scholarly journals Quantifying Landscape Degradation Following Construction of a Highway Using Landscape Metrics in Southern Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alireza Mohammadi ◽  
Faezeh Fatemizadeh
Keyword(s):  
Protected Areas ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Landscape Fragmentation ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Edge Density ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Landscape Degradation ◽  
Southern Iran

Rapid expansion of roads is among the strongest drivers of the loss and degradation of natural habitats. The goal of the present study is to quantify landscape fragmentation and degradation before and after the construction of the Isfahan-Shiraz highway in southern Iran. To this end, the ecological impacts of the highway on forests, rangelands, and protected areas were evaluated. Impacts of the construction of the highway were studied within a 1,000-m buffer around the road, which was then overlaid on maps of forests, rangelands, and protected areas. Class area, number of patches, largest patch index, edge density, landscape shape index, mean patch size, and patch cohesion index were used to gauge changes in the spatial configuration of the landscape; the ecological impacts of the highway were quantified using effective mesh size (MESH), division index, and splitting index. The results indicated that after the construction of the highway, 6,406.9 ha of forest habitat, 16,647.1 ha of rangeland habitat, and 912 of the Tang-e Bostanak Protected Area will be lost. The effective MESH metric showed that after the construction of the highway, the area of forest, rangeland habitats and protected area will decrease by 20,537, 49,149, and 71,822 ha, respectively. Our findings revealed drastic habitat loss and landscape fragmentation associated with construction of the highway, serving as references for conservation planning and development.

scholarly journals Correlates of long-term land-cover change and protected area performance at priority conservation sites in Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALISON E. BERESFORD ◽  
GRAEME M. BUCHANAN ◽  
BEN PHALAN ◽  
GEORGE W. ESHIAMWATA ◽  
ANDREW BALMFORD ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Cover ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Land Cover Change ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Environmental Gradients ◽  
Survival Rates ◽  
Absolute Difference ◽  
Area Network ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Natural Land

SUMMARYThe loss of natural habitats is a major threat to biodiversity, and protected area designation is one of the standard responses to this threat. However, greater understanding of the drivers of habitat loss and of the circumstances under which protected areas succeed or fail is still needed. We use visual assessment of satellite images to quantify land-cover change over periods of up to 30 years in and around a matched sample of protected and unprotected Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) in Africa. We modelled the annual survival of forests and other natural land covers as a function of a range of environmental and anthropic predictors of plausible drivers. The best-supported model indicated that survival rates of natural land cover were highest in steeper areas, at higher altitudes, in areas with lower human population densities and in areas where the cover of natural habitats was already higher at the start of the period. Survival rates of natural land cover in protected areas were, on average, around twice those in unprotected areas, but the differences between them varied along different environmental gradients. The overall survival rates of both protected and unprotected forests were significantly lower than those of other natural land-cover types, but the net benefit of protection, in terms of the absolute difference in rates of loss between protected and unprotected sites, was higher in forests. Interaction terms indicated that as slope and altitude increased, the natural protection offered by topography increasingly nullified the additional benefits of legislative protection. Furthermore, protected area designation offered reduced additional benefits to the survival of natural land cover in areas where rates of conversion were higher at the start of the observation period. Variation in the impacts of protected area status along different environmental gradients indicates that targets to improve the world's protected area network, such as Aichi Target 11 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, need to look beyond simple area-based metrics. Our methods and results contribute to the development of a protocol for prioritizing places where protection is likely to have the greatest effect.

scholarly journals Research on the tourist traffic in protected areas in Romania

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-90
Author(s):  
Milin Ioana Anda ◽  
Merce Ioana Luliana
Keyword(s):  
Research And Development ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Natural Capital ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Tourist Destinations ◽  
Tourism Sector

Ecotourism has been gaining popularity in recent times as more people are embracing the preservation of nature. Most countries are implementing laws to preserve natural habitats and other countries are practising a forestation in a bid to restore their lost nature. Romania is a country that is blessed with natural capital and is open to ecotourism. Over the years, Romania has been host to tourists from different countries, especially the European countries, who visit mostly to enjoy the eco tourist destinations of Romania. This research aimed to study the tourist traffic in protected areas in Romania and how they can be improved in order to generate further income for the Romanian tourism sector. This research made use of secondary data that were retrieved from the Association of Ecotourism Romania and the National Institute for Research and Development in Tourism. This research found out that most of the visitors to the Romanian tourist sites were the indigenes. However, tourists from different countries were more involved in ecotourism than the indigenes. At the end of this article, recommendations are made on how tourist traffic can be increased by the Romanian tourism department.   Keywords: Ecotourism, protected area, ecosystems, nature.

