scholarly journals Trait-based responses to forestry and animal husbandry modify long-term changes in forest understories

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konsta Happonen ◽  
Lauralotta Muurinen ◽  
Risto Virtanen ◽  
Eero Kaakinen ◽  
John-Arvid Grytnes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Forest Management ◽  
Plant Traits ◽  
Forest Understory ◽  
Vegetation Changes ◽  
Large Herbivores ◽  
Reindeer Husbandry ◽  
Understory Communities ◽  
Land Use Practices

AbstractAimLand use is the foremost cause of global biodiversity decline, but species do not respond equally to land-use practices. Instead, responses are mediated by species traits, but long-term data on the trait-mediated effects of land-use on communities is scarce. Here we study how forest understory communities have been affected by common land-use practices during 4–5 decades, and whether changes in diversity are related to changes in functional composition.LocationFinlandTime period1968–2019Major taxa studiedVascular plantsMethodsWe resurveyed 245 semi-permanent vegetation plots in boreal herb-rich forest understories, and used path analysis to relate changes in diversity, species composition, average plant size, and leaf economic traits to reindeer husbandry, forest management intensity, and changes in canopy cover and canopy traits.ResultsForestry affected understories indirectly by increasing canopy shading, which increased understory SLA and decreased LDMC over the study period. Intensive management also decreased species richness and increased turnover. In areas with reindeer husbandry, reindeer density had increased along with understory evenness and diversity. Areas with reindeer husbandry also had lower temporal community turnover. Plant height had increased in areas without reindeer, but this trend was suppressed or even reversed within the reindeer herding area.Main conclusionsFunctional traits are useful in connecting vegetation changes to the mechanisms that drive them. Forest management causes directional selection on light-interception traits by altering shade. Reindeer husbandry seems to buffer forest understory communities against compositional changes by altering selection on whole-plant traits such as size. These trait-dependent selection effects could inform which species benefit and which suffer from different types of land use, and point to the potential usefulness of large herbivores as tools for managing vegetation changes under global change.

scholarly journals Human Land-Use Practices Lead to Global Long-Term Increases in Photosynthetic Capacity

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 5717-5731 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Mueller ◽  
Gunnar Dressler ◽  
Compton Tucker ◽  
Jorge Pinzon ◽  
Peter Leimgruber ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Photosynthetic Capacity ◽  
Human Land Use ◽  
Land Use Practices

scholarly journals Savannas of southern Africa: attributes and use of some types along the Tropic of Capricorn

Bothalia ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 14 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 675-681 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Van der Meulen ◽  
H. A. M. J. Van Gils
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Survey Methodology ◽  
Striking Difference ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Landscape Approach ◽  
Large Herbivores ◽  
Vegetation Growth ◽  
Vegetation Surveys ◽  
Land Use Practices ◽  
Landscape Basis

Two recent reconnaissance vegetation surveys of savanna in the Kalahari of Botswana and in the western Transvaal (RSA) carried out on a landscape basis are described. Attributes and utilization of four selected stations along a transect of about 1 000 km near the Tropic of Capricorn, with a climate changing eastward from arid to subhumid. are compared. The stations represent microphyllous /íajcïfl-savannas and mesophvllous Burkea-Ochna-Terminalia savannas on deep red sands, covering extensive parts in both survey areas. Land attributes used are physiography, macro-climate, vegetation (growth), large herbivores and land use practices. The most striking difference between the four areas are the land use practices. Some notes on the survey methodology are presented. The authors conclude that for small-scale vegetation-land use surveys the 'holistic' landscape approach can be recommended.

scholarly journals People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (17) ◽  
pp. e2023483118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erle C. Ellis ◽  
Nicolas Gauthier ◽  
Kees Klein Goldewijk ◽  
Rebecca Bliege Bird ◽  
Nicole Boivin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Spatially Explicit ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Vertebrate Species ◽  
Biodiversity Crisis ◽  
Indigenous Lands ◽  
Tropical Woodlands ◽  
Land Use Practices

Archaeological and paleoecological evidence shows that by 10,000 BCE, all human societies employed varying degrees of ecologically transformative land use practices, including burning, hunting, species propagation, domestication, cultivation, and others that have left long-term legacies across the terrestrial biosphere. Yet, a lingering paradigm among natural scientists, conservationists, and policymakers is that human transformation of terrestrial nature is mostly recent and inherently destructive. Here, we use the most up-to-date, spatially explicit global reconstruction of historical human populations and land use to show that this paradigm is likely wrong. Even 12,000 y ago, nearly three quarters of Earth’s land was inhabited and therefore shaped by human societies, including more than 95% of temperate and 90% of tropical woodlands. Lands now characterized as “natural,” “intact,” and “wild” generally exhibit long histories of use, as do protected areas and Indigenous lands, and current global patterns of vertebrate species richness and key biodiversity areas are more strongly associated with past patterns of land use than with present ones in regional landscapes now characterized as natural. The current biodiversity crisis can seldom be explained by the loss of uninhabited wildlands, resulting instead from the appropriation, colonization, and intensifying use of the biodiverse cultural landscapes long shaped and sustained by prior societies. Recognizing this deep cultural connection with biodiversity will therefore be essential to resolve the crisis.

