scholarly journals Teetering on the Edge or too Late? Conservation and Research Issues for Avifauna of Sagebrush Habitats

The Condor ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 105 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven T. Knick ◽  
David S. Dobkin ◽  
John T. Rotenberry ◽  
Michael A. Schroeder ◽  
W. Matthew Vander Haegen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
National Parks ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Research Issues ◽  
Habitat Dynamics ◽  
Breeding Grounds ◽  
Disturbance Processes ◽  
Management And Conservation

Abstract Degradation, fragmentation, and loss of native sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) landscapes have imperiled these habitats and their associated avifauna. Historically, this vast piece of the Western landscape has been undervalued: even though more than 70% of all remaining sagebrush habitat in the United States is publicly owned, <3% of it is protected as federal reserves or national parks. We review the threats facing birds in sagebrush habitats to emphasize the urgency for conservation and research actions, and synthesize existing information that forms the foundation for recommended research directions. Management and conservation of birds in sagebrush habitats will require more research into four major topics: (1) identification of primary land-use practices and their influence on sagebrush habitats and birds, (2) better understanding of bird responses to habitat components and disturbance processes of sagebrush ecosystems, (3) improved hierarchical designs for surveying and monitoring programs, and (4) linking bird movements and population changes during migration and wintering periods to dynamics on the sagebrush breeding grounds. This research is essential because we already have seen that sagebrush habitats can be altered by land use, spread of invasive plants, and disrupted disturbance regimes beyond a threshold at which natural recovery is unlikely. Research on these issues should be instituted on lands managed by state or federal agencies because most lands still dominated by sagebrush are owned publicly. In addition to the challenge of understanding shrubsteppe bird-habitat dynamics, conservation of sagebrush landscapes depends on our ability to recognize and communicate their intrinsic value and on our resolve to conserve them. ¿Tambaleando en el Borde o Demasiado Tarde? Asuntos de Conservación e Investigación para la Avifauna de Ambientes de Matorral de Artemisia spp Resumen. La degradación, fragmentación y pérdida de paisajes nativos de matorrales de Artemisia spp. han puesto en peligro a estos ambientes y su avifauna asociada. Históricamente, esta vasta porción del paisaje occidental ha sido subvalorada: aunque más del 70% de todo el hábitat de matorral de Artemisia de los Estados Unidos es de propiedad pública, <3% de éste es protegido por reservas federales o parques nacionales. En este artículo revisamos las amenazas a las que se enfrentan las aves de los matorrales de Artemisia para enfatizar la urgencia de emprender acciones de conservación e investigación, y sintetizamos la información existente que constituye la base para una serie de directrices de investigación recomendadas. El manejo y conservación de las aves de los matorrales de Artemisia necesitará más investigación en cuatro tópicos principales: (1) la identificación de prácticas primarias de uso del suelo y su influencia sobre los ambientes y las aves de Artemisia, (2) un mejor entendimiento de las respuestas de las aves a componentes del hábitat y a procesos de disturbio de los ecosistemas de Artemisia, (3) el mejoramiento de diseños jerárquicos para programas de censos y monitoreos y (4) la conexión de los movimientos de las aves y los cambios poblacionales durante la migración y en los períodos de invernada con la dinámica en las áreas reproductivas de matorrales de Artemisia. Estas investigaciones son esenciales porque ya hemos visto que los ambientes de Artemisia pueden ser alterados por el uso del suelo, la diseminación de plantas invasoras y la disrupción de los regímenes de disturbio más allá de un umbral en el que la recuperación natural es poco probable. La investigación en estos asuntos debe instituirse en tierras manejadas por agencias estatales o federales porque la mayoría de las tierras aún dominadas por Artemisia son de propiedad pública. Además del desafío de entender la dinámica aves-hábitat en las estepas arbustivas, la conservación de los paisajes de matorral de Artemisia depende de nuestra habilidad de reconocer y comunicar su valor intrínseco y de nuestra decisión para conservarlos.

scholarly journals How emissions, climate, and land use change will impact mid-century air quality over the United States: a focus on effects at National Parks

