Can a problem-solving approach strengthen landscape ecology’s contribution to sustainable landscape planning?

The need to avert unacceptable and irreversible environmental change is the most urgent challenge facing society. Landscape ecology has the capacity to help address these challenges by providing spatially-explicit solutions to landscape sustainability problems. However, despite a large body of research, the real impact of landscape ecology on sustainable landscape management and planning is still limited. In this paper, we first outline a typology of landscape sustainability problems which serves to guide landscape ecologists in the problem-solving process. We then outline a formal problem-solving approach, whereby landscape ecologists can better bring about disciplinary integration, a consideration of multiple landscape functions over long time scales, and a focus on decision making. This framework explicitly considers multiple ecological objectives and socio-economic constraints, the spatial allocation of scarce resources to address these objectives, and the timing of the implementation of management actions. It aims to make explicit the problem-solving objectives, management options and the system understanding required to make sustainable landscape planning decisions. We propose that by adopting a more problem-solving approach, landscape ecologists can make a significant contribution towards realising sustainable future landscapes.     

Assessing land-use impacts on biodiversity using an expert systems tool

Habitat alteration, in the form of land-use development, is a leading cause of biodiversity loss in the U.S. and elsewhere. Although statutes in the U.S. may require consideration of biodiversity in local land-use planning and regulation, local governments lack the data, resources, and expertise to routinely consider biotic impacts that result from permitted land uses. We hypothesized that decision support systems could aid solution of this problem. We developed a pilot biodiversity expert systems tool (BEST) to test that hypothesis and learn what additional scientific and technological advancements are required for broad implementation of such a system. BEST uses data from the U.S. Geological Survey's Gap Analysis Program (GAP) and other data in a desktop GIS environment. The system provides predictions of conflict between proposed land uses and biotic elements and is intended for use at the start of the development review process. Key challenges were the development of categorization systems that relate named land-use types to ecological impacts, and relate sensitivities of biota to ecological impact levels. Although the advent of GAP and sophisticated desktop GIS make such a system feasible for broad implementation, considerable ongoing research is required to make the results of such a system scientifically sound, informative, and reliable for the regulatory process. We define a role for local government involvement in biodiversity impact assessment, the need for a biodiversity decision support system, the development of a prototype system, and scientific needs for broad implementation of a robust and reliable system.     

Expanding the conservation toolbox: conservation planning of multifunctional landscapes

An area of convergence appears to be emerging between the approaches of conservation planning and the concepts of multifunctional landscapes, which if exploited correctly may assist in overcoming the resource and other constraints faced by biodiversity conservation, while at the same time furthering the aims of multifunctional landscapes to improve production abilities and overall sustainability. Using a multi-zone conservation planning approach, we explore the conservation costs, benefits to biodiversity conservation and possible ecosystem service payments associated with various land-use configurations, in the Little Karoo of South Africa, in order to develop and showcase a multifunctional landscape planning approach and its data requirements, as well as the possible cost savings to conservation agencies. The study uses four conservation planning scenarios, five land-use types, their conservation costs and biodiversity benefits, as well as possible payments from carbon sequestration and tourism. We find that the costs and biodiversity benefits associated with different land-uses varies substantially between land-uses, and also spatially within a land-use type. By incorporating this variation into a multi-zone conservation planning approach land-uses can be allocated in a way that achieves biodiversity targets while at the same time reducing costs by up to 50?% when compared with traditional binary approaches to conservation. Despite some challenges presented by cost and ecosystem service value data and the determination of land-use impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services, the ability of conservation planning approaches to reflect differential contributions of particular land-uses to biodiversity targets and ecosystem services holds much potential for conservation planning, for multifunctional landscape objectives and for growing the resources and partnerships available to the establishment of sustainable and resilient landscapes.     

Addressing the interplay of poverty and the ecology of landscapes: a Grand Challenge Topic for landscape ecologists?

