Conservation opportunities across the world's anthromes

Integrated pond aquaculture and regional identity: ethnobiology of the golden humped tench of Poirino highlands, Northwest Italy

BACKGROUND

Social-ecological systems are based on particular species and on their direct and human-mediated interactions. The 'golden humped tench' or tinca gobba dorata, a variety of tench-Tinca tinca (L., 1758)-traditionally bred in artificial ponds called peschiere in Poirino highlands, northwest Italy, is one of such species. The aim of the study is to investigate the traditional farming of the golden humped tench, the associated knowledge, practices, and gastronomy, and to discuss the changes that the tench, the ponds, and their role in the local social-ecological system are going through.

METHODS

The data analyzed were collected in different locations of Poirino highlands during May-September 2021. Fieldwork included semi-structured interviews (n = 23) with current and former tench farmers about the breeding and gastronomy of the tench and the management of the peschiere. The interviewees' selection occurred through an exponential non-discriminative snowball sampling, and interview transcripts were qualitatively analyzed through inductive thematic content analysis.

RESULTS

The golden humped tench has been farmed for centuries in ponds used also to water livestock and to irrigate cultivated fields, and managed by every peasant household in the area. This integrated aquaculture system is underpinned by detailed knowledge on the peschiera ecosystem and on the tench life cycle and supports a gastronomic knowledge that is part of the local heritage. The ongoing process of gastronomic valorization of the tench is sustaining the role of the fish in locals' livelihoods and as a marker of regional identity, but it is also transforming tench farming, already threatened by livelihood change, pesticides, and invasive species, in controversial ways.

CONCLUSIONS

We argue that ponds and tenches are core elements of the local social-ecological system, defining the cultural landscape and engendering a form of regional identity around them. Studying integrated aquaculture systems and associated knowledge and practices is relevant to design sustainable systems of food production and to address possibilities of conservation of biodiversity and livelihoods in aquatic environments.

Designer Ecosystems for the Anthropocene—Deliberately Creating Novel Ecosystems in Cultural Landscapes

Accepting that nature and culture are intricately co-evolved has profound implications for the ethical, legal, philosophical and pragmatic dimensions of social and environmental policy. The way we think about nature affects how we understand and manage ecosystems. While the ideals of preserving wilderness and conserving ecosystems have motivated much conservation effort to date, achieving these ideals may not be feasible under Anthropocene conditions unless communities accept custodial responsibilities for landscapes and other species. This paper’s origins are in the author’s work with the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council representing Indigenous traditional owners in Australia’s Kimberley region. These landscapes, shaped by 60,000 years of human occupation, interweave knowledge, laws and governance regimes, and material and spiritual connections with country. This interweaving offers insights into options for dealing with humanity’s complex sustainability challenges. The paper also draws on the literature about cultural landscapes, ecological design, agroecology and permaculture to explore options for applying ecological design as a planning and problem-solving framework. The paper concludes that design-based approaches offer significant opportunities for using ecological science to integrate conservation and production in agricultural landscapes in ways that can meet human needs while also conserving biodiversity under climate change.

Determinant Factor of Plant Species Diversity in the Organic Agriculture-Dominated System of Gedeo Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Agricultural intensification is a major challenge for biodiversity conservation in many parts of the world. Organic agriculture is perceived as a possible solution for biodiversity conservation in agriculture dominant systems. This study aimed at investigating the current status of plant species diversity and its determinants in organic agriculture-dominated areas of Gedeo zone, Southern Ethiopia. Multistage sampling procedures were used to obtain 108 households from three agroecological zones of the study area, and plant species data were collected from the quadrants laid in farms of sampled farmers. Besides, diversity management practice data were collected using focus group discussion. A total of 234 plant species belonging to 82 plant families were identified. Most (69.2%) of species in the system were native. The mean value of richness and Shannon index evenness for the whole system was 10.36, 2.06, and 0.89 for highland midland and lowland agroecological zones, respectively, which is relatively high compared with other agriculture-dominated systems in the tropics. The diversity of overall plant species were significantly affected by both agroecological zones and the wealth status of farmers. Midland and lowland agroecological zones had the highest richness values for total plant species than highland. Similarly, highest richness was recorded among farmers of rich and medium wealth classes than poor. The diversity of tree species was significantly affected by both agroecological zone and wealth status of farmer households. The lowland agroecological zone had a significantly higher number of tree species than midland and lowland agroecological zones, while the rich farmer had higher tree diversity compared to medium and poor farmers. The study also identified that diversity of shrubs were significantly influenced by agroecological zone. The midland agroecological had a significantly higher number of shrubs diversity compared to lowland and highland agroecological zones. In this study, herbaceous species diversity was not influenced by both agroecological zone and farmer wealth class. The function of plant species and indigenous plant species maintenance practice had its own effect on plant species diversity in the study area, since the area is dominated with organic agriculture. Therefore, to maintain the current status of the system and to improve the farmer’s livelihood, development planners may need to design agroecological-based plant species conservation strategies that give due consideration for indigenous plant species conservation practices and function of plant species.