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (19) ◽  
pp. 26495-26543 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Val Martin ◽  
C. L. Heald ◽  
J.-F. Lamarque ◽  
S. Tilmes ◽  
L. K. Emmons ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
National Parks ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Us ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Epa ◽  
Surface O3

Abstract. We use a global coupled chemistry-climate-land model (CESM) to assess the integrated effect of climate, emissions and land use changes on annual surface O3 and PM2.5 on the United States with a focus on National Parks (NPs) and wilderness areas, using the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 projections. We show that, when stringent domestic emission controls are applied, air quality is predicted to improve across the US, except surface O3 over the western and central US under RCP8.5 conditions, where rising background ozone counteracts domestic emissions reductions. Under the RCP4.5, surface O3 is substantially reduced (about 5 ppb), with daily maximum 8 h averages below the primary US EPA NAAQS of 75 ppb (and even 65 ppb) in all the NPs. PM2.5 is significantly reduced in both scenarios (4 μg m−3; ~50%), with levels below the annual US EPA NAAQS of 12 μg m−3 across all the NPs; visibility is also improved (10–15 deciviews; >75 km in visibility range), although some parks over the western US (40–74% of total sites in the US) may not reach the 2050 target to restore visibility to natural conditions by 2064. We estimate that climate-driven increases in fire activity may dominate summertime PM2.5 over the western US, potentially offsetting the large PM2.5 reductions from domestic emission controls, and keeping visibility at present-day levels in many parks. Our study suggests that air quality in 2050 will be primarily controlled by anthropogenic emission patterns. However, climate and land use changes alone may lead to a substantial increase in surface O3 (2–3 ppb) with important consequences for O3 air quality and ecosystem degradation at the US NPs. Our study illustrates the need to consider the effects of changes in climate, vegetation, and fires in future air quality management and planning and emission policy making.

scholarly journals How emissions, climate, and land use change will impact mid-century air quality over the United States: a focus on effects at national parks

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 2805-2823 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Val Martin ◽  
C. L. Heald ◽  
J.-F. Lamarque ◽  
S. Tilmes ◽  
L. K. Emmons ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
National Parks ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Us ◽  
The Us ◽  
Emission Controls ◽  
Surface O3

Abstract. We use a global coupled chemistry–climate–land model (CESM) to assess the integrated effect of climate, emissions and land use changes on annual surface O3 and PM2.5 in the United States with a focus on national parks (NPs) and wilderness areas, using the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 projections. We show that, when stringent domestic emission controls are applied, air quality is predicted to improve across the US, except surface O3 over the western and central US under RCP8.5 conditions, where rising background ozone counteracts domestic emission reductions. Under the RCP4.5 scenario, surface O3 is substantially reduced (about 5 ppb), with daily maximum 8 h averages below the primary US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) of 75 ppb (and even 65 ppb) in all the NPs. PM2.5 is significantly reduced in both scenarios (4 μg m−3; ~50%), with levels below the annual US EPA NAAQS of 12 μg m−3 across all the NPs; visibility is also improved (10–15 dv; >75 km in visibility range), although some western US parks with Class I status (40–74 % of total sites in the US) are still above the 2050 planned target level to reach the goal of natural visibility conditions by 2064. We estimate that climate-driven increases in fire activity may dominate summertime PM2.5 over the western US, potentially offsetting the large PM2.5 reductions from domestic emission controls, and keeping visibility at present-day levels in many parks. Our study indicates that anthropogenic emission patterns will be important for air quality in 2050. However, climate and land use changes alone may lead to a substantial increase in surface O3 (2–3 ppb) with important consequences for O3 air quality and ecosystem degradation at the US NPs. Our study illustrates the need to consider the effects of changes in climate, vegetation, and fires in future air quality management and planning and emission policy making.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 261-268
Author(s):  
Brad Edmondson
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
National Parks ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Agency ◽  
Adirondack Park ◽  
Environmental Laws ◽  
Statutory Authority ◽  
Environmentally Sensitive Areas ◽  
Develop Land

