Participatory mapping of landscape values in a Pan-European perspective

Context

Human–nature interactions are reflected in the values people assign to landscapes. These values shape our understanding and actions as landscape co-creators, and need to be taken into account to achieve an integrated management of the landscape that involves civil society.

Objectives

The aim of this research was to increase the current knowledge on the most and least common landscape values perceived by local stakeholders, the patterns in the spatial distribution of values, and their connection to different socio-economic backgrounds and landscape characteristics across Europe.

Methods

The research consisted of a cross-site comparison study on how landscape values are perceived in six areas of Europe using Public Participation GIS surveys. Answers were analysed combining contingency tables, spatial autocorrelation and bivariate correlation methods, kernel densities, land cover ratios, and viewshed analyses. Results were discussed in the light of findings derived from other European participatory mapping studies.

Results

We identified shared patterns in the perception of landscape values across Europe. Recreation, aesthetics, and social fulfilment were the most common values. Landscape values showed common spatial patterns mainly related to accessibility and the presence of water, settlements, and cultural heritage. However, respondents in each study site had their own preferences connected to the intrinsic characteristics of the local landscape and culture.

Conclusions

The results encourage land planners and researchers to approach landscape values in relation to socio-cultural and bio-physical land characteristics comprehensibly, acknowledging the complexity in the relationship between people’s perception and the landscape, to foster more effective and inclusive landscape management strategies.

     

Step-wise drops in modularity and the fragmentation of exploited marine metapopulations

Context

Many nearshore species are distributed in habitat patches connected only through larval dispersal. Genetic research has shown some spatial structure of such metapopulations and modeling studies have shed light onto possible patterns of connectivity and barriers. However, little is known about human impact on their spatial structure and patterns of connectivity.

Objectives

We examine the effects of fishing on the spatial and temporal dynamics of metapopulations of sedentary marine species (red sea urchin and red abalone) interconnected by larval dispersal.

Methods

We constructed a metapopulation model to simulate abalone and sea urchin metapopulations experiencing increasing levels of fishing mortality. We performed the modularity analysis on the yearly larval connectivity matrices produced by these simulations, and analyzed the changes of modularity and the formation of modules over time as indicators of spatial structure.

Results

The analysis revealed a strong modular spatial structure for abalone and a weak spatial signature for sea urchin. In abalone, under exploitation, modularity takes step-wise drops on the path to extinction, and modules breakdown into smaller fragments followed by module and later metapopulation collapse. In contrast, sea urchin showed high modularity variation, indicating high- and low-mixing years, but an abrupt collapse of the metapopulation under strong exploitation.

Conclusions

The results identify a disruption in larval connectivity and a pattern of collapse in highly modular nearshore metapopulations. These results highlight the ability of modularity to detect spatial structure in marine metapopulations, which varies among species, and to show early changes in the spatial structure of exploited metapopulations.

     

Environmental heterogeneity and biotic interactions as potential drivers of spatial patterning of shorebird nests

Context

Species distributions are driven by a wide variety of abiotic and biotic factors, including nest placement for breeding individuals. As such, the spatial distribution of nests within a landscape can reflect environmental heterogeneity, habitat preferences, or even interactions with predators and other species.

Objectives

We determined the extent to which environmental heterogeneity and predation risk accounted for the observed spatial distribution of nests.

Methods

We assessed the spatial distribution of 112 nests of a migratory shorebird, the Hudsonian Godwit (Limosa haemastica), at Beluga River, Alaska, from 2009 to 2012, and explicitly tested for the relative influence of habitat characteristics and predation risk on nest locations. We also evaluated the effect of nest location, distance to conspecific nests, and proximity to roads on nest fate using 64 nests that were monitored through completion.

