Including Condition into Ecological Maps Changes Everything—A Study of Ecological Condition in the Conterminous United States

In 2021, the Biden administration signed an executive order to protect 30% of American lands by 2030. Accomplishing this ambitious goal in the U.S. requires understanding the relative contribution of public and private lands toward supporting biodiversity. New approaches are needed because existing approaches focus on quantity of habitat without incorporating quality. To fill this need, we developed a 30 m resolution national habitat condition index (HCI) that integrates quality and quantity measures of habitat. We hypothesized that including an evaluation of the quality of habitat at landscape scales, both in conservation-focused preserves and working lands would provide a better assessment of the value of geographies for conservation. We divided the conterminous U.S. by major land cover type and into natural and cultivated lands and then spatially mapped multiple anthropogenic stressors, proximity to aquatic habitat, and vegetation departure from expected natural disturbance regimes. Each map layer was then scored for site impact and distance decay and combined into a final national index. Field observations providing scored relative ecological conditions were used for HCI calibration and validation at both CONUS and regional scales. Finally, we evaluate lands by management (conservation versus working lands) and ownership (public versus private) testing the value of these lands for conservation. While we found regional differences across CONUS, functional habitat was largely independent of protection status: working lands provide clear habitat and other values. These results are relevant for guiding strategies to achieve the U.S. 30 by 30 goals. Where similar data exist in other countries, analogous modeling could be used to meet their national conservation commitments.

A decade of science support in the sagebrush biome (NOTE: to be released late September 2021)

Working Lands for Wildlife (WLFW) invests in science to proactively target conservation investments and quantify outcomes. This report summarizes more than a decade of WLFW science’s current understanding of identified sagebrush biome threats on western working rangelands and how best to address them through voluntary conservation actions. More than 350 plant and animal species are benefitting from this conservation, notably sage grouse, sagebrush songbirds, and migratory big game populations. 61 peer-reviewed publications are referenced in the report that are helping guide targeted conservation of the sage brush biome, conserve core areas, along with scientifically quantifying outcomes.

Spare half, share the rest: A revised planetary boundary for biodiversity intactness and integrity

Setting clear biodiversity targets is a pervasive challenge1 due to the context-dependent nature of biodiversity that has evaded concise science-based objectives such as the 1.5°C for climate2. Considering the major risk of continued inaction, and further biodiversity loss, it is imperative that the biodiversity community identify similarly operational science-based boundaries supporting the development of targets to safeguard biodiversity and its contributions to human well-being. Confounding goal setting are the two distinct but not mutually exclusive conservation objectives: (1) halting the rampant loss of intact ecosystems, species extinction and population declines, and (2) maintaining biosphere integrity and ecosystem function. We propose a revised planetary boundary for biodiversity: retaining at least half of the area of each terrestrial ecoregion biologically intact to halt the extinction crisis, and maintaining ecosystem integrity across all lands to preserve and regenerate biosphere, ecosystem functions and their contributions to human well-being. We combine four intactness datasets to provide a global assessment and find that 49.6% of the Earth’s land ice-free surface remains intact. While this is promising globally, 69% of 798 unique ecoregions are less than half intact. For ecosystem integrity, we find 18.1% of working lands have ecosystem integrity deficits precluding the provisioning of biosphere and ecosystem functions. Ninety percent of ecoregions have an ecosystem integrity deficit. Globally, intactness and integrity are at boundary limits with degradation of nature critically jeopardizing biosphere capacity to support a safe and just space for humanity. Combined efforts are needed to halt loss of and restore intactness, while regenerating integrity in working lands.

Ecosystem Services in Working Lands of the Southeastern USA

Agriculture and natural systems interweave in the southeastern US, including Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, where topographic, edaphic, hydrologic, and climatic gradients form nuanced landscapes. These are largely working lands under private control, comprising mosaics of timberlands, grazinglands, and croplands. According to the “ecosystem services” framework, these landscapes are multifunctional. Generally, working lands are highly valued for their provisioning services, and to some degree cultural services, while regulating and supporting services are harder to quantify and less appreciated. Trade-offs and synergies exist among these services. Regional ecological assessments tend to broadly paint working lands as low value for regulating and supporting services. But this generalization fails to consider the complexity and tight spatial coupling of land uses and land covers evident in such regions. The challenge of evaluating multifunctionality and ecosystem services is that they are not spatially concordant. While there are significant acreages of natural systems embedded in southeastern working lands, their spatial characteristics influence the balance of tradeoffs between ecosystem services at differing scales. To better understand this, we examined the configuration of working lands in the southeastern US by comparing indicators of ecosystem services at multiple scales. Indicators included measurements of net primary production (provisioning), agricultural Nitrogen runoff (regulating), habitat measured at three levels of land use intensity, and biodiversity (supporting). We utilized a hydrographic and ecoregional framework to partition the study region. We compared indicators aggregated at differing scales, ranging from broad ecoregions to local landscapes focused on the USDA Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) Network sites in Florida and Georgia. Subregions of the southeastern US differ markedly in contributions to overall ecosystem services. Provisioning services, characterized by production indicators, were very high in northern subregions of Georgia, while supporting services, characterized by habitat and biodiversity indicators, were notably higher in smaller subregions of Florida. For supporting services, the combined contributions of low intensity working lands with embedded natural systems made a critical difference in their regional evaluation. This analysis demonstrated how the inclusion of working lands combined with examining these at different scales shifted our understanding of ecosystem services trade-offs and synergies in the southeastern United States.

Climate-resilient water-for-agriculture infrastructure: boundaries, complexities and standards in irrigated working lands

<p>The continuous intensification of agriculture along the High Plains in the US has been sustained by improvements in genetics, understanding of soil complexity, hydroclimate controls, and irrigation. The present work aims to identify the socioecological and sociotechnical processes involved in sustaining the intensification of yields in the past 50 years. We hypothesize that in the occurrence of extreme events, the boundaries of the agricultural systems –for example, water tradeoffs, governance, and natural availability—can be compromised, leading to a reduction in yields. Furthermore, the complexity of the Ag system –characterized by the interdependencies among complex hydroclimate, soil, and management – can change across spatial scales. The objectives are (1) to collect digital yield and climate data, as well as information about standards of water-for-agriculture; and (2) use the collected data to characterize the limits and limitations of the standards. In the proposed approach, the standards will represent our ability to manage resources, and ultimately create resilient water-for-food infrastructure in a changing climate.</p>

Coproducing Science to Inform Working Lands: The Next Frontier in Nature Conservation

Conservationists are increasingly convinced that coproduction of science enhances its utility in policy, decision-making, and practice. Concomitant is a renewed reliance on privately owned working lands to sustain nature and people. We propose a coupling of these emerging trends as a better recipe for conservation. To illustrate this, we present five elements of coproduction, contrast how they differ from traditional approaches, and describe the role of scientists in successful partnerships. Readers will find coproduction more demanding than the loading dock approach to science delivery but will also find greater rewards, relevance, and impact. Because coproduction is novel and examples of it are rare, we draw on our roles as scientists within the US Department of Agriculture–led Sage Grouse Initiative, North America's largest effort to conserve the sagebrush ecosystem. As coproduction and working lands evolve, traditional approaches will be replaced in order to more holistically meet the needs of nature and people.