This chapter looks at the major environmental laws of the United States after the Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan was signed into law. It also presents Senator Henry Jackson's National Land Use Policy Act in 1970. The act used incentives and sanctions to encourage states to develop land use plans for environmentally sensitive areas and large development sites. The chapter then highlights the Adirondack Park Agency's (APA) job to protect the wilderness character of a state park that was much larger than any of the national parks that existed in 1973. Many regional land use plans of the era depended on local governments taking voluntary incentives, but the Adirondack law gave a state agency statutory authority to protect environmental quality by reviewing and modifying zoning regulations. The chapter recounts the APA's three main goals: to prevent building in the park's backcountry, to make sure that development happened in places where it would not hurt the park's wild character, and to protect Adirondack shorelines. Ultimately, the chapter examines the emergence of threats to the ecological health of the Adirondacks that are beyond the park agency's power to control.

From Competition to Cooperation: A History of Canada–US National Park Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Young ◽  
Alan MacEachern ◽  
Lary Dilsaver
Keyword(s):  
National Parks ◽  
National Park ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Park Service ◽  
Settler Societies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
The Relationship

This essay explores the evolving international relationship of the two national park agencies that in 1968 began to offer joint training classes for protected-area managers from around the world. Within the British settler societies that dominated nineteenth century park-making, the United States’ National Park Service (NPS) and Canada’s National Parks Branch were the most closely linked and most frequently cooperative. Contrary to campfire myths and nationalist narratives, however, the relationship was not a one-way flow of information and motivation from the US to Canada. Indeed, the latter boasted a park bureaucracy before the NPS was established. The relationship of the two nations’ park leaders in the half century leading up to 1968 demonstrates the complexity of defining the influences on park management and its diffusion from one country to another.

Privatizing Public Lands

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Lehmann
Keyword(s):  
National Parks ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Public Lands ◽  
The United States ◽  
Collective Ownership ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Wildlife Refuges ◽  
Ownership Of Land ◽  
Privately Owned

In the United States, private ownership of land is not a new idea, yet the federal government retains title to roughly a quarter of the nation's land, including national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges. Managing these properties is expensive and contentious, and few management decisions escape criticism. Some observers, however, argue that such criticism is largely misdirected. The fundamental problem, in their view, is collective ownership and its solution is privatization. A free market, they claim, directs privately owned resources to their most productive uses, and privatizing public lands would create a free market in their services. This timely study critically examines these issues, arguing that there is no sense of "productivity" for which it is true that greater productivity is both desirable and a likely consequence of privatizing public lands or "marketizing" their management. Lehmann's discussion is self-contained, with background chapters on federal lands and management agencies, economics, and ethics, and will interest philosophers as well as public policy analysts.

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
Divya Saxena ◽  
Jiannong Cao
Keyword(s):  
Optimization Technique ◽  
Generative Models ◽  
Generative Adversarial Networks ◽  
Network Architectures ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Research Issues ◽  
Design And Optimization ◽  
Adversarial Networks ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
Selection Of

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) is a novel class of deep generative models that has recently gained significant attention. GANs learn complex and high-dimensional distributions implicitly over images, audio, and data. However, there exist major challenges in training of GANs, i.e., mode collapse, non-convergence, and instability, due to inappropriate design of network architectre, use of objective function, and selection of optimization algorithm. Recently, to address these challenges, several solutions for better design and optimization of GANs have been investigated based on techniques of re-engineered network architectures, new objective functions, and alternative optimization algorithms. To the best of our knowledge, there is no existing survey that has particularly focused on the broad and systematic developments of these solutions. In this study, we perform a comprehensive survey of the advancements in GANs design and optimization solutions proposed to handle GANs challenges. We first identify key research issues within each design and optimization technique and then propose a new taxonomy to structure solutions by key research issues. In accordance with the taxonomy, we provide a detailed discussion on different GANs variants proposed within each solution and their relationships. Finally, based on the insights gained, we present promising research directions in this rapidly growing field.

Land Use Policy and Problems in the United States

1964 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 698
Author(s):  
A. Allan Schmid ◽  
Howard W. Ottoson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
The United States ◽  
Land Use Policy
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