Methods and tools for addressing natural disturbance dynamics in conservation planning for wilderness areas

Conservation planning integrating natural disturbances: Estimating minimum reserve sizes for an insect disturbance in the boreal forest of eastern Canada

Large natural disturbances such as insect outbreaks and fire are important processes for biodiversity in forest landscapes. However, few methods exist for incorporating natural disturbances into conservation planning. Intact forest landscapes, such as in the North American boreal forest, can produce large natural disturbance footprints. They also have the potential to support large reserves but size estimates based on natural disturbance are needed to guide reserve design. Historical fire data have been used to estimate minimum dynamic reserves, reserve size estimates based on maintaining natural disturbance dynamics and ensuring resilience to large natural disturbance events. While this has been a significant step towards incorporating natural disturbance into reserve design, managers currently lack guidance on how to apply these concepts in areas where fire is not the dominant natural disturbance. We generalize the minimum dynamic reserve framework to accommodate insect outbreaks and demonstrate the framework in a case study for eastern spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana) in the Canadian boreal forest. Our methods use geospatial analysis to identify minimum dynamic reserves based on a set of spatially explicit initial conditions, and simulation models to test for the maintenance of a set of dynamic conditions over time. We found considerable variability in minimum dynamic reserve size depending on the size of historic budworm disturbance events and the spatial patterns of disturbance-prone vegetation types. The minimum dynamic reserve framework provides an approach for incorporating wide-ranging natural disturbances into biodiversity conservation plans for both pro-active planning in intact landscapes, and reactive planning in more developed regions.

An Innovative Framework on Spatial Boundary Optimization of Multiple International Designated Land Use

The continuous improvement of international protection awareness has dramatically increased the number of protection organizations and promoted various reserve-naming methods. However, the existing global natural reserves have either fully or partially overlapped, thereby allowing the same region to hold various international titles, resulting in serious issues, which are especially manifested in the boundary delimitation process of natural reserves. Therefore, delimiting the titles of reserve borders will become an enormous challenge in protected-area governance worldwide. This study conducted an in-depth investigation of the technical methods for delineating the spatial boundaries of natural reserves. Taking Jiangshan Nature Reserve in China as the case object, the Candidate Area–Natural background–Heritage Resource–Construction (C-NHC) framework was constructed, and the boundaries of the new reserves were delineated. This study has changed the status quo of the spatial overlap of the reserve through the quantitative evaluation of the conflict patches and the triple optimization of the boundary of the reserve. The area of the new reserve is 150.524 km2, which is 6.682 km2 larger than the original one. The original reserves are all included within the scope of the new one. This study provides guidance and new insights into the boundary delineation of integrated nature reserves worldwide.

The call of the wild: Investigating the potential for ecoacoustic methods in mapping wilderness areas

The critical importance of wilderness areas (WAs) for biodiversity conservation and human well-being is well established yet mapping criteria on which WA management policies are based take neither into account. Current WA mapping methods are framed in terms of absence of anthropogenic influence, and created using visual satellite data, obviating consideration of the ecological or anthropogenic value of WAs. In this paper we suggest that taking the acoustic environment into account could address this lacuna. We report the first investigation into the potential for ecoacoustic methods to complement existing geophysical approaches. Participatory walks, including in situ questionnaires and ecoacoustic surveys were carried out at points along transects traversing urban-wilderness gradients at four study sites in the Scottish Highlands and French Pyrenees. The relationships between a suite of six acoustic indices (AIs), wilderness classifications and human subjective ratings were examined. We observed significant differences between five out of six AIs tested across wilderness classes, demonstrating significant differences in the soundscape across urban-wild gradients. Strong, significant correlations between AIs, wilderness classes and human perceptions of wildness were observed, although magnitude and direction of correlations varied across sites. Finally, a compound acoustic index is shown to strongly predict mapped wildness classes (up to 95% variance explained MSE 0.22); perceived wilderness and biodiversity are even more strongly predicted. Together these results demonstrate that the acoustic environment varies significantly along urban-wild gradients; AIs reveal details of environmental variation excluded under current methods, and capture key facets of the human experience of wildness. An important next step is to ascertain the ecological and anthropogenic relevance of these differences, and develop new automated acoustic analysis methods suited to mapping the environmental characteristics of WAs. Taken together, our results suggest that future management of WAs could benefit from ecoacoustic methods to take the biosphere and anthroposphere into account.

