A Forest Pool as a Habitat Island for Mites in a Limestone Forest in Southern Norway

Forest water bodies, e.g., pools, constitute ‘environmental islands’ within forests, with specific flora and fauna thus contributing considerably to the landscape biodiversity. The mite communities of Oribatida and Mesostigmata in two distinctive microhabitats, water-soaked Sphagnum mosses at the edge of a pool and other mosses growing on the medium-wet forest floor nearby, were compared in a limestone forest in Southern Norway. In total, 16,189 specimens of Oribatida representing 98 species, and 499 specimens of Mesostigmata, from 23 species, were found. The abundance and species number of Oribatida were significantly lower at the pool, while the abundance and species richness of Mesostigmata did not differ. Both the communities of Oribatida and of Mesostigmata differed among the microhabitats studied and analysis showed significant differences between the community structures in the two microhabitats. The most abundant oribatid species in Sphagnum mosses was Parachipteria fanzagoi (Jacot, 1929), which made up over 30% of all Oribatida, followed by Atropacarus striculus (C.L. Koch, 1835) and Tyrphonothrus maior (Berlese, 1910) (14% and 12% of Oribatida, respectively). Among Mesostigmata Paragamasus parrunciger (Bhattacharyya, 1963) dominated (44% of Mesostigmata), followed by P. lapponicus (Trägårdh, 1910) (14% of Mesostigmata). Most of these species, except P. lapponicus, were either absent or very uncommon in the other microhabitat studied. The specific acarofauna of the forest pool shows the importance of such microhabitats in increasing forest diversity. In addition, a quarter of the mite species found had not been reported from Norwegian broadleaf forests before, including five new species records for Norway and four new to Fennoscandia, all found in the medium-wet microhabitat. Most of these species are rarely collected and have their northernmost occurrence in the studied forest.

Possible models of implementing private protected area concept in Lithuania

Nowadays people are more aware of the importance of the surrounding nature: landscape, biodiversity, and natural resources. However, society is facing many ecological challenges, so individuals and communities are becoming more involved in conservation. While government is not always capable of providing the best care of nature and all its components, ordinary people, or non-government organizations “step up” and help them. One way of doing that is creating private protected areas. Many countries in the world have examples of this kind of protected areas’ governance type: some are more regulated in legal systems, some are less, but they all provide crucial benefits to conservation if managed properly. In Lithuania protected areas are governed only by the government but usually the lack of funds affects the quality of conservation. Because of that, it is necessary to analyse different mechanisms of creation of private protected areas, take examples from best practices in the world and consider implementing it in the national protected area system.

Identifying causal links between tectono-geomorphic processes and biodiversity with a coupled landscape-biodiversity evolution model

<p>Landscapes and their associated ecosystems coevolve over geologic time. Correlative approaches have elucidated the importance of topographic diversity and tectonic history but have not identified specific causal links between tectono-geomorphic processes and biodiversity metrics. To address this issue, we coupled the numerical landscape evolution model DAC (Divide and Capture) with a mechanistic model for biodiversity that simulates dispersal, allopatric speciation, and extinction to develop hypothetical biological signatures of different functional groups to a variety of landscape histories. In our coupled model, DAC-BIO, suitable habitat for terrestrial species is defined using a combination of elevation, slope, and aspect, which are measured at sub-grid scale from the simulated landscape and meant to represent more complex physical parameters such as temperature, precipitation, soil properties, and hydrologic environment. In addition to habitability requirements, species are assigned dispersal characteristics (rate and ability to cross uninhabitable terrain) and speciation rate (isolation time needed to form new species). We test whether distinct trends in the size and number of contiguous habitat patches emerge in response to various tectono-geomorphic processes, including a step change in uplift rate, a shift from uniform uplift to an uplift gradient, steady shortening (horizontal advection), and escarpment retreat. We find that these tectono-geomorphic processes do yield distinct trends in the size and number of habitat patches and that the resulting changes in habitat connectivity across the landscape leaves distinct biological signatures in diversification rates, species richness, and endemic richness.</p>

Tourism Attraction, Facilities, Flow and Assessment of Tourism Product of Manaslu Conservation Area