Results

Hudsonian Godwit nests were clustered across the landscape despite a lack of significant spatial autocorrelation (i.e., patchiness) in vegetation characteristics at either the micro- or landscape scale. Nest fate also was not predicted by either the distance to the nearest conspecific neighbor or proximity to roads. Thus, neither habitat characteristics nor predation risk explained the clustering of godwit nests.

Conclusions

These results suggest that godwits may select nest locations based more on social cues than underlying heterogeneity in vegetation or predation risk. As such, intra- and inter-specific interactions should be considered when developing management plans for species of conservation concern.

     

Environmental drivers of community diversity in a neotropical urban landscape: a multi-scale analysis

Context

Many aquatic communities are linked by the aerial dispersal of multiple, interacting species and are thus structured by processes occurring in both the aquatic and terrestrial compartments of the ecosystem.

Objectives

To evaluate the environmental factors shaping the aquatic macroinvertebrate communities associated with tank bromeliads in an urban landscape.

Methods

Thirty-two bromeliads were georeferenced to assess the spatial distribution of the aquatic meta-habitat in one city. The relative influence of the aquatic and terrestrial habitats on the structure of macroinvertebrate communities was analyzed at four spatial scales (radius = 10, 30, 50, and 70 m) using redundancy analyses.

Results

We sorted 18,352 aquatic macroinvertebrates into 29 taxa. Water volume and the amount of organic matter explained a significant part of the taxa variance, regardless of spatial scale. The remaining variance was explained by the meta-habitat size (i.e., the water volume for all of the bromeliads within a given surface area), the distance to the nearest building at small scales, and the surface area of buildings plus ground cover at larger scales. At small scales, the meta-habitat size influenced the two most frequent mosquito species in opposite ways, suggesting spatial competition and coexistence. Greater vegetation cover favored the presence of a top predator.

Conclusions

The size of the meta-habitat and urban landscape characteristics influence the structure of aquatic communities in tank bromeliads, including mosquito larval abundance. Modifications to this landscape will affect both the terrestrial and aquatic compartments of the urban ecosystem, offering prospects for mosquito management during urban planning.

     

Assessing wild bees in perennial bioenergy landscapes: effects of bioenergy crop composition,landscape configuration,and bioenergy crop area

Context

Wild bee populations are currently under threat, which has led to recent efforts to increase pollinator habitat in North America. Simultaneously, U.S. federal energy policies are beginning to encourage perennial bioenergy cropping (PBC) systems, which have the potential to support native bees.

Objectives

Our objective was to explore the potentially interactive effects of crop composition, total PBC area, and PBC patches in different landscape configurations.

Methods

Using a spatially-explicit modeling approach, the Lonsdorf model, we simulated the impacts of three perennial bioenergy crops (PBC: willow, switchgrass, and prairie), three scenarios with different total PBC area (11.7, 23.5 and 28.8% of agricultural land converted to PBC) and two types of landscape configurations (PBC in clustered landscape patterns that represent realistic future configurations or in dispersed neutral landscape models) on a nest abundance index in an Illinois landscape.

Results

Our modeling results suggest that crop composition and PBC area are particularly important for bee nest abundance, whereas landscape configuration is associated with bee nest abundance at the local scale but less so at the regional scale.

Conclusions

Strategies to enhance wild bee habitat should therefore emphasize the crop composition and amount of PBC.

     

Spatial relationship between biodiversity and geodiversity across a gradient of land-use intensity in high-latitude landscapes

Context

‘Conserving Nature’s stage’ has been advanced as an important conservation principle because of known links between biodiversity and abiotic environmental diversity, especially in sensitive high-latitude environments and at the landscape scale. However these links have not been examined across gradients of human impact on the landscape.

Objectives

To (1) analyze the relationships between land-use intensity and both landscape-scale biodiversity and geodiversity, and (2) assess the contributions of geodiversity, climate and spatial variables to explaining vascular plant species richness in landscapes of low, moderate and high human impact.

