scholarly journals Efficacy of land use designation in protecting habitat in the miombo woodlands: Insights from Tanzania

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex L. Lobora ◽  
Cuthbert L. Nahonyo ◽  
Linus K. Munishi ◽  
Tim Caro ◽  
Charles Foley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Anthropogenic Activities ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Miombo Woodlands ◽  
Conservation Areas ◽  
The Past ◽  
Natural Landscapes ◽  
Landsat Satellite

AbstractLoss of natural landscapes surrounding major conservation areas compromise their future and threaten long-term conservation. We evaluate the effectiveness of fully and lesser protected areas within Katavi-Rukwa and Ruaha-Rungwa ecosystems in south-western Tanzania to protecting natural landscapes within their boundaries over the past four decades. Using a time series of Landsat satellite imageries of September 1972, July 1990 and September 2015, we assess the extent to which natural habitat has been lost within and around these areas mainly through anthropogenic activities. We also test the viability of the remaining natural habitat to provide connectivity between the two ecosystems. Our analysis reveals that while fully protected areas remained intact over the past four decades, lesser protected areas lost a combined total area of about 5,984 km2 during that period which is about 17.5% of habitat available in 1972. We also find that about 3,380 km2 of natural habitat is still available for connectivity between the two ecosystems through Piti East and Rungwa South Open Areas. We recommend relevant authorities to establish conservation friendly village land use plans in all villages surrounding and between the two ecosystems to ensure long-term conservation of these ecosystems.

scholarly journals Integrated Landscape Change Analysis of Protected Areas and their Surrounding Landscapes: Application in the Brazilian Cerrado

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz Bellón ◽  
Julien Blanco ◽  
Alta De Vos ◽  
Fabio de O. Roque ◽  
Olivier Pays ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Landscape Change ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Productivity Loss ◽  
Landscape Dynamics ◽  
Natural Vegetation ◽  
Local Analysis ◽  
Area Network ◽  
Conservation Areas

Remote sensing tools have been long used to monitor landscape dynamics inside and around protected areas. Hereto, scientists have largely relied on land use and land cover (LULC) data to derive indicators for monitoring these dynamics, but these metrics do not capture changes in the state of vegetation surfaces that may compromise the ecological integrity of conservation areas’ landscapes. Here, we introduce a methodology that combines LULC change estimates with three Normalized Difference Vegetation Index-based proxy indicators of vegetation productivity, phenology, and structural change. We illustrate the utility of this methodology through a regional and local analysis of the landscape dynamics in the Cerrado Biome in Brazil in 2001 and 2016. Despite relatively little natural vegetation loss inside core protected areas and their legal buffer zones, the different indicators revealed significant LULC conversions from natural vegetation to farming land, general productivity loss, homogenization of natural forests, significant agricultural expansion, and a general increase in productivity. These results suggest an overall degradation of habitats and intensification of land use in the studied conservation area network, highlighting serious conservation inefficiencies in this region and stressing the importance of integrated landscape change analyses to provide complementary indicators of ecologically-relevant dynamics in these key conservation areas.

scholarly journals The social context for conservation: amphibians in human-shaped landscapes

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tibor Hartel ◽  
Ben C Scheele ◽  
Laurentiu Rozylowicz ◽  
Andra Horcea-Milcu ◽  
Dan Cogalniceanu
Keyword(s):  
Protected Areas ◽  
Amphibian Conservation ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Direct Control ◽  
Adaptive Potential ◽  
Management Options ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Natural Landscapes

Many human-shaped landscapes support viable amphibian populations due to the habitats created and/or maintained as a consequence of human actions. The challenges and approaches required to achieve the persistence of amphibians in human-shaped landscapes are markedly different from approaches commonly applied in protected areas. Contrary to protected areas or natural landscapes where amphibian conservationists can have direct control over management, in human-shaped landscapes, management options are best approached through understanding local communities’ values and socio-economic aspirations. However, consideration of the social aspects of amphibian conservation are vastly under-represented in the amphibian conservation literature. We propose that amphibian conservationists should: (i) assess the controllability of their mitigation actions for achieving long-term sustainability, (ii) understand the values and attitudes of individual landowners towards amphibians and amphibian-friendly management (local scale) and land stewardship on which amphibian conservation initiatives can be built (landscape scale), and (iii) understand the social and economic drivers of land-use change operating at regional levels, which is crucial for building adaptive potential in conservation programs. Since targeted amphibian conservation initiatives are limited in many human-shaped landscapes, consideration of the socio-economic context conducive to amphibian persistence is crucial.

scholarly journals Two centuries of settlement and urban development in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (23) ◽  
pp. eaba2937 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Leyk ◽  
Johannes H. Uhl ◽  
Dylan S. Connor ◽  
Anna E. Braswell ◽  
Nathan Mietkiewicz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Population Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Development Patterns ◽  
The Past ◽  
Resolution Analysis