We argue for the landscape ecology community to adopt the study of poverty and the ecology of landscapes as a Grand Challenge Topic. We present five areas of possible research foci that we believe that landscape ecologists can join with other social and environmental scientists to increase scientific understanding of this pressing issue: (1) scale and poverty; (2) landscape structure and human well-being; (3) social and ecological processes linked to spatial patterns in landscapes; (4) conservation and poverty, and (5) applying the landscape ecologist’s toolkit. A brief set of recommendations for landscape ecologists is also presented. These include the need to utilize broad frameworks that integrate social and ecological variables, build capacity to do this kind of work through the development of strong collaborations of researchers in developed and developing countries, create databases in international locations where extreme poverty exists, and create a new generation of researchers capable of addressing this pressing social and environmental issue.     

Relating tradable credits for biodiversity to sustainability criteria in a dynamic landscape

Tradable biodiversity credit systems provide flexible means to resolve conflicts between development and conservation land-use options for habitats occupied by threatened or endangered species. We describe an approach to incorporate the influence of habitat fragmentation into the conservation value of tradable credits. Habitat fragmentation decreases gene flow, increases rates of genetic drift and inbreeding, and increases probabilities of patch extinction. Importantly, tradable credit systems will change the level of fragmentation over time for small and/or declining populations. We apply landscape equivalency analysis (LEA), a generalizable, landscape-scale accounting system that assigns conservation value to habitat patches based on patch contributions to abundance and genetic variance at landscape scales. By evaluating habitat trades using two models that vary the relationship between dispersal behaviors and landscape patterns, we show that LEA provides a novel method for limiting access to habitat at the landscape-scale, recognizing that the appropriate amount of migration needed to supplement patch recruitment and to offset drift and inbreeding will vary as landscape pattern changes over time. We also found that decisions based on probabilities of persistence alone would ignore changes in migration, genetic drift, and patch extinction that result from habitat trades. The general principle of LEA is that habitat patches traded should make at least equivalent contributions to rates of recruitment and migration estimated at a landscape scale. Traditional approaches for assessing the “take” and “jeopardy” standards under the Endangered Species Act based on changes in abundance and probability of persistence may be inadequate to prevent trades that increase fragmentation.     

Impact of land-use change on biodiversity and ecosystem services in the Chilean temperate forests

Context

Land-use change impacts biodiversity and ecosystem services, which are intrinsically related. There is a serious lack of knowledge concerning on how land-use change affects this relationship at landscape level, where the greatest impacts have been reported. A proper knowledge of that relationship would provide crucial information for planning conservation strategies. The forest landscape of southern Chile, which includes Valdivian Temperate Forest, has been designated as a hotspot for biodiversity conservation. However, this landscape has been transformed by land-use change.

Objective

We evaluated the impact of land-use change on the spatial patterns of the diversity of native forest habitat and the influence of these impacts on the provision of the ecosystem services water supply, erosion control, and organic matter accumulation from 1986 to 2011.

Methods

The evaluation, at the landscape level, was carried out using satellite images, landscape metrics, spatially explicit models and generalized linear models. Results: We found that the area loss of native forest habitat was 12%, the number patches of native forest habitat increased more than 150% and the Shannon diversity index decreased by 0.20. The largest decrease in the provision of services was recorded for erosion control (346%), and the smallest for water supply (11%).

Conclusions

The loss of provision of the ecosystem services can be explained by the interaction between the area loss, increase in the number patches and diversity loss. We recommend that the conservation planning strategies should consider the current landscape configuration, complemented with land-use planning.