This study aimed to understand the tourist attractions, major tourism products and their assessment in Manaslu Conservation Area of Nepal MCA). MCA is a place well known both, nationally and internationally, for its scenic beauty, unique ecology, and rich cultural heritage, given by its geographic position and unique topography. The number of tourists visiting this area has been increasing every year. In 2001 the tourist flow was only 798 whereas in 2019 it was 7655. Such tourism growth has several socio-economic and cultural consequences. Along with the increased number of tourists, tourism focused facilities and infrastructures like hotels and tea shops are also increasing in the area. There are 127 hotels with 1328 rooms and 2827 beds (as of 2019) providing food and accommodation services for the visitors. However, even though there are many potential areas for tourism development in the Manaslu Conservation Area, because of less promotional practices, there is very little tourism activity in the region. With the area's diverse physiography, unique landscape, biodiversity and the social-cultural dimension of the villages, the area could provide plenty of attractions for tourism.

Defining Dry Rivers as the Most Extreme Type of Non-Perennial Fluvial Ecosystems

We define Dry Rivers as those whose usual habitat in space and time are dry channels where surface water may interrupt dry conditions for hours or a few days, primarily after heavy rainfall events that are variable in time and that usually lead to flash floods, disconnected from groundwater and thereby unable to harbor aquatic life. Conceptually, Dry Rivers would represent the extreme of the hydrological continuum of increased flow interruption that typically characterizes the non-perennial rivers, thus being preceded by intermittent and ephemeral rivers that usually support longer wet phases, respectively. This paper aims to show that Dry Rivers are ecosystems in their own right given their distinct structural and functional characteristics compared to other non-perennial rivers due to prevalence of terrestrial conditions. We firstly reviewed the variety of definitions used to refer to these non-perennial rivers featured by a predominant dry phase with the aim of contextualizing Dry Rivers. Secondly, we analyzed existing knowledge on distribution, geophysical and hydrological features, biota and biogeochemical attributes that characterize Dry Rivers. We explored the capacity of Dry Rivers to provide ecosystem services and described main aspects of anthropogenic threats, management challenges and the conservation of these ecosystems. We applied an integrative approach that incorporates to the limnological perspective the terrestrial view, useful to gain a better understanding of Dry Rivers. Finally, we drew main conclusions where major knowledge gaps and research needs are also outlined. With this paper, we ultimately expect to put value in Dry Rivers as non-perennial rivers with their own ecological identity with significant roles in the landscape, biodiversity and nutrient cycles, and society; thus worthy to be considered, especially in the face of exacerbated hydrological drying in many rivers across the world.

A Place-Based Approach to Agricultural Nonmaterial Intangible Cultural Ecosystem Service Values

Though agricultural landscape biodiversity and ecosystem service (ES) conservation is crucial to sustainability, agricultural land is often underrepresented in ES studies, while cultural ES associated with agricultural land is often limited to aesthetic and tourism recreation value only. This study mapped 7 nonmaterial-intangible cultural ES (NICE) valuations of 34 rural farmers in western Taiwan using the Social Values for Ecosystem Services (SolVES) methodology, to show the effect of farming practices on NICE valuations. However, rather than a direct causal relationship between the environmental characteristics that underpin ES, and respondents’ ES valuations, we found that environmental data is not explanatory enough for causality within a socio-ecological production landscape where one type of land cover type (a micro mosaic of agricultural land cover) predominates. To compensate, we used a place-based approach with Google Maps data to create context-specific data to inform our assessment of NICE valuations. Based on 338 mapped points of 7 NICE valuations distributed among 6 areas within the landscape, we compared 2 groups of farmers and found that farmers’ valuations about their landscape were better understood when accounting for both the landscape’s cultural places and environmental characteristics, rather than environmental characteristics alone. Further, farmers’ experience and knowledge influenced their NICE valuations such that farm areas were found to be sources of multiple NICE benefits demonstrating that farming practices may influence ES valuation in general.

Organic viticulture as an important aspect of conserving biodiversity in Crimean agrocenoses

The current status of the global organic viticulture is discussed. The challenge of conservation of species and landscape biodiversity in the Crimea is actualized. The fauna of mites and other insects in the grape agrocenosis of the South Coast of the Peninsula is reported. Biodiversity of mites and other insects in commercial vineyards at different pesticide loads is shown. The role that wild-growing vegetation in territories adjacent to vineyards plays in the agrolandscape of grape agrocenoses is highlighted. The commonness of species diversity of predatory mites in a vineyard and on its outskirts is revealed. The possibility to rely on natural mechanisms for self-regulation of population numbers of phytophagous mites under conditions of organic viticulture is demonstrated.