Participatory GIS to mitigate conflicts between reindeer husbandry and forestry in Vilhelmina Model Forest, Sweden

2012 ◽  
Vol 88 (03) ◽  
pp. 254-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per Sandström ◽  
Camilla Sandström ◽  
Johan Svensson ◽  
Leif Jougda ◽  
Karin Baer
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Land Use Planning ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Central Component ◽  
Reindeer Herding ◽  
Reindeer Husbandry ◽  
Participatory Gis

To improve communication between reindeer-herders and other land users, we developed and implemented a system to produce reindeer husbandry plans together with Sami reindeer-herding communities. A central component of our communications strategy was the introduction and use of a participatory GIS (pGIS). We evaluated the potential and limitations of pGIS as a tool for collaborative learning. We concluded that by merging traditional and scientific knowledge in a pGIS, the process of spatial communication has contributed to a more inclusive planning process, and to improved knowledge-sharing. Furthermore, the process has contributed to a more efficient long-term perspective where land use planning focuses on key areas but with solutions applied to the landscape. The Model Forest offered an appropriate platform to facilitate the process.

Nitrate leaching to groundwater

1982 ◽  
Vol 296 (1082) ◽  
pp. 477-489 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Potable Water ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Agricultural Soils ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Groundwater Resources ◽  
Agricultural Land Use ◽  
Supply Industry ◽  
Land Use Practices

Groundwater provides over 30% of developed supplies of potable water in Britain. The outcrops of the important aquifers form extensive tracts of agricultural land. Groundwater resources largely originate as rainfall that infiltrates this land. During the 1970s, growing concern about rising, or elevated, groundwater nitrate concentrations, in relation to current drinking water standards, stimulated a major national research effort on the extent of diffuse pollution resulting from agricultural land-use practices. The results presented derive from intensive and continuing studies of a number of small groundwater catchments in eastern England. It is in this predominantly arable region that the groundwater nitrate problem is most widespread and severe. The distribution of nitrate in the unsaturated and saturated zones of the aquifers concerned is summarized. These data have important implications for the water-supply industry, but their interpretation is discussed primarily in relation to what can be deduced about both the recent and long-term histories of leaching from the more permeable agricultural soils.

Towards Synthesis: Research and Discovery in Neolithic North-East England

2011 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 279-319
Author(s):  
Clive Waddington ◽  
Peter Marshall ◽  
David G. Passmore
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Bayesian Modelling ◽  
Robust Estimate ◽  
North East ◽  
Chronological Sequence ◽  
New Type ◽  
Landscape Research ◽  
Land Use Practices

The Tweed Valley and its tributaries, and particularly the Milfield Basin in north Northumberland, is an area of strategic significance in the geography of the British Isles and it hosts a rich and varied multi-period archaeological and palaeoenvironmental record. This paper summarises some of the key findings for the Neolithic resulting from a long-term and in-depth landscape research project and provides a new chronological sequence for the Neolithic of the region.Attention is drawn to the discovery of what appears to be a new type of Neolithic structure associated with settlement activity hitherto unrecognised in Britain: post-built timber buildings based on a triangular arrangement of timbers. The paper then turns to a consideration of subsistence and land-use practices and the evidence for cereal agriculture from the immediate outset of the Neolithic in the region. Since 1999 many more radiocarbon measurements have become available for Neolithic activity in the area and, together with those obtained before 1999, have been recalibrated and subjected to Bayesian modelling to produce more precise estimates for Neolithic activity. Important findings include the provision of a more robust estimate for dating the onset of the Neolithic in the region, as well as establishing a chronological framework for the Neolithic–Beaker period ceramic sequence. It also reveals that the current dating available for the henge monuments indicates that this ritual complex most likely dates to the Beaker period and not to the Neolithic proper as they do in some other parts of Britain. Truly ‘Neolithic’ ceremonial monuments in the Milfield Basin remain elusive and few of the potential sites that have so far been identified have yet to be tested by excavation and scientific dating. A clear zoning of rock art is apparent, with hundreds of sites all clustered on the Fellsandstone escarpment, while a variety of Neolithic burial types is attested suggesting the region formed a meeting ground for different cultural influences.

scholarly journals Bacterial community dissimilarity in soils is driven by long‐term land‐use practices

age ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aditi Sengupta ◽  
Janani Hariharan ◽  
Parwinder S. Grewal ◽  
Warren A. Dick
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Bacterial Community ◽  
Community Dissimilarity ◽  
Land Use Practices

Tree Hollows and Wildlife Conservation in Australia

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Gibbons ◽  
David Lindenmayer
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Forest Management ◽  
Wildlife Conservation ◽  
Timber Production ◽  
Disturbance Regimes ◽  
Tree Hollows ◽  
Firewood Collection ◽  
Eucalypt Forests ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Land Use Practices

More than 300 species of Australian native animals — mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians — use tree hollows, but there has never been a complete inventory of them. Many of these species are threatened, or are in decline, because of land-use practices such as grazing, timber production and firewood collection. All forest management agencies in Australia attempt to reduce the impact of logging on hollow-dependent fauna, but the nature of our eucalypt forests presents a considerable challenge. In some cases, tree hollows suitable for vertebrate fauna may take up to 250 years to develop, which makes recruiting and perpetuating this resource very difficult within the typical cycle of human-induced disturbance regimes. Tree Hollows and Wildlife Conservation in Australia is the first comprehensive account of the hollow-dependent fauna of Australia and introduces a considerable amount of new data on this subject. It not only presents a review and analysis of the literature, but also provides practical approaches for land management.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document