     

Comparative influence of isolation,landscape, and wetland characteristics on egg-mass abundance of two pool-breeding amphibian species

The distribution and abundance of species are shaped by local and landscape processes, but the dominant processes may differ with scale and increasing human disturbance. We investigated population responses of two pool-breeding amphibian species to differences in local and landscape characteristics in suburbanizing, southeastern New Hampshire, USA. In 2003 and 2004, we sampled 49 vernal pools for spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) and wood frog (Lithobates sylvaticus) egg masses. Using egg masses as a proxy for breeding-female population size, we examined the relative influence of five land-use and three isolation variables at two scales (300 and 1000 m) and five wetland variables on egg-mass abundance. For both species, road density at the landscape scale (1000 m) and hydroperiod most strongly predicted egg-mass abundance, with abundance decreasing as roads became denser and hydroperiods shortened. Wetland isolation was also an important predictor, with abundance greatest at more isolated pools, suggesting that both species concentrate at isolated pools when alternative breeding sites are scarce. Surprisingly, no 300-m parameters were strongly associated with salamander egg-mass abundance, whereas several landscape parameters were. In suburbanizing areas, it is at least as important to consider landscape-scale road density as to consider hydroperiod when designing conservation plans for these species. Furthermore, both isolated and clustered pools provide these species important habitat and may require protection. Finally, the conceptual framework for spotted-salamander management must be expanded so that spatial configuration at the landscape scale becomes a regular, integrated component of conservation planning for this species.     

Human appropriated net primary productivity as a metric for land use planning: a case study in the US Great Lakes region

Context

Human appropriation of net primary productivity (HANPP) is employed as a measure of human pressures on biodiversity, though largely at global and national scales rather than landscape to regional scales where many conservation decisions take place. Though gaining in familiarity, HANPP is not widely utilized by conservation professionals.

Objectives

This study, encompassing the US side of the Great Lakes basin, examines how regional distributions of HANPP relate to landscape-based biodiversity proxy metrics used by conservation professionals. Our objectives were (1) to quantify the HANPP of managed lands at the county scale; and (2) to assess spatial patterns of HANPP in comparison to landscape diversity and local habitat connectedness to determine if the metric can provide useful information to conservation professionals.

Methods

We aggregated forest and cropland NPP data between 2005 and 2015 and coupled it with previously published potential vegetation maps to quantify the HANPP of each county in the study region. We mapped the outputs at 500 m resolution to analyze spatial relationships between HANPP and landscape metrics of biodiversity potential.

Results

Area-weighted HANPP across our study region averaged 45% of NPP, down to 4.9% in forest-dominated counties. Greater HANPP correlated with reduced landscape diversity (p?<?0.001, r²?=?0.28) and reduced local habitat connectedness (p?<?0.001, r²?=?0.36).

Conclusion

HANPP could be used as an additional tool for conservation professionals during regional-scale land use planning or conservation decision-making, particularly in mixed-use landscapes that both support important biodiversity and have high levels of primary production harvest.

     

城市滨水景观设计方法探析——以新绛新城区滨水景观设计为例

城市滨水景观区是反映城市独特风貌的区域之一,滨水区景观设计是城市生态规划和城市空间系统规划的重要部分。本文以山西新绛新城区滨水景观设计为例,旨在研究有关滨水景观设计的原则和方法,打造具有地方特色及人性化的景观环境。     

Urban landscape sustainability and resilience: the promise and challenges of integrating ecology with urban planning and design

The twenty-first century global population will be increasingly urban-focusing the sustainability challenge on cities and raising new challenges to address urban resilience capacity. Landscape ecologists are poised to contribute to this challenge in a transdisciplinary mode in which science and research are integrated with planning policies and design applications. Five strategies to build resilience capacity and transdisciplinary collaboration are proposed: biodiversity; urban ecological networks and connectivity; multifunctionality; redundancy and modularization, adaptive design. Key research questions for landscape ecologists, planners and designers are posed to advance the development of knowledge in an adaptive mode.     