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

The current biodiversity crisis is often depicted as a struggle to preserve untouched habitats. Here, we combine global maps of human populations and land use over the past 12,000 y with current biodiversity data to show that nearly three quarters of terrestrial nature has long been shaped by diverse histories of human habitation and use by Indigenous and traditional peoples. With rare exceptions, current biodiversity losses are caused not by human conversion or degradation of untouched ecosystems, but rather by the appropriation, colonization, and intensification of use in lands inhabited and used by prior societies. Global land use history confirms that empowering the environmental stewardship of Indigenous peoples and local communities will be critical to conserving biodiversity across the planet.

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.

Agricultural Landscape Composition Linked with Acoustic Measures of Avian Diversity

Measuring, monitoring, and managing biodiversity across agricultural regions depends on methods that can combine high-resolution mapping of landscape patterns with local biodiversity observations. This study explores the potential to monitor biodiversity in agricultural landscapes by linking high-resolution remote sensing with passive acoustic monitoring. Land cover maps produced using a small unmanned aerial system (UAS) and PlanetScope (PS) satellite imagery were used to investigate relationships between landscape patterns and an acoustically derived biodiversity index (vocalizing bird species richness) across 12 agricultural sample locations equipped with acoustic recorders in Iowa, USA during the 2018 growing season. Statistical assessment revealed a significant direct association between vocalizing bird richness and percent noncrop vegetation cover. High spatial resolution (1 m) UAS mapping produced stronger statistical associations than PS-based maps (3 m) for landscape composition metrics. Landscape configuration metrics (Shannon’s diversity index, contagion, perimeter-area-ratio, and circumscribing circle index) were either cross-correlated with composition metrics or unusable owing to complete landscape homogeneity in some agricultural landscape samples. This study shows that high resolution mapping of noncrop vegetation cover can be linked with acoustic monitoring of unique bird vocalizations to provide a useful indicator of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.

Anthropogenic Biomes: 10,000 BCE to 2015 CE

Human populations and their use of land have reshaped landscapes for thousands of years, creating the anthropogenic biomes (anthromes) that now cover most of the terrestrial biosphere. Here we introduce the first global reconstruction and mapping of anthromes and their changes across the 12,000-year interval from 10,000 BCE to 2015 CE; the Anthromes 12K dataset. Anthromes were mapped using gridded global estimates of human population density and land use from the History of the Global Environment database (HYDE version 3.2) by a classification procedure similar to that used for prior anthrome maps. Anthromes 12K maps generally agreed with prior anthrome maps for the same time periods, though significant differences were observed, including a substantial reduction in Rangelands anthromes in 2000 CE but with increases before that time. Differences between maps resulted largely from improvements in HYDE’s representation of land use, including pastures and rangelands, compared with the HYDE 3.1 input data used in prior anthromes maps. The larger extent of early land use in Anthromes 12K also agrees more closely with empirical assessments than prior anthrome maps; the result of an evidence-based paradigm shift in characterizing the history of Earth’s transformation through land use, from a mostly recent large-scale conversion of uninhabited wildlands, to a long-term trend of increasingly intensive transformation and use of already inhabited and used landscapes. The spatial history of anthropogenic changes depicted in Anthromes 12K remain to be validated, especially for earlier time periods. Nevertheless, Anthromes 12K is a major advance over all prior anthrome datasets and provides a new platform for assessing the long-term environmental consequences of human transformation of the terrestrial biosphere.

EcoAnthromes of Alberta: An example of disturbance-informed ecological regionalization using remote sensing

Humans influence ecosystems on magnitudes that often exceed that of natural forces such as climate and geology; however, frameworks rarely include anthropogenic disturbance when delineating unique ecological regions. A critical step toward understanding, managing and monitoring human-altered ecosystems is to incorporate disturbance into ecological regionalizations. Furthermore, quantitative regionalization approaches are desirable to provide cost-effective, repeatable and statistically sound stratification for environmental monitoring. We applied a two-stage multivariate clustering technique to identify 'EcoAnthromes' across a large area - the province of Alberta, Canada - at 30 m spatial resolution, and using primarily remotely sensed inputs. The EcoAnthrome clusters represent regions with unique ecological characteristics based on a combination of natural ecological potential (e.g., climatic and edaphic factors) and disturbance, both natural and anthropogenic. Compared to existing expert-derived Natural Subregions in Alberta, the model-based EcoAnthromes showed greater class separation and explained more variance for an assortment of variables related to land cover, disturbance and species intactness. The EcoAnthromes successfully separated important ecological regions that are defined by complex assemblages of topography, climate and disturbance, such as gravel-bed river valleys, boreal forests, grasslands, post-fire recovery areas and highly disturbed agricultural, industrial and urban landscapes. In addition to presenting a flexible method for EcoAnthrome regionalization, we group and describe the EcoAnthromes created for Alberta and discuss how they can complement expert-derived regionalizations to aid in environmental management efforts, such as species recovery planning and monitoring for threatened species.