Forest Fragmentation and Connectivity in Virginia Between 2001 and 2011

With an annual population growth rate currently estimated at about 5 %, Virginia presents an ideal case study for anthropogenic environmental disturbances. Urbanization as a result of increasing human activities has led to fragmentation of many crucial habitats, especially forests. Analysis of the extent to which forest fragmentation and connectivity have occurred in Virginia and corresponding changes associated with these processes, is relevant for conserving forest habitats and the biodiversity that they support. This study applies FRAGSTATS, a software system developed to assess forest fragmentation and connectivity, in combination with ArcGIS, to identify changes in forest patch metrics for Virginia over a ten-year interval (2001, 2006 and 2011) using National Land Cover Datasets (NLCD) maps as data source. Results show that, over ten years, forest patches have significantly declined in size, while the number of forest patches and total length of edge areas have increased over time. Results of this study show that road density in Virginia has no significant effect on forest fragmentation between 2001 and 2011. Analysis using ArcGIS revealed that sizes of core forest areas in Virginia are declining, and that these reductions match local topographic slope. This is because the steepness of the slope of an area dictates the degree of human activities in that area. These results suggest that urban sprawl associated with areas with gentler slopes, may have significant, long-term consequences for natural forest ecosystems and ultimately, biodiversity conservation.

Determining the size of a complete disturbance landscape: multi-scale, continental analysis of forest change

The scale of investigation for disturbance-influenced processes plays a critical role in theoretical assumptions about stability, variance, and equilibrium, as well as conservation reserve and long-term monitoring program design. Critical consideration of scale is required for robust planning designs, especially when anticipating future disturbances whose exact locations are unknown. This research quantified disturbance proportion and pattern (as contagion) at multiple scales across North America. This pattern of scale-associated variability can guide selection of study and management extents, for example, to minimize variance (measured as standard deviation) between any landscapes within an ecoregion. We identified the proportion and pattern of forest disturbance (30 m grain size) across multiple landscape extents up to 180 km². We explored the variance in proportion of disturbed area and the pattern of that disturbance between landscapes (within an ecoregion) as a function of the landscape extent. In many ecoregions, variance between landscapes within an ecoregion was minimal at broad landscape extents (low standard deviation). Gap-dominated regions showed the least variance, while fire-dominated showed the largest. Intensively managed ecoregions displayed unique patterns. A majority of the ecoregions showed low variance between landscapes at some scale, indicating an appropriate extent for incorporating natural regimes and unknown future disturbances was identified. The quantification of the scales of disturbance at the ecoregion level provides guidance for individuals interested in anticipating future disturbances which will occur in unknown spatial locations. Information on the extents required to incorporate disturbance patterns into planning is crucial for that process.

Likelihood of changes in forest species suitability, distribution, and diversity under future climate: The case of Southern Europe

Forest conservation strategies and plans can be unsuccessful if the new habitat conditions determined by climate change are not considered. Our work aims at investigating the likelihood of future suitability, distribution and diversity for some common European forest species under the projected changes in climate, focusing on Southern Europe. We combine an Ensemble Platform for Species Distribution Models (SDMs) to five Global Circulation Models (GCMs) driven by two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), to produce maps of future climate-driven habitat suitability for ten categories of forest species and two time horizons. For each forest category and time horizon, ten maps of future distribution (5 GCMs by 2 RCPs) are thus combined in a single suitability map supplied with information about the "likelihood" adopting the IPCC terminology based on consensus among projections. Then, the statistical significance of spatially aggregated changes in forest composition at local and regional level is analyzed. Finally, we discuss the importance, among SDMs, that environmental predictors seem to have in influencing forest distribution. Future impacts of climate change appear to be diversified across forest categories. A strong change in forest regional distribution and local diversity is projected to take place, as some forest categories will find more suitable conditions in previously unsuitable locations, while for other categories the same new conditions will become less suited. A decrease in species diversity is projected in most of the area, with Alpine region showing the potentiality to become a refuge for species migration.