Large-Scale Landscape Composition and Capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus) Density in Finland

AbstractAgricultural land expansion and intensification, driven by human consumption of agricultural goods, are among the major threats to environmental degradation and biodiversity conservation. Land degradation can ultimately hamper agricultural production through a decrease in ecosystem services. Thus, designing viable land use strategies is a key sustainability challenge. We develop a model describing the coupled dynamics of human demography and landscape composition, while imposing a trade-off between agricultural expansion and intensification. We model land use strategies spanning from low-intensity agriculture and high land conversion rates per person to high-intensity agriculture and low land conversion rates per person; and explore their consequences on the long-term dynamics of the coupled human-land system. We seek to characterise the strategies’ viability in the long run; and understand the mechanisms that potentially lead to large-scale land degradation and population collapse due to resource scarcity. We show that the viability of land use strategies strongly depends on the land’s intrinsic recovery rate. We also find that socio-ecological collapses occur when agricultural intensification is not accompanied by a sufficient decrease in land conversion. Based on these findings we stress the dangers of naive land use planning and the importance of precautionary behaviour for land use management.

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Suburban frog ponds: mapping local land cover yields different estimates of landscape composition than the National Land Cover Database

10.7287/peerj.preprints.570 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Max Lambert

Keyword(s):

Land Cover ◽

Large Scale ◽

Forest Cover ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Landscape Composition ◽

Ecological Processes ◽

Simple Method ◽

Fine Grain ◽

Land Cover Data ◽

Ecological Patterns

Suburban neighborhoods are rapidly spreading globally. As such, there is an increasing need to study the environmental and ecological effects of suburbanization. At large spatial extents, from county-level to global, remote sensing-derived land cover data, such as the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD), have yielded insight into patterns of urbanization and concomitant large-scale ecological patterns in response. However, the components of suburban land cover (houses, yards, etc.) are dispersed throughout the landscape at a finer scale than the relatively coarse grain size (30m pixels) of NLCD may be able to detect. Our understanding of ecological processes in heterogeneous landscapes is reliant upon the accuracy and resolution of our measurements as well as the scale at which we measure the landscape. Analyses of ecological processes along suburban gradients are restricted by the currently available data. As ecologists are becoming increasingly interested in describing phenomena at spatial extents as small as individual households, we need higher-resolution landscape measurements. Here, I describe a simple method of translating the components of suburban landscapes into finer-grain, local land cover (LLC) data in GIS. Using both LLC and NLCD, I compare the suburban matrix surrounding ponds occupied by two different frog species. I illustrate large discrepancies in Forest, Yard, and Developed land cover estimates between LLC and NLCD, leading to markedly different interpretations of suburban landscape composition. NLCD, relative to LLC, estimates lower proportions of forest cover and higher proportions of anthropogenic land covers in general. These two land cover datasets provide surprisingly different descriptions of the suburban landscapes, potentially affecting our understanding of how organisms respond to an increasingly suburban world. LLC provides a free and detailed fine-grain depiction of the components of suburban neighborhoods and will allow ecologists to better explore heterogeneous suburban landscapes at multiple spatial scales.

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Defining Ottoman Realism in the Uppsala Mecca Painting

Muqarnas Online ◽

10.1163/22118993-00371p08 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 37 (1) ◽

pp. 209-245

Author(s):

Deniz Beyazıt

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

East Asia ◽

Large Scale ◽

Turning Point ◽

Landscape Composition ◽

Linear Perspective ◽

Power Struggles ◽

Holy Places ◽

History Of ◽

Work Functions

Abstract This article analyzes a little-known painting of the sanctuary at Mecca in the Uppsala University Library, Sweden—one of the most sophisticated depictions of its kind. Datable to ca. 1700 and attributable to Cairo, the painting is among the earliest known depictions of the Holy Places in an illusionistic style with a bird’s-eye view, composed according to linear perspective. With minutely rendered details accompanied by more than seventy inscriptions, the work functions as an early map of Mecca. The Uppsala Mecca painting exemplifies the complexity of artistic exchange between Europe and the Ottoman world, which yielded highly original results. This discussion sheds light on the long, hybrid journey of Ottoman art towards realism, applied to a large-scale topographic landscape composition. The work marks a turning point in the history of Mecca painting and served as a model for European prints, through which the imagery spread all the way to East Asia. This study attempts to unravel the mysterious origins of the painting in the context of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Egypt and the power struggles to control Egypt, the Hijaz, and the Hajj.