Reply: Protected areas and property rights in Thailand

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER VANDERGEEST
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
National Parks ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Local People ◽  
Nature Protection ◽  
Buffer Zones

Dearden et al . (1998) have suggested that my arguments for backing away from zealously pursuing the expansion of protected areas in Thailand (Vandergeest 1996) means giving benefits to local people with no consideration for the wider community or future generations. Let me begin my response by reminding readers of my central argument: that the driving force behind the rapid expansion of wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in Thailand was primarily the forest department's need to find new ways of controlling territory and legitimizing budget allocations, rather than nature protection per se. This bureaucratic need was the outcome of widespread occupation of reserve forests, due to both reservation of occupied areas and new migration into demarcated reserved forests, as well as the 1989 ban on legal logging in Thailand. In its rush to convert reserve forest to protected area status, the forest department demarcated as national parks and wildlife sanctuaries many areas occupied and used by local people, producing a situation in which most protected areas in Thailand are surrounded or partially occupied by an alienated local population who feel that their legitimate property rights have been appropriated. The rapid expansion of protected areas in Thailand is thus hardly something that the international conservation community should be celebrating. Nor will ongoing problems with local people be fundamentally resolved through development projects, buffer zones, and participatory conservation alone, although these kinds of projects often have important benefits. I suggested that a more appropriate direction would be to degazette and allocate to households land clearly claimed and occupied by rural households, which I estimate to be about 20% of protected areas. I also suggested that some land gazetted as protected area could be managed as common property, and that conservation could be much more aggressively pursued outside of protected areas.

scholarly journals Cross-boundary human impacts compromise the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem

Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 363 (6434) ◽  
pp. 1424-1428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michiel P. Veldhuis ◽  
Mark E. Ritchie ◽  
Joseph O. Ogutu ◽  
Thomas A. Morrison ◽  
Colin M. Beale ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Natural Resource Management ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Human Impacts ◽  
Landscape Degradation ◽  
The Core ◽  
Lines Of Evidence ◽  
Ecological Functioning

Protected areas provide major benefits for humans in the form of ecosystem services, but landscape degradation by human activity at their edges may compromise their ecological functioning. Using multiple lines of evidence from 40 years of research in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, we find that such edge degradation has effectively “squeezed” wildlife into the core protected area and has altered the ecosystem’s dynamics even within this 40,000-square-kilometer ecosystem. This spatial cascade reduced resilience in the core and was mediated by the movement of grazers, which reduced grass fuel and fires, weakened the capacity of soils to sequester nutrients and carbon, and decreased the responsiveness of primary production to rainfall. Similar effects in other protected ecosystems worldwide may require rethinking of natural resource management outside protected areas.

New data on aphyllophoraceous fungi (Basidiomycota) of the protected areas of the Leningrad Region. X. State Nature Reserve «Kurgalsky»

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. M. Kotkova
Keyword(s):  
Protected Areas ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Nature Reserve ◽  
Leningrad Region ◽  
State Nature Reserve ◽  
X State ◽  
First Time ◽  
Aphyllophoroid Fungi ◽  
State Nature

The paper provides the data on aphyllophoroid fungi of the State Nature Reserve «Kurgalsky» situated in the Kingisepp District of the Leningrad Region. The list includes 285 species annotated by data on their habitats, substrates and frequency. In total 25 species protected in the Leningrad Region and 3 species protected in Russian Federation were found in the protected area. Chaetodermella luna, Phlebia subochracea and Trechispora stevensonii are published for the first time for the Leningrad Region. The specimens of selected species are kept in the Mycological Herbarium of the Komarov Botanical Institute RAS (LE).

scholarly journals Conservation Debates: People’s Perceptions and Values towards a Privately Protected Area in Southern Ecuador

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 233
Author(s):  
Verónica Iñiguez-Gallardo ◽  
Fabián Reyes-Bueno ◽  
Olga Peñaranda
Keyword(s):  
Protected Areas ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Southern Ecuador ◽  
Negative Perceptions ◽  
Land Tenure System

The perceptions and values that local communities have towards protected areas are of great value for the improvement of these territories’ management. Such perceptions and values are often absent in the conservation planning process, particularly in those privately protected areas that are established in areas where the land tenure system is based not only on ownership but also on customary uses. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data obtained through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and members of communities surrounding a privately protected area in southern Ecuador, we identify that the level of collaboration with the managers, the distance to the protected area, the percentage of untitled land, and the dependence on the resources (customary uses) are among the variables affecting these perceptions and values. Positive perceptions towards protected areas and naturalistic values are developed among those who collaborate with the protected area managers, whereas negative perceptions, and a mix of naturalistic and biospheric values are developed among those who have a sense of a lack of attention to social needs although supporting nature conservation at the same time. The evidence presented shows the importance of matching local peoples’ expectations with conservation goals during the establishment of a protected area.

scholarly journals Landscape structure affects the sunflower visiting frequency of insect pollinators

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Károly Lajos ◽  
Ferenc Samu ◽  
Áron Domonkos Bihaly ◽  
Dávid Fülöp ◽  
Miklós Sárospataki
Keyword(s):  
Landscape Structure ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Agricultural Landscape ◽  
Edge Density ◽  
Wild Bees ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Mass Flowering ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Pollinator Community ◽  
Foraging Ranges

