Academic Articles February 24th

Source: Four Steps President Biden Can Take to Ease the Extinction Crisis


The latest academic papers on conservation. If you have a paper that you would like to share, please get in contact with us. Click on the title to follow the link to each article. Please note that some of these articles are behind a paywall.

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A synthesis of the prevalence and drivers of non-compliance in marine protected areas

  • Source: Biological Conservation
  • Author(s): Josephine Iacarella, Georgia Clyde, Brock Bergseth, Natalie Ban
  • Non-compliance regularly negates the effectiveness of marine protected areas (MPAs) worldwide. Understanding and addressing non-compliance is critical given continued efforts to establish MPAs to meet international milestones (e.g., Aichi targets)…

Key information needs to move from knowledge to action for biodiversity conservation in Canada

  • Source: Biological Conservation
  • Author(s): Rachel Buxton et al.
  • To address the ongoing global biodiversity crisis, conservation approaches must be underpinned by robust information. We elicited input from experts across a range of disciplines to identify the key information needed to advance policy and management actions to conserve biodiversity in Canada…

Connectivity metrics for conservation planning and monitoring

  • Source: Biological Conservation
  • Author(s): Annika Keeley, Pau lBeier, Jeff Jenness
  • Conservation plans increasingly include goals to maintain a connected network. For example, planners might design a linkage between two conserved areas, or the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity might set targets for a well-connected system of protected areas for each nation. Here we describe 35 metrics that can quantify connectivity of focal patches or of networks and monitor changes over time in an ecoscape (landscape or seascape)…

Valuing High Seas Ecosystem Conservation

  • Source: Conservation Biology
  • Author(s): Bui Xuan, Claire Armstrong, Isaac Ankamah‐Yeboah, Stephen Hynes,  Katherine Needham
  • The high seas are known to provide a variety of ecosystem services that are of benefit to society. There have however been few attempts to quantify the welfare impacts of changes to the delivery of these benefits. This study assesses the values of several key ecosystem service benefits derived from protecting ecosystems in the high seas area of Flemish Cap…

Human impacts on global freshwater fish biodiversity

  • Source: Science
  • Author(s): Guohuan Su et al.
  • A new index, Cumulative Change in Biodiversity Facets, revealed marked changes in biodiversity in >50% of the world’s rivers covering >40% of the world’s continental surface and >37% of the world’s river length, whereas <14% of the world’s surface and river length remain least impacted… 

Prioritizing the next decade of freshwater turtle and tortoise conservation in West Africa

  • Source: Journal for Nature Conservation 
  • Author(s): Luca Luiselli, Tomas Diagne, Pearson Mcgovern
  • The chelonian fauna of West Africa is relatively understudied and experiencing a multitude of threats. Moreover, the IUCN Red List status of several African species is both outdated and, we believe, underestimated. Herein, we cover projections for freshwater turtle and tortoise status trends…

The wild camel in China: current status and conservation implications

  • Source: Journal for Nature Conservation 
  • Author(s): Yadong Xue, Jia Li, Diqiang Li
  • The species is now restricted to four isolated habitats in China and Mongolia, and more than 20 years have passed since the most recent surveys of its status and distribution. In an effort to get more current information, we conducted ground surveys, coupled with ad-libitum interviews of local residents…

The importance of buffer zones in woody vegetation conservation in areas that combine mega-fauna and anthropogenic disturbance: the case of Save Valley landscape, south-eastern Zimbabwe

  • Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
  • Author(s): Clayton Mashapa, Patience Mhuriro-Mashapa, Edson Gandiwa, Never Muboko, Tendai Chinho
  • This study evaluated the influence of human and elephant utilization of woody vegetation across three land use categories; a protected conservation area, a buffer zone and the adjacent communal lands of Mutema-Musikavanhu communities in the Save Valley landscape, south-eastern Zimbabwe…

Mitigation and management plans should consider all anthropogenic disturbances to fauna

  • Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
  • Author(s): Sophie Cross et al.
  • The direct impacts of anthropogenic habitat loss on fauna have attracted considerable global research focus. However, it is not only these overt impacts of human activities that are contributing to the global biodiversity crisis. Other disturbances… may be subtle or indirect, yet capable of creating significant impacts to fauna…

Flowering fields, organic farming and edge habitats promote diversity of plants and arthropods on arable land

  • Source: Journal of Applied Ecology 
  • Author(s): Christoph Gayer et al.
  • Increased farming intensity led to massive declines across multiple farmland taxa. We studied biodiversity effects of non‐productive flowering fields managed under conventional farming compared to both an organically managed cereal mono‐crop (organic winter spelt fields) and a flowering mixed‐crop (organic lentil mixed‐crop fields) as well as conventionally managed winter wheat fields, which served as control crop…

Forest regeneration can positively contribute to local hydrological ecosystem services: Implications for forest landscape restoration

  • Source: Journal of Applied Ecology
  • Author(s): H. van Meerveld et al.
  • Governments are increasingly committing to significant forest restoration. While carbon sequestration is a major objective, the case for restoration often includes benefits to local communities. However, the impacts of forest restoration on local hydrological services are surprisingly poorly understood…

Temperature thresholds of ecosystem respiration at a global scale

  • Source: Nature Ecology and Evolution
  • Author(s): Alice Johnston et al.
  • Ecosystem respiration is a major component of the global terrestrial carbon cycle and is strongly influenced by temperature. The global extent of the temperature–ecosystem respiration relationship, however, has not been fully explored. Here, we test linear and threshold models of ecosystem respiration across 210 globally distributed eddy covariance sites over an extensive temperature range…

Success of coastal wetlands restoration is driven by sediment availability

  • Source: Communications Earth & Environment
  • Author(s): Zezheng Liu, Sergio Fagherazzi, Baoshan Cui 
  • Shorelines and their ecosystems are endangered by sea-level rise. Nature-based coastal protection is becoming a global strategy to enhance coastal resilience through the cost-effective creation, restoration and sustainable use of coastal wetlands. Here we assess, using a meta-analysis, the difference in accretion, elevation, and sediment deposition rates between natural and restored coastal wetlands across the world…

Threats of illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing to biodiversity and food security in the Republic of the Congo

  • Source: Conservation Biology
  • Author(s): Philip Doherty et al.
  • Illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing poses a major threat to effective management of marine resources, impacting biodiversity and communities dependent on these coastal resources. Spatio‐temporal patterns of industrial fisheries in developing countries are often poorly understood…

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