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Size and spacing of grouse leks: comparing capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus) and black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) in two contrasting Eurasian boreal forest landscapes

Canadian Journal of Zoology ◽

10.1139/z09-093 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 87 (11) ◽

pp. 1032-1043 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Jørund Rolstad ◽

Per Wegge ◽

Andrey V. Sivkov ◽

Olav Hjeljord ◽

Ken Olaf Storaunet

Keyword(s):

Forest Dynamics ◽

Large Scale ◽

Landscape Scale ◽

Tetrao Urogallus ◽

Black Grouse ◽

Surrounding Area ◽

Social Attraction ◽

Tetrao Tetrix ◽

Habitat Affinities

Capercaillie ( Tetrao urogallus L., 1758) and black grouse ( Tetrao tetrix L., 1758 (= Lyrurus tetrix (L., 1758))) are two sympatric Eurasian lekking grouse species that differ markedly in habitat affinities and social organization. We examined how size and spacing of leks in pristine (Russia) and managed (Norway) forests were related to habitat and social behavior. Leks of both species were larger and spaced farther apart in the pristine landscape. Capercaillie leks were regularly spaced at 2–3 km distance, increasing with lek size, which in turn was positively related to the amount of middle-aged and older forests in the surrounding area. Black grouse leks were irregularly distributed at shorter distances of 1–2 km, with lek size explained by the size of the open bog arena and the amount of open habitat in the surroundings. At the landscape scale, spatial distribution of open bogs and social attraction among male black grouse caused leks to be more aggregated, whereas mutual avoidance in male capercaillie caused leks to be spaced out. In the pristine landscape, large-scale and long-term changes in forest dynamics owing to wildfires, combined with an aggregated pattern of huge bog complexes, presumably provide both grouse species with enough time and space to build up bigger lek populations than in the managed landscape.

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Molecular dietary analyses of western capercaillies (Tetrao urogallus) reveal a diverse diet

10.1101/2021.03.08.434346 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Physilia Ying Shi Chua ◽

Youri Lammers ◽

Emmanuel Menoni ◽

Torbjørn Ekrem ◽

Kristine Bohmann ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Focal Point ◽

Environmental Dna ◽

Taxonomic Resolution ◽

Conservation Strategies ◽

Dietary Composition ◽

Tetrao Urogallus ◽

Dietary Analysis ◽

Non Invasive ◽

Microhistological Analysis

ABSTRACTConservation strategies centred around species habitat protection rely on species’ dietary information. One species at the focal point of conservation efforts is the herbivorous grouse, the western capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus). Traditional microhistological analysis of crop contents or faeces and/or direct observations are time-consuming and at low taxonomic resolution. Thus, limited knowledge on diet is hampering conservation efforts. Here we use non-invasive environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding on DNA extracted from faeces to present the first large-scale molecular dietary analysis of capercaillies. Faecal samples were collected from seven populations located in Norway (Finnmark, Troms, Trøndelag, Innlandet) and France (Vosges, Jura, Pyrenees) (n=172). We detected 122 plant taxa belonging to 46 plant families of which 37.7% of the detected taxa could be identified at species level. The average dietary richness of each sample was 7 ± 5 SD taxa. The most frequently occurring plant groups with the highest relative read abundance (RRA) were trees and dwarf shrubs, in particular, Pinus and Vaccinium myrtillus, respectively. There was a difference in dietary composition (RRA) between samples collected from the different locations (adonis F5,86= 11.01, p <0.05) and seasons (adonis F2,03= 0.64, p <0.05). Dietary composition also differed between sexes at each location (adonis F1,47 = 2.77, p <0.05), although not significant for all data combined. In total, 35 taxa (36.84% of taxa recorded) were new capercaillie food items compared to existing knowledge. The non-invasive molecular dietary analysis applied in this study provides new ecological understanding of capercaillies’ diet which can have real conservation implications. The broad variety of diet items indicates that vegetation does not limit food intake. This plasticity in diet suggests that other factors including disturbed mating grounds and not diet could be the main threat to their survival.

