, the new prioritization algorithm has time scaling of less than Nlog2N instead of the N2 of its predecessor. We illustrate feasible computation times with data up to billions of elements in size, implying capacity for global analysis at a resolution higher than 0.25 km2, or close to 1‐ha resolution for a continent.
The algorithmic improvements described here bring about improved capacity to implement decision support for real‐world spatial conservation planning problems. The methods described here will be at the technical core of forthcoming software releases.
Context
Spatial prioritization is an analytical approach that can be used to provide decision support in spatial conservation planning (SCP), and in tasks such as conservation area network design, ...zoning, planning for impact avoidance or targeting of habitat management or restoration.
Methods
Based on literature, we summarize the role of connectivity as one component of relevance in the broad structure of spatial prioritization in both marine and terrestrial realms.
Results
Partially diffuse, directed connectivity can be approximated in Zonation-based multi-criteria SCP by applying hydrodynamic modelling, knowledge on species traits, and information on species occurrences and quality of habitats. Sources and destinations of larvae or propagules can be identified as separate spatial layers and taken into account in full-scale spatial prioritization involving data on biota, as well as economic factors, threats, and administrative constraints. While population connectivity is an important determinant of metapopulation persistence, the importance of marine connectivity depends on species traits and the marine environment studied. At one end of the continuum are species that occupy isolated habitats and have long pelagic larval durations in deeper sea areas with strong directional currents. At the other extreme are species with short pelagic durations that occupy fragmented habitats in shallow topographically complex sea areas with weak and variable currents.
Conclusions
We conclude that the same objectives, methods, and analysis structures are applicable to both terrestrial and marine spatial prioritization. Marine spatial conservation planning, marine spatial planning, marine zoning, etc., can be implemented using methods originated in the terrestrial realm of planning.
Listeria monocytogenes is a facultative pathogenic saprophyte. It can cause a severe disease, listeriosis, which is currently considered to be one of the leading food-borne diseases worldwide. ...L. monocytogenes can be found in raw and processed foods. Particularly ready-to-eat (RTE) foods are sources of Listeria infections. RTE foods have a long shelf life, because they are stored at low temperatures and in vacuum or modified atmosphere packages. Additionally, they are usually consumed without any additional cooking. As L. monocytogenes can multiply over a wide range of pH and osmolarity, at low temperatures, and both under aerobic and anaerobic conditions, this is a particular concern and necessitates control along the food chain. A wide variety of culture and alternative methods have been developed in order to detect or quantify this pathogen in food. Here are presented the most rapid and sensitive methods (<48 h) found in the literature that have been used with artificially and/or naturally contaminated food samples. In addition to being much more rapid, many of them were as sensitive as the standard methods. However, many methods still need to be more thoroughly validated.
•Overview of currently available, rapid (<48 h) Listeria monocytogenes detection methods.•Focus on naturally or artificially contaminated food and environmental samples.•Summary of the most rapid and sensitive methods.•Many methods as sensitive as standard methods, but much faster.
Predictive species distribution models are mostly based on statistical dependence between environmental and distributional data and therefore may fail to account for physiological limits and ...biological interactions that are fundamental when modelling species distributions under future climate conditions. Here, we developed a state-of-the-art method integrating biological theory with survey and experimental data in a way that allows us to explicitly model both physical tolerance limits of species and inherent natural variability in regional conditions and thereby improve the reliability of species distribution predictions under future climate conditions. By using a macroalga-herbivore association (Fucus vesiculosus - Idotea balthica) as a case study, we illustrated how salinity reduction and temperature increase under future climate conditions may significantly reduce the occurrence and biomass of these important coastal species. Moreover, we showed that the reduction of herbivore occurrence is linked to reduction of their host macroalgae. Spatial predictive modelling and experimental biology have been traditionally seen as separate fields but stronger interlinkages between these disciplines can improve species distribution projections under climate change. Experiments enable qualitative prior knowledge to be defined and identify cause-effect relationships, and thereby better foresee alterations in ecosystem structure and functioning under future climate conditions that are not necessarily seen in projections based on non-causal statistical relationships alone.