Changes in land-use/land-cover patterns in Italy and their implications for biodiversity conservation

Land-use/land-cover change is the most important factor in causing biodiversity loss. The Mediterranean region has been affected by antropic disturbance for thousands of years, and is, nowadays, one of the most significantly altered hotspots in the world. However, in the last years a significant increase in forest cover has been measured. These new patterns are independent from planned conservation strategies and appear to have a substantial impact on landscapes and biodiversity. We used three land-use/land-cover maps (from 1960 to 2000) covering the Italian peninsula to analyze the pattern of land-use/land-cover change. We measured an increase in forests, especially in mountains, an increase in artificial areas, especially in coastal zones, and a decrease in pastures. Intensively cultivated areas showed a limited decrease while extensively cultivated ones showed a marked decrease. In the same period mammal and bird species followed a similar pattern, with forest birds, ungulates and carnivores increasing, and typically Mediterranean species decreasing. We suggest that our results may provide important information, which could be useful for conservation planning in the entire Mediterranean hotspot. We suggest that an increasing conservation effort should be made to protect the Mediterranean-type forests and scrublands, as well as traditional agricultural practices. Moreover, future conservation efforts should consider the broad socio-political and ecological processes that are most likely to occur across the whole hotspot, especially along coastal areas, and the network of protected areas should be functionally integrated in a conservation strategy that includes the human-dominated landscape.     

Developing a multi-scale visualisation framework for use in climate change response

Climate change is predicted to impact countries, regions and localities differently. However, common to the predicted impacts is a global trend toward increased levels of carbon dioxide and rising sea levels. Governments and communities need to take into account the likely impacts of climate on the landscape, both built and natural. There is a growing and significant body of climate change research. Much of this information produced by domain experts for a range of disciplines is complex and difficult for planners, decision makers and communities to act upon. The need to communicate often complex scientific information which can be used to assist in the planning cycle is a key challenge. This paper draws from a range of international examples of the use of visualisation in the context of landscape planning to communicate climate change impact and adaptation options within the context of the planning cycle. Missing from the literature, however, is a multi-scalar approach which allows decision makers, planners and communities to seamlessly explore scenarios at their special level of interest, as well as to collectively understand what is driving these at a larger scale, and what the implications are at ever more local levels. Visualisation tools such as digital globes provide one way to bring together multi-scaled spatial–temporal datasets. We present an initial development with this goal in mind. Future research is required to determine the best tools for communicating particular complex scientific data and also to better understand how visualisation can be used to improve the landscape planning process.     

Opportunities and challenges for mainstreaming ecosystem services in development planning: perspectives from a landscape level

Despite much progress in ecosystem services research, a gap still appears to exist between this research and the implementation of landscape management and development activities on the ground, especially within a developing country context. If ecosystem service science is to be operationalised and used by decision-makers directing local development, an in-depth understanding of the implementation context for landscape planning and management, and of the opportunities and challenges for ecosystem services in this context are needed. Very little is known about these opportunities and constraints, largely because of the absence of methods to explore the complexity of the landscape planning, management and implementation context and the possibilities of integrating scientific information into these processes within a real-world setting. This study aims to address this need for information and methods, by focusing on a region in South Africa with a long history of ecosystem service research and stakeholder engagement, and testing a social science approach to explore opportunities and challenges for integrating ecosystem services in landscape planning processes and policies. Our methodological approach recognises the importance of social processes and legitimacy in decision-making, emphasizing the need to engage with the potential end-users of ecosystem service research in order to ensure the relevance of the research. While we discovered challenges for mainstreaming ecosystem service at a local level, we also found strong opportunities in the multi-sectoral planning processes driving development and in how the concept of ecosystem services is framed and aligned with development priorities, especially those relating to disaster risk reduction.     