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Biased parasitoid sex ratios: Wolbachia, functional traits, local and landscape effects

10.1101/271395 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Zoltán László ◽

Avar-Lehel Dénes ◽

Lajos Király ◽

Béla Tóthmérész

Keyword(s):

Functional Traits ◽

Large Scale ◽

Mating Behaviour ◽

Functional Trait ◽

Landscape Scale ◽

Landscape Composition ◽

Habitat Amount ◽

Explanatory Variables ◽

Ovipositor Length ◽

Adult Sex Ratio

AbstractAdult sex ratio (ASR) is a demographic key parameter, being essential for the survival and dynamics of a species populations. Biased ASR are adaptations to the environment on different scales, resulted by different mechanisms as inbreeding, mating behaviour, resource limitations, endosymbionts such as Wolbachia, and changes in density or spatial distribution. Parasitoid ASRs are also known to be strongly biased. But less information is available on large scale variable effects such as landscape composition or fragmentation. We aimed to study whether the landscape scale does affect the ASR of parasitoids belonging to the same tritrophic gall inducer community. We examined effects of characteristics on different scales as functional trait, local and landscape scale environment on parasitoid ASR. On species level ovipositor length, on local scale resource amount and density, while on landscape scale habitat amount, land use and landscape history were the examined explanatory variables. We controlled for the incidence and prevalence of Wolbachia infections. Parasitoid ASR is best explained by ovipositor length: with which increase ASR also increases; and available resource amount: with the gall diameter increase ASR decreases. On large scale the interaction of functional traits with habitat size also explained significantly the parasitoid ASRs. Our results support the hypothesis that large scale environmental characteristics affect parasitoid ASRs besides intrinsic and local characteristics.

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Intensification of agriculture, landscape composition and wild bee communities: A large scale study in four European countries

Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment ◽

10.1016/j.agee.2010.01.015 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 137 (1-2) ◽

pp. 143-150 ◽

Cited By ~ 140

Author(s):

Violette Le Féon ◽

Agnès Schermann-Legionnet ◽

Yannick Delettre ◽

Stéphanie Aviron ◽

Regula Billeter ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Landscape Composition ◽

European Countries ◽

Wild Bee ◽

Large Scale Study ◽

Bee Communities

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Balancing the needs of capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus) and moose (Alces alces) in large-scale human land use

European Journal of Wildlife Research ◽

10.1007/s10344-009-0306-z ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 56 (3) ◽

pp. 249-260 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Saija Sirkiä ◽

Jani Pellikka ◽

Harto Lindén

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Large Scale ◽

Alces Alces ◽

Tetrao Urogallus ◽

Human Land Use

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Suburban frog ponds: mapping local land cover yields different estimates of landscape composition than the National Land Cover Database

10.7287/peerj.preprints.570v1 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Max Lambert

Keyword(s):

Land Cover ◽

Large Scale ◽

Forest Cover ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Landscape Composition ◽

Ecological Processes ◽

Simple Method ◽

Fine Grain ◽

Land Cover Data ◽

Ecological Patterns

Suburban neighborhoods are rapidly spreading globally. As such, there is an increasing need to study the environmental and ecological effects of suburbanization. At large spatial extents, from county-level to global, remote sensing-derived land cover data, such as the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD), have yielded insight into patterns of urbanization and concomitant large-scale ecological patterns in response. However, the components of suburban land cover (houses, yards, etc.) are dispersed throughout the landscape at a finer scale than the relatively coarse grain size (30m pixels) of NLCD may be able to detect. Our understanding of ecological processes in heterogeneous landscapes is reliant upon the accuracy and resolution of our measurements as well as the scale at which we measure the landscape. Analyses of ecological processes along suburban gradients are restricted by the currently available data. As ecologists are becoming increasingly interested in describing phenomena at spatial extents as small as individual households, we need higher-resolution landscape measurements. Here, I describe a simple method of translating the components of suburban landscapes into finer-grain, local land cover (LLC) data in GIS. Using both LLC and NLCD, I compare the suburban matrix surrounding ponds occupied by two different frog species. I illustrate large discrepancies in Forest, Yard, and Developed land cover estimates between LLC and NLCD, leading to markedly different interpretations of suburban landscape composition. NLCD, relative to LLC, estimates lower proportions of forest cover and higher proportions of anthropogenic land covers in general. These two land cover datasets provide surprisingly different descriptions of the suburban landscapes, potentially affecting our understanding of how organisms respond to an increasingly suburban world. LLC provides a free and detailed fine-grain depiction of the components of suburban neighborhoods and will allow ecologists to better explore heterogeneous suburban landscapes at multiple spatial scales.

Download Full-text