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are considered to be an essential tool for safeguarding marine biodiversity. Sustainable use of the oceans and seas relies on the benefits of MPAs, now even more than ...ever, due to environmental degradation and anthropogenic impacts on marine ecosystems. Various international and regional agreements require that nations designate sufficiently marine areas under protection. MPAs are powerful tools, if coherent and ecologically efficient. Assessing the functionality of MPA networks is challenging, unless extensive data on underwater species and habitats is available. We evaluated the efficiency of the Finnish MPA network by utilizing a unique new dataset of ~140 000 samples, collected by the Finnish Inventory Programme for the Underwater Marine Environment VELMU. For the evaluation of MPAs, we used comprehensive data on: species distribution and abundance models for over 100 taxa, IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, fish reproduction areas, EU Habitats Directive Annex I Habitats and human pressures. Using the quantitative conservation planning and spatial prioritization method Zonation, we identified sites of high biodiversity and developed a balanced ranking of underwater conservation values. Only 27 % of the ecologically most valuable features were covered by the current MPA network. Based on the analyses a set of expansion sites were identified, complementing the ecological and geographical gaps in the current MPA network. Increasing the protected sea area by just one percent with the selection of the most valuable areas indicated by the analysis, the protection level of biological features could be significantly increased. We also discovered that the EU Directive habitats are not in their present form functional proxies for marine benthic species. This suggests that MPA networks based on habitats are not sufficient for safeguarding marine biodiversity in the northern Baltic Sea. Furthermore, the produced rankings are essentially environmental value maps, they can be used in ecosystem-based marine spatial planning and impact avoidance, including, e.g., siting of wind energy or aquaculture. Our approach and analytical procedure can be replicated elsewhere in the Baltic Sea and in other marine areas around the world, provided sufficient data exists.
Background Protected areas (PAs) have become one of the most important instruments to preserve nature and, when effective, can significantly reduce human pressure and derived threats to biodiversity. ...However, evidence suggests that despite the growing number and coverage of PAs worldwide, biodiversity trends continue to deteriorate, and human pressure increases outside and inside PAs. While many studies have focused on the effectiveness of PAs in maintaining ecological features, less attention has been given to the threat reduction potential of PAs, despite threats being one of the main factors leading to the need to conserve biodiversity. It is therefore essential to understand PAs' role in addressing threats. In this paper, we describe the protocol for conducting a systematic review to explore and review the evidence surrounding the effectiveness of PAs as an intervention to reduce threats to biodiversity. We will examine the role of PAs in addressing several types of threats. Thus, our primary research question is: How effective are protected areas for reducing threats to biodiversity? Methods This protocol follows the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence guidelines for evidence synthesis and complies with the ROSES (Reporting Standards for Systematic Evidence Synthesis) reporting framework. We will use a comprehensive search, covering databases such as Web of Science--core collection and Scopus and organizational websites to capture relevant grey literature. Our search terms and strategies aim to find studies assessing change of threats given in PAs at any scale and ecosystem type capturing literature in English. Independent reviewers will screen search results at the title--abstract, and full text levels. In order to evaluate the relevance of the evidence, we will use the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence Critical Appraisal Tool. The results will be presented as a narrative synthesis supported by quantitative data. Additionally, a meta-analysis, if possible, will be performed. Keywords: Protected areas, Conservation, Threats to biodiversity, Protected areas effectiveness, Threat reduction in protected areas
Hypoxia is an increasing problem in marine ecosystems around the world. While major advances have been made in our understanding of the drivers of hypoxia, challenges remain in describing oxygen ...dynamics in coastal regions. The complexity of many coastal areas and lack of detailed in situ data have hindered the development of models describing oxygen dynamics at a sufficient spatial resolution for efficient management actions to take place. It is well known that the enclosed nature of seafloors and reduced water mixing facilitates hypoxia formation, but the degree to which topography contributes to hypoxia formation and small-scale variability of coastal hypoxia has not been previously quantified. We developed simple proxies of seafloor heterogeneity and modeled oxygen deficiency in complex coastal areas in the northern Baltic Sea. According to our models, topographical parameters alone explained ∼80 % of hypoxia occurrences. The models also revealed that less than 25 % of the studied seascapes were prone to hypoxia during late summer (August–September). However, large variation existed in the spatial and temporal patterns of hypoxia, as certain areas were prone to occasional severe hypoxia (O2 < 2 mg L−1), while others were more susceptible to recurrent moderate hypoxia (O2 < 4.6 mg L−1). Areas identified as problematic in our study were characterized by low exposure to wave forcing, high topographic shelter from surrounding areas and isolation from the open sea, all contributing to longer water residence times in seabed depressions. Deviations from this topographical background are probably caused by strong currents or high nutrient loading, thus improving or worsening oxygen status, respectively. In some areas, connectivity with adjacent deeper basins may also influence coastal oxygen dynamics. Developed models could boost the performance of biogeochemical models, aid developing nutrient abatement measures and pinpoint areas where management actions are most urgently needed.
PDF