AbstractMass-flowering crop monocultures, like sunflower, cannot harbour a permanent pollinator community. Their pollination is best secured if both managed honey bees and wild pollinators are present in the agricultural landscape. Semi-natural habitats are known to be the main foraging and nesting areas of wild pollinators, thus benefiting their populations, whereas crops flowering simultaneously may competitively dilute pollinator densities. In our study we asked how landscape structure affects major pollinator groups’ visiting frequency on 36 focal sunflower fields, hypothesising that herbaceous semi-natural (hSNH) and sunflower patches in the landscape neighbourhood will have a scale-dependent effect. We found that an increasing area and/or dispersion of hSNH areas enhanced the visitation of all pollinator groups. These positive effects were scale-dependent and corresponded well with the foraging ranges of the observed bee pollinators. In contrast, an increasing edge density of neighbouring sunflower fields resulted in considerably lower visiting frequencies of wild bees. Our results clearly indicate that the pollination of sunflower is dependent on the composition and configuration of the agricultural landscape. We conclude that an optimization of the pollination can be achieved if sufficient amount of hSNH areas with good dispersion are provided and mass flowering crops do not over-dominate the agricultural landscape.

scholarly journals Gap analyses of priority wild relatives of food crop in current ex situ and in situ conservation in Indonesia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wiguna Rahman ◽  
Joana Magos Brehm ◽  
Nigel Maxted ◽  
Jade Phillips ◽  
Aremi R. Contreras-Toledo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Protected Areas ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
In Situ Conservation ◽  
Wild Relatives ◽  
Ex Situ ◽  
Area Network ◽  
Complementarity Analysis ◽  
Ex Situ Collections ◽  
Conservation Actions

AbstractConservation programmes are always limited by available resources. Careful planning is therefore required to increase the efficiency of conservation and gap analysis can be used for this purpose. This method was used to assess the representativeness of current ex situ and in situ conservation actions of 234 priority crop wild relatives (CWR) in Indonesia. This analysis also included species distribution modelling, the creation of an ecogeographical land characterization map, and a complementarity analysis to identify priorities area for in situ conservation and for further collecting of ex situ conservation programmes. The results show that both current ex situ and in situ conservation actions are insufficient. Sixty-six percent of priority CWRs have no recorded ex situ collections. Eighty CWRs with ex situ collections are still under-represented in the national genebanks and 65 CWRs have no presence records within the existing protected area network although 60 are predicted to exist in several protected areas according to their potential distribution models. The complementarity analysis shows that a minimum of 61 complementary grid areas (complementary based on grid cells) are required to conserve all priority taxa and 40 complementary protected areas (complementary based on existing protected areas) are required to conserve those with known populations within the existing in situ protected area network. The top ten of complementary protected areas are proposed as the initial areas for the development of CWR genetic reserves network in Indonesia. It is recommended to enhanced coordination between ex situ and in situ conservation stakeholders for sustaining the long term conservation of CWR in Indonesia. Implementation of the research recommendations will provide for the first time an effective conservation planning of Indonesia’s CWR diversity and will significantly enhance the country’s food and nutritional security.

scholarly journals Economic value of protected areas via visitor mental health

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralf Buckley ◽  
Paula Brough ◽  
Leah Hague ◽  
Alienor Chauvenet ◽  
Chris Fleming ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Global Estimate ◽  
Conservation Policies ◽  
Life Years ◽  
Order Of Magnitude ◽  
Individual Scale

Abstract We evaluate methods to calculate the economic value of protected areas derived from the improved mental health of visitors. A conservative global estimate using quality-adjusted life years, a standard measure in health economics, is US$6 trillion p.a. This is an order of magnitude greater than the global value of protected area tourism, and two to three orders greater than global aggregate protected area management agency budgets. Future research should: refine this estimate using more precise methods; consider interactions between health and conservation policies and budgets at national scales; and examine links between personalities and protected area experiences at individual scale.

Protected Areas: offering security to whom, when and where?

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALICE B. KELLY ◽  
A. CLARE GUPTA
Keyword(s):  
Protected Areas ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Term Management ◽  
Over Time

SUMMARYThis study considers the issue of security in the context of protected areas in Cameroon and Botswana. Though the literature on issues of security and well-being in relation to protected areas is extensive, there has been less discussion of how and in what ways these impacts and relationships can change over time, vary with space and differ across spatial scales. Looking at two very different historical trajectories, this study considers the heterogeneity of the security landscapes created by Waza and Chobe protected areas over time and space. This study finds that conservation measures that various subsets of the local population once considered to be ‘bad’ (e.g. violent, exclusionary protected area creation) may be construed as ‘good’ at different historical moments and geographical areas. Similarly, complacency or resignation to the presence of a park can be reversed by changing environmental conditions. Changes in the ways security (material and otherwise) has fluctuated within these two protected areas has implications for the long-term management and funding strategies of newly created and already existing protected areas today. This study suggests that parks must be adaptively managed not only for changing ecological conditions, but also for shifts in a protected area's social, political and economic context.

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