Landscape genetics since 2003: status,challenges and future directions

A scientific symposium on landscape genetics, held at the 2013 IALE Europe Conference in Manchester UK (September 2–8, 2013), highlighted status, challenges and future avenues in the field. Key topics included analytical aspects in landscape genetics, conceptual progress and application of landscape genetics for conservation management. First, analytical aspects referred to statistical relationships between genetic and landscape data. It was suggested that linear mixed models or Bayesian approaches are particularly promising due to more appropriate and powerful ways for analyzing landscape effects on genetic variation. Second, supplementing neutral genetic variation with adaptive genetic variation is very promising. However, research needs to go beyond the identification of genomic regions under selection and provide information on the ecological function of adaptive genetic regions. Conceptually, endogenous processes (e.g., life-history attributes such as dispersal) require consideration as supplementary factors in shaping the genetic variation in addition to landscapes. Also, the temporal dimension in landscapes for both the past and the future should be given increased attention as the genetic responses to landscape change may be non-simultaneous, resulting in time lags. As for applied conservation management, landscape genetics can provide important baseline information such as basic data on species movement in a spatial context, assessments of the spatial need for management efforts, or evaluations of the effectiveness of already existing management measures.     

Landscape ecology as a foundation for sustainable conservation

Landscape ecology and conservation share a common focus on places, but they differ in their perspectives about what is important about those places, and the integration of landscape ecology into conservation is far from complete. I consider four ways in which landscape ecology can contribute to conservation. First, protected areas that are established for conservation are not stand-alone isolates. They exist in the context of broader landscape mosaics, which may encourage or discourage movements of individuals into and out of an area. Second, the landscape surroundings of a preserve may contain threats to the biodiversity within the preserve, many of them consequences of human activities. In combination, these relationships with the surroundings may make the “effective area” of a preserve different from that shown on a map. Third, the scale of an administrative area or of management action may not coincide with the scales of populations, disturbances, or ecological processes, creating challenges to both landscape ecology and conservation. Finally, landscapes encompass people and their activities; sustainability of conservation requires consideration of the tradeoffs between human uses and the biodiversity values of a landscape. I illustrate these four themes with a case study of the management of prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus) in the Great Plains of North America, where the tensions between conservation and human land uses are particularly high. Ecologists and conservationists consider prairie dogs as keystone species in these grassland ecosystems and primary targets for conservation, but many private landowners regard them as varmints that consume valuable livestock forage and degrade rangeland condition. Effective conservation of functioning grasslands must include prairie dogs, and this in turn requires that the issues be addressed in terms of the biological, social, and cultural features of entire landscapes. Important as they are, areas protected for conservation cannot by themselves stem the tide of global biodiversity loss. The perspective must be broadened to include the landscapes where people live and work, recognizing the dynamic nature of landscapes and the factors driving land-use change. Landscape ecologists must work together to overcome the cultural differences between their disciplines, and between academic science and conservation practice and management. It can, and must, be done.     

The role of landscape structure in species richness distribution of birds,amphibians, reptiles and lepidopterans in Mediterranean landscapes

The parameters referring to landscape structure are essential in any evaluation for conservation because of the relationship that exists between the landscape structure and the ecological processes. This paper presents a study of the relationships between landscape structure and species diversity distribution (estimated in terms of richness of birds, amphibians, reptiles and butterflies) in the region of Madrid, Spain. The results show that the response of species richness to landscape heterogeneity varies depending on the group of species considered. For birds and lepidopterans, the most important factor affecting the distribution of richness of species is landscape heterogeneity, while other factors, such as the specific composition of land use, play a secondary role at this scale. On the other hand, richness of amphibians and reptiles is more closely related to the abundance of certain land-use types. The study highlights the importance of heterogeneity in Mediterranean landscapes as a criterion for landscape planning and for definition of management directives in order to maintain biodiversity.     

