Academic Articles June 30

Source: South Australia Adds 150,000 Acres to its Protected Area Estate and Proclaims a New National Park


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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Interpolating missing land cover data using stochastic spatial random forests for improved change detection

  • Source: Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation
  • Author(s): Jacinta Holloway-Brown, Kate Helmstedt and Kerrie Mengersen
  • Forest cover requires large scale and frequent monitoring as an indicator of biodiversity and progress towards United Nations and World Bank Sustainable Development Goal 15. Measuring change in forest cover over time is an essential task in order to track and preserve quality habitats for species around the world. 

The unknownness of biodiversity: Its value and ethical significance for conservation action

  • Source: Biological Conservation
  • Author(s): Małgorzata Dereniowska and Yves Meinard
  • There is a consensus among scientists, conservationists and policy-makers that the diversity of life is a value that should be preserved. However, conservation concerns are usually not reducible to the protection of diversity. This raises the question: What are the specific reasons to protect biodiversity as diversity…

Noncommercial forests need type- and age-differentiated conservation measures: A case study based on 600 plots in Zhejiang Province in eastern China

  • Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
  • Author(s): Jiejie Sun et al.
  • Global climate change and unprecedented human activities have significantly endangered forest biodiversity and productivity. Understanding the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationship is the basis for forest management and the formulation of biodiversity conservation strategies…

Evaluating habitat suitability and potential dispersal corridors across the distribution landscape of the Chinese red panda in Sichuan, China

  • Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
  • Author(s): Win Dong et al.
  • The new taxonomy status of the red panda has been confirmed recently after a long period of controversy. The Chinese red panda has been classified as a phylogenetic species that is separate from the Himalayan red panda. Effective conservation of the adjacent genetic populations…

Impact of climate change on the Oueme basin in Benin

  • Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
  • Author(s): Jacqueline Fifame Dossou et al.
  • The world is currently facing disruption of the climate system related to global warming. Climate is a crucial factor in ecosystem assessment. Benin is considered a vulnerable area, particularly its south, which is a coastal zone. The current study evaluated the impact of climate on ecosystems in the Oueme basin…

Behavioural approaches and conservation messages with New Zealand’s threatened kiwi

  • Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
  • Author(s): Patrick J. Walsh
  • New Zealand’s iconic bird species, the kiwi, is facing significant threats from dogs. Dogs walked off leash or left outside frequently kill fragile kiwi, posing a major social issue. Local governments have spread awareness through billboards, pamphlets, and other media, but there are no empirical analyses…

Rapid economic valuation of ecosystem services in man and biosphere reserves in Africa: A review

  • Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
  • Author(s): Hossein Azadi, Steven Van Passel and JanCools
  • This study aimed to examine the methods of economic evaluation and reveal the role of Man and Biosphere programs in Africa. MAB programs enable biosphere reserves to help national governments find solutions to the pressing challenges. Results showed that the asset-based method is well-suited…

Invasion theory as a management tool for increasing native biodiversity in urban ecosystems

  • Source: Journal of Applied Ecology
  • Author(s): Marc W. Cadotte et al.
  • Human activity has altered ecosystems in some places to a point where traditional restoration, ecosystem management and conservation interventions might not be feasible. This is especially true in densely populated urban areas if ongoing stressors are not ameliorated. As a result, different…

Rotational grazing can mitigate ecosystem service tradeoffs between livestock production and water quality in semi‐arid rangelands

  • Source: Journal of Applied Ecology
  • Author(s): Kristin B. Hulvey et al.
  • Mitigating ecosystem service (ES) tradeoffs is a key management goal in locations where stakeholders value different and potentially conflicting ecosystem services (ESs). However, studies are not often designed to examine how local management actions address ES tradeoffs, and therefore do not…

Food availability and long‐term predation risk interactively affect antipredator response

  • Source: Ecology
  • Author(s): Shotaro Shiratsuru et al.
  • Food availability and temporal variation in predation risk are both important determinants of the magnitude of antipredator responses, but their effects have rarely been examined simultaneously, particularly in wild prey. Here, we determine how food availability and long-term predation risk…

Integrated ecosystems: linking food webs through reciprocal resource reliance

  • Source: Ecology
  • Author(s): Ethan M. Baruch
  • Ecosystems are defined, studied, and managed according to boundaries constructed to conceptualize patterns of interest at a certain scale and scope. The distinction between ecosystems becomes obscured when resources from multiple origins cross porous boundaries and are assimilated into food…

A general theory of avian migratory connectivity

  • Source: Ecology Letters
  • Author(s): Marius Somveille
  • Despite much research describing migratory behaviour, the underlying forces driving how a species’ breeding and wintering populations redistribute each year, that is, migratory connectivity, remain largely unknown. Here, we test the hypothesis that birds migrate in a way that minimises energy expenditure…

Trait‐based responses to land use and canopy dynamics modify long‐term diversity changes in forest understories

  • Source: Global Ecology and Biogeography
  • Author(s): Konsta Happonen et al.
  • Land use is the foremost cause of global biodiversity decline, but species do not respond equally to land-use practices. Instead, it is suggested that responses vary with species traits, but long-term data on the trait-mediated effects of land use on communities are scarce. Here we study…

Emergent global biogeography of marine fish food webs

  • Source: Global Ecology and Biogeography
  • Author(s): P. Daniël van Denderen et al.
  • Understanding how fish food webs emerge from planktonic and benthic energy pathways that sustain them is an important challenge for predicting fisheries production under climate change and quantifying the role of fish in carbon and nutrient cycling. We examine if a trait-based fish community…

Framing of visual content shown on popular social media may affect viewers’ attitudes to threatened species

  • Source: Scientific Reports
  • Author(s): Fernando Ballejo et al.
  • Content published on social media may affect user’s attitudes toward wildlife species. We evaluated viewers’ responses to videos published on a popular social medium, focusing particularly on how the content was framed (i.e., the way an issue is conveyed to transmit a certain meaning) …

Election cycles affect deforestation within Brazil’s Atlantic Forest

  • Source: Conservation Letters
  • Author(s): Patricia G. C. Ruggiero et al.
  • Policymakers’ incentives during election campaigns can lead to decisions that significantly affect deforestation. Yet this is rarely studied. For Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, a highly biodiverse tropical forest, we link federal-and-state as well as municipal elections to annual deforestation between…

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