Effects of vegetation management on plant diversity in traditional irrigation systems

Acequias are historical community-operated water channels used for irrigating of traditional farming areas (vegas). They have been traditionally managed by local inhabitants, either by clearing weeds or by burning them in winter, in order to keep the channels clean of vegetation, thus avoiding their clogging. The impact of these cultural practices on vegetation has not still been studied. The aim of this paper is to show how traditional management influences floristic biodiversity in a traditional acequia in the vega of Granada (SE Spain). The acequia was treated following the traditional methodology used by farmers, being divided into areas that were burned, cleared, or left unchanged as control (January 2016). Afterwards, we collected soil samples and analyzed them in the lab to determine the treatment effects on soil properties. Vegetation was monitored in late spring 2016 in order to detect differences between treatments. Traditional management increased plant diversity, this effect being much more patent for the burning than for clearing treatment. Soil analyses revealed only slight differences in pH and CaCO₃ content, higher for the burning treatment. The increase in plant diversity found in areas treated by traditional management was due mainly to the reduction of competition, which promoted the emergence or increase of populations of non-dominant species. The results indicated that traditional management not only offers advantages to the farmers but also promotes plant diversity and ecosystem services.

Opportunities drive the global distribution of protected areas

BACKGROUND

Protected areas, regarded today as a cornerstone of nature conservation, result from an array of multiple motivations and opportunities. We explored at global and regional levels the current distribution of protected areas along biophysical, human, and biological gradients, and assessed to what extent protection has pursued (i) a balanced representation of biophysical environments, (ii) a set of preferred conditions (biological, spiritual, economic, or geopolitical), or (iii) existing opportunities for conservation regardless of any representation or preference criteria.

METHODS

We used histograms to describe the distribution of terrestrial protected areas along biophysical, human, and biological independent gradients and linear and non-linear regression and correlation analyses to describe the sign, shape, and strength of the relationships. We used a random forest analysis to rank the importance of different variables related to conservation preferences and opportunity drivers, and an evenness metric to quantify representativeness.

RESULTS

We find that protection at a global level is primarily driven by the opportunities provided by isolation and a low population density (variable importance = 34.6 and 19.9, respectively). Preferences play a secondary role, with a bias towards tourism attractiveness and proximity to international borders (variable importance = 12.7 and 3.4, respectively). Opportunities shape protection strongly in "North America & Australia-NZ" and "Latin America & Caribbean," while the importance of the representativeness of biophysical environments is higher in "Sub-Saharan Africa" (1.3 times the average of other regions).

DISCUSSION

Environmental representativeness and biodiversity protection are top priorities in land conservation agendas. However, our results suggest that they have been minor players driving current protection at both global and regional levels. Attempts to increase their relevance will necessarily have to recognize the predominant opportunistic nature that the establishment of protected areas has had until present times.

Global patterns of conservation research importance in different countries of the world

Conservation research is essential to help inform the science-based management of environments that support threatened and endangered wildlife; however, research effort is not necessarily uniform across countries globally. Here, we assessed how the research importance of conservation is distributed globally across different countries and what drives this variation. Specifically, we compared the number of conservation/ecological articles versus all scientific articles published for each country in relation to the number of endangered species, the protection status and number of ecosystems, and the economic status of each country (gross domestic product (GDP) per capita). We observed a significant and positive relationship between the proportion of conservation and ecology articles to all scientific articles with respect to the number of endangered species and the proportion of endangered species that are protected in a country, as well as GDP per capita. In conclusion, knowledge about the conservation and economic status of countries should be accounted for when predicting the research importance of conservation and ecology.

Restoration, Reintroduction, and Rewilding in a Changing World

The increasing abandonment of marginal land creates new opportunities for restoration, reintroduction, and rewilding, but what do these terms mean in a rapidly and irreversibly changing world? The 're' prefix means 'back', but it is becoming clear that the traditional use of past ecosystems as targets and criteria for success must be replaced by an orientation towards an uncertain future. Current opinions in restoration and reintroduction biology range from a defense of traditional definitions, with some modifications, to acceptance of more radical responses, including assisted migration, taxon substitution, de-extinction, and genetic modification. Rewilding attempts to minimize sustained intervention, but this hands-off approach is also threatened by rapid environmental change.

The face of conservation responding to a dynamically changing world

In its 40-year history, the science of conservation has faced unprecedented challenges in terms of environmental damage and rapid global change, and environmental problems are only increasing as greater demands are placed on limited natural resources. Conservation science has been adapting to keep pace with these changes. Here, we highlight contemporary and emerging trends and innovations in conservation science that we believe represent the most effective responses to biodiversity threats. We focus on specific areas where conservation science has had to adjust its approach to address emerging threats to biodiversity, including habitat destruction and degradation, climate change, declining populations and invasive species. We also document changes in attitudes, norms and practices among conservation scientists. A key component to success is engaging and maintaining public support for conservation, which can be facilitated through the use of technology. These recent trends in conservation and management are innovative and will assist in optimizing conservation strategies, increasing our leverage with the general public and tackling our current environmental challenges.