中小城镇园林规划常见问题及改进建议

针对当前一些中小城镇园林规划中出现的问题,提出改进措施:立足当地,进行科学系统规划;因地制宜,突出地方特色;注重生态,保护生物多样性;加强全过程监理和后续管理。     

Spatial resilience: integrating landscape ecology,resilience, and sustainability

Landscape ecology has a high potential to contribute to sustainability in the interactions of people and nature. Landscape ecologists have already made considerable progress towards a more general understanding of the relevance of spatial variation for ecosystems. Incorporating the complexities of societies and economies into landscape ecology analyses will, however, require a broader framework for thinking about spatial elements of complexity. An exciting recent development is to explicitly try to integrate landscape ecology and ideas about resilience in social–ecological systems through the concept of spatial resilience. Spatial resilience focuses on the importance of location, connectivity, and context for resilience, based on the idea that spatial variation in patterns and processes at different scales both impacts and is impacted by local system resilience. I first introduce and define the concepts of resilience and spatial resilience and then discuss some of their potential contributions to the further interdisciplinary integration of landscape ecology, complexity theory, and sustainability science. Complexity theorists have argued that many complex phenomena, such as symmetry-breaking and selection, share common underlying mechanisms regardless of system type (physical, social, ecological, or economic). Similarities in the consequences of social exclusion and habitat fragmentation provide an informative example. There are many strong parallels between pattern–process interactions in social and ecological systems, respectively, and a number of general spatial principles and mechanisms are emerging that have relevance across many different kinds of system. Landscape ecologists, with their background in spatially explicit pattern–process analysis, are well placed to contribute to this emerging research agenda.     

Land-use and land-cover dynamics in response to changes in climatic,biological and socio-political forces: the case of southwestern Ethiopia

Few studies of land-use/land-cover change provide an integrated assessment of the driving forces and consequences of that change, particularly in Africa. Our objectives were to determine how driving forces at different scales change over time, how these forces affect the dynamics and patterns of land use/land cover, and how land-use/land-cover change affects ecological properties at the landscape scale. To accomplish these objectives, we first developed a way to identify the causes and consequences of change at a landscape scale by integrating tools from ecology and the social sciences and then applied these methods to a case study in Ghibe Valley, southwestern Ethiopia. Maps of land-use/land-cover change were created from aerial photography and Landsat TM imagery for the period, 1957–1993. A method called `ecological time lines' was developed to elicit landscape-scale explanations for changes from long-term residents. Cropland expanded at twice the speed recently (1987–1993) than two decades ago (1957–1973), but also contracted rapidly between 1973–1987. Rapid land-use/land cover change was caused by the combined effects of drought and migration, changes in settlement and land tenure policy, and changes in the severity of the livestock disease, trypanosomosis, which is transmitted by the tsetse fly. The scale of the causes and consequences of land-use/land-cover change varied from local to sub-national (regional) to international and the links between causes and consequences crossed scales. At the landscape scale, each cause affected the location and pattern of land use/land cover differently. The contraction of cropland increased grass biomass and cover, woody plant cover, the frequency and extent of savanna burning, and the abundance of wildlife. With recent control of the tsetse fly, these ecological changes are being reversed. These complex patterns are discussed in the context of scaling issues and current conceptual models of land-use/land-cover change.     

Pond density as a determinant of aquatic species richness in an urban landscape

Green spaces within urban areas provide services and benefits to human populations and habitat for a variety of species. Freshwater, in the form of rivers, canals, lakes, reservoirs and ponds, is an important component of urban greenspaces. This paper focuses on ponds; and specifically ponds within urban areas. This work is timely as during 2008 ponds were designated, in the UK, as habitats of national conservation importance. Yet, while farmland ponds have received considerable attention, there has been little work on the ecology and landscape ecology of urban ponds. Ecological data was collected from 37 ponds in the Borough of Halton (northwest England) over a period of 2 years (2005–2006). The median species richness in these ponds was 28 invertebrate species and 10 macrophyte species. A highly significant correlation was observed between pond density and species richness. The relationship between the richness of different taxa varied according to scale; becoming more significant within pond clusters than within a single pond. These findings have significance for those involved in planning and managing urban environments, further strengthening the need for functional ecological connectivity in urban areas. With pressure to increase infill development, and thus raise housing density, a greater understanding of the affect of urban design on pond ecology will be of importance to urban planners and ecologists alike.