Over the past 200 years, the population of the United States grew more than 40-fold. The resulting development of the built environment has had a profound impact on the regional economic, demographic, and environmental structure of North America. Unfortunately, constraints on data availability limit opportunities to study long-term development patterns and how population growth relates to land-use change. Using hundreds of millions of property records, we undertake the finest-resolution analysis to date, in space and time, of urbanization patterns from 1810 to 2015. Temporally consistent metrics reveal distinct long-term urban development patterns characterizing processes such as settlement expansion and densification at fine granularity. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these settlement measures are robust proxies for population throughout the record and thus potential surrogates for estimating population changes at fine scales. These new insights and data vastly expand opportunities to study land use, population change, and urbanization over the past two centuries.

scholarly journals Evaluation of land cover/land use development in selected landscape conservation areas in comparison to non-protected areas

Geografie ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-316
Author(s):  
Lucia Bendíková ◽  
Markéta Šantrůčková ◽  
Zdeněk Lipský
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Landscape Conservation ◽  
Land Use Land Cover ◽  
Natural Conditions ◽  
Conservation Areas ◽  
Land Use Development ◽  
Landscape Protection

Qualities of protected areas in Europe are the result of mutual collaboration, and the influence of natural conditions and historical development. Therefore, landscape protection has a wider scope. In addition to the protection of the landscape’s natural qualities, landscape protection also needs to identify human-driven impacts that support or directly affect landscape qualities. We have compared the development of land use/land cover in selected landscape conservation areas, and suitably selected referential areas in four time levels within a period of more than 150 years. The goals were to identify the types of land use that decrease, or increase the qualities of landscape, and to verify the hypothesis that landscape conservation areas, protected areas, have gone through a different land use/land cover development than the referential areas. The results of this comparison do not confirm our hypothesis. The most substantial changes in the rural areas in Czechia took place in a distant past not covered by the dataset used in this study.

scholarly journals Geospatial assessment of land use and land cover dynamics in the mid-zone of Ghana

2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 288-305
Author(s):  
Addo Koranteng ◽  
Isaac Adu-Poku ◽  
Emmanuel Donkor ◽  
Tomasz Zawiła-Niedźwiecki
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Satellite Imagery ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Anthropogenic Activities ◽  
Arable Land ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
The Past ◽  
Open Forest

AbstractLand use and land cover (LULC) terrain in Ghana has undergone profound changes over the past years emanating mainly from anthropogenic activities, which have impacted countrywide and sub-regional environment. This study is a comprehensive analysis via integrated approach of geospatial procedures such as Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) of past, present and future LULC from satellite imagery covering Ghana’s Ashanti regional capital (Kumasi) and surrounding districts. Multi-temporal satellite imagery data sets of four different years, 1990 (Landsat TM), 2000 (Landsat ETM+), 2010 (Alos and Disaster Monitoring Constellation-DMC) and 2020 (SENTINEL), spanning over a 30-year period were mapped. Five major LULC categories – Closed Forest, Open Forest, Agriculture, Built-up and Water – were delineated premised on the prevailing geographical settings, field study and remote sensing data. Markov Cellular Automata modelling was applied to predict the probable LULC change consequence for the next 20 years (2040). The study revealed that both Open Forest and Agriculture class categories decreased 51.98 to 38.82 and 27.48 to 20.11, respectively. Meanwhile, Built-up class increased from 4.8% to 24.8% (over 500% increment from 1990 to 2020). Rapid urbanization caused the depletion of forest cover and conversion of farmlands into human settlements. The 2040 forecast map showed an upward increment in the Built-up area up to 35.2% at the expense of other LULC class categories. This trend from the past to the forecasted future would demand that judicious LULC resolutions have to be made to keep Ghana’s forest cover, provide arable land for farming activities and alleviate the effects of climate change.

Meta-analysis reveals declines in terrestrial but increases in freshwater insect abundances

Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 368 (6489) ◽  
pp. 417-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roel van Klink ◽  
Diana E. Bowler ◽  
Konstantin B. Gongalsky ◽  
Ann B. Swengel ◽  
Alessandro Gentile ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
North America ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Spatiotemporal Patterns ◽  
European Regions ◽  
Insect Abundance ◽  
Abundance Trends ◽  
Over Time

Recent case studies showing substantial declines of insect abundances have raised alarm, but how widespread such patterns are remains unclear. We compiled data from 166 long-term surveys of insect assemblages across 1676 sites to investigate trends in insect abundances over time. Overall, we found considerable variation in trends even among adjacent sites but an average decline of terrestrial insect abundance by ~9% per decade and an increase of freshwater insect abundance by ~11% per decade. Both patterns were largely driven by strong trends in North America and some European regions. We found some associations with potential drivers (e.g., land-use drivers), and trends in protected areas tended to be weaker. Our findings provide a more nuanced view of spatiotemporal patterns of insect abundance trends than previously suggested.

scholarly journals Reserves as tools for alleviating impacts of marine disease

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1689) ◽  
pp. 20150210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joleah B. Lamb ◽  
Amelia S. Wenger ◽  
Michelle J. Devlin ◽  
Daniela M. Ceccarelli ◽  
David H. Williamson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Marine Protected Areas ◽  
Anthropogenic Activities ◽  
Coral Disease ◽  
Disease Prevalence ◽  
Run Off ◽  
One Year ◽  
Over Exploitation