Methods

We used generalized additive models (GAMs) to analyze relationships between land-use intensity and both geodiversity (geological, geomorphological and hydrological richness) and plant species richness in 6191 1-km² grid squares across Finland. We used linear regression-based variation partitioning (VP) to assess contributions of climate, geodiversity and spatial variable groups to accounting for spatial variation in species richness.

Results

In GAMs, geodiversity correlated negatively, and plant species richness positively, with land-use intensity. Both relationships were non-linear. In VP, geodiversity best accounted for species richness in areas of moderate to high human impact. These overall contributions were mainly due to variation explained jointly with climate, which dominated the models. Independent geodiversity contributions were highest in pristine environments, but low throughout.

Conclusions

Human action increases biodiversity but may reduce geodiversity, at landscape scale in high-latitude environments. Better understanding of the connections between biodiversity and abiotic environment along changing land-use gradients is essential in developing sustainable measures to conserve biodiversity under global change.

     

Connectivity and habitat type shape divergent dispersal behavior in a desert-dwelling fish

Context

Dispersal has important fitness consequences for individuals, populations, and species. Despite growing theoretical insights into the evolution of dispersal, its behavioral underpinnings remain empirically understudied, limiting our understanding of the extent and impact of responses to landscape-level heterogeneity of environments, and increasing the risk of inferring species-level responses from biased population sampling.

Objectives

We asked if predictable ecological variation among naturally fragmented arid waterbodies is correlated with disparate dispersal responses of populations of the desert goby Chlamydogobius eremius, which naturally inhabits two habitat “types” (permanent springs, ephemeral rivers), and different levels of hydrological connectivity (high and low) that potentially convey different costs and benefits of dispersal.

Methods

To test for possible behavioral divergence between such populations, we experimentally compared the movement behaviors (correlates of emigration and exploration) of wild-caught fish. We used two biologically relevant spatial scales to test movement relevant to different stages of the dispersal process.

Results

Behavior differed at both spatial scales, suggesting that alternative dispersal strategies enable desert gobies to exploit diverse habitat patches. However, while emigration was best predicted by the connectivity (flood risk) of fish habitats, exploration was linked to their habitat type (spring versus river).

Conclusions

Our findings demonstrate that despite a complex picture of ecological variation, key landscape factors have an overarching effect on among-population variation in dispersal traits. Implications include the maintenance of within-species variation, potentially divergent evolutionary trajectories of naturally or anthropogenically isolated populations, and the direction of future experimental studies on the ecology and evolution of dispersal behavior.

     

Shifting concepts of urban spatial heterogeneity and their implications for sustainability

Context

Spatial heterogeneity has myriad influences on ecosystem processes, ecosystem services, and thus the sustainability of urban areas. It acts as a medium for urban design, planning, and management to determine how processes affecting sustainability can operate and interact. Therefore, how spatial heterogeneity is conceptualized and measured in cities is crucial for enhancing sustainability.

Objectives

We show that the two most commonly used, but contrasting paradigms of urban ecology, ecology IN versus ecology OF the city, determine how spatial heterogeneity is thought of and used in different ways. We identify the key implications of these theoretical contrasts for the practice and assessment of sustainability in urban areas.

Methods

We review and compare the different ways in which ecology IN versus ecology OF the city affect how to conceptualize, model and map urban spatial heterogeneity. We present a new framework to guide the comparison of spatial heterogeneity under the two paradigms.

Results and conclusion

The integrative nature of this new framework becomes apparent under the ecology OF the city paradigm, because it recognizes the hybrid social and bioecological nature of heterogeneity in urban ecosystems. The hybrid approach to patchiness resonates with the three pillars of sustainability—environment, society, and economy. We exemplify how the more comprehensive and integrated framework of spatial heterogeneity under the ecology OF the city paradigm (1) supports more effective measurement and integration of the three components of sustainability, (2) improves management of heterogeneous urban ecosystems, and (3) satisfies calls for improved ecological tools to support urban ecosystem design.