Marine protected areas can prevent over-exploitation, but their effect on marine diseases is less clear. We examined how marine reserves can reduce diseases affecting reef-building corals following acute and chronic disturbances. One year after a severe tropical cyclone, corals inside reserves had sevenfold lower levels of disease than those in non-reserves. Similarly, disease prevalence was threefold lower on reserve reefs following chronic exposure to terrestrial run-off from a degraded river catchment, when exposure duration was below the long-term site average. Examination of 35 predictor variables indicated that lower levels of derelict fishing line and injured corals inside reserves were correlated with lower levels of coral disease in both case studies, signifying that successful disease mitigation occurs when activities that damage reefs are restricted. Conversely, reserves were ineffective in moderating disease when sites were exposed to higher than average levels of run-off, demonstrating that reductions in water quality undermine resilience afforded by reserve protection. In addition to implementing protected areas, we highlight that disease management efforts should also target improving water quality and limiting anthropogenic activities that cause injury.

scholarly journals Landscape research in Croatia from 1945 to 2019

2021 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-56
Author(s):  
Valerija Butorac ◽  
◽  
Nenad Buzjak ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Land Management ◽  
Landscape Architecture ◽  
Anthropogenic Activities ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Research Topics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Landscape Research ◽  
Over Time

In Croatia, as elsewhere, significant changes have occurred in the landscape over time, due to changes in land use, climate change, and general anthropogenic activities. Accordingly, the need for deeper and more intensive understanding of landscape properties has arisen, in order to ensure adequate land management and protection. The aim of this study is to give an overview of the state of scientific landscape research in Croatia, and determine the stakeholders, methodologies, various research topics, and degree of research and knowledge regarding Croatia’s landscapes. Over the past decade, there has been an increased interest in landscape research, with two clear landscape research approaches emerging: geographic approach and (landscape) architecture approach, that differ in terms of the issues examined, methodologies applied, and spatial context.

scholarly journals The social context for conservation: amphibians in human-shaped landscapes

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tibor Hartel ◽  
Ben C Scheele ◽  
Laurentiu Rozylowicz ◽  
Andra Horcea-Milcu ◽  
Dan Cogalniceanu
Keyword(s):  
Protected Areas ◽  
Amphibian Conservation ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Direct Control ◽  
Adaptive Potential ◽  
Management Options ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Natural Landscapes

Many human-shaped landscapes support viable amphibian populations due to the habitats created and/or maintained as a consequence of human actions. The challenges and approaches required to achieve the persistence of amphibians in human-shaped landscapes are markedly different from approaches commonly applied in protected areas. Contrary to protected areas or natural landscapes where amphibian conservationists can have direct control over management, in human-shaped landscapes, management options are best approached through understanding local communities’ values and socio-economic aspirations. However, consideration of the social aspects of amphibian conservation are vastly under-represented in the amphibian conservation literature. We propose that amphibian conservationists should: (i) assess the controllability of their mitigation actions for achieving long-term sustainability, (ii) understand the values and attitudes of individual landowners towards amphibians and amphibian-friendly management (local scale) and land stewardship on which amphibian conservation initiatives can be built (landscape scale), and (iii) understand the social and economic drivers of land-use change operating at regional levels, which is crucial for building adaptive potential in conservation programs. Since targeted amphibian conservation initiatives are limited in many human-shaped landscapes, consideration of the socio-economic context conducive to amphibian persistence is crucial.

scholarly journals Relating the Land-Use Changes to the Invasion of Pneumatopteris afra in Nigeria Using Remote Sensing

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gbenga Festus Akomolafe ◽  
Zakaria Rahmad
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Forest Products ◽  
Classification Systems ◽  
The Past ◽  
Classification Technique ◽  
Bare Land ◽  
Landsat Satellite ◽  
Broad Classification

The study aimed at using satellite remote sensing in identifying the land-use changes that have occurred in Lafia, Nigeria within the past 35 years, especially in relation to the current and the predicted future invasion of a fern (Pneumatopteris afra). Landsat satellite images OLI/TIRS, ETM+ and TM within the interval of 15 years from 1985 to 2020 were used for the extraction of land-use. Six broad classification systems were used to classify the land-use changes by employing a supervised classification technique. In 1985, the bare land dominated the land-use having an area of 69156 ha while the wetland was the least having an area of 3412 ha. However, in 2020, the built-up area has dominated the land-use of Lafia with an area of 144645 ha (52.21%) while the wetland still remained the least with area of 1477 ha. This is obviously due to the geometric increase in the urbanization of this city. There was a consistent loss of the forests from 1985 to 2020 with an annual rate of loss of 0.46%. This resulted in a loss of 44329 ha of forests in 2020 out of the 47643 ha in 1985. This approximately leads to a total loss of 172,732,045 USD of forest products. The current invasion of Pneumatopteris afra in Lafia was found to fall within the shrub and grasses land-use class. This indicates that the landsat satellite could not detect the wetlands where the plant dominated due to its massive covering. This study calls for immediate conservation of the remaining forests and wetlands in Lafia to prevent further encroachments and invasion by plants.

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