Is research keeping up with changes in landscape policy? A review of the literature

Conrad, Elisabeth; Christie, Michael; Fazey, Ioan

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2011.04.003

Cited by 51 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Geopolitical bias was towards Europe and the Americas with far less focus on Africa and Asia, a pattern previously demonstrated for other subdisciplines of conservation and ecology (Pyšek et al 2008, Felton et al 2009, Conrad et al 2011. Disconcertingly, area-corrected research output per geopolitical region was not correlated with CRI.…”

Section: Patterns Of Geographical Bias In Research Outputmentioning

confidence: 67%

“…Similarly, government policies and funding opportunities that encourage international scientific collaboration could help spread resources to under-studied regions, promote valuable knowledge exchange, and build local capacity (Fazey et al 2005b). However, given that similar research biases have emerged repeatedly in the conservation and ecology literature (e.g., Fazey et al 2005b, Lawler et al 2006, Pyšek et al 2008, Felton et al 2009, Conrad et al 2011, and little progress has been made (Griffiths and Dos Santos 2012), future work should specifically assess how to encourage research on topics in need of more attention. …”

Section: Origins Of Bias and New Directions For Researchmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…There are also clear v www.esajournals.org geographical biases in ecological research. For instance, the study of invasive species is concentrated in the Americas and Europe with little research conducted in Africa and Asia (Pyšek et al 2008), a pattern that holds for landscape research, climate change ecology, and conservation biology as a whole (Lawler et al 2006, Felton et al 2009, Conrad et al 2011. If studies of biogeography of human-modified landscapes are biased towards certain topics, scientists and funding agencies may wish to refocus their efforts to ensure sufficient science is available to support conservation in human-modified landscapes where it is most needed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Geographical and taxonomic biases in research on biodiversity in human‐modified landscapes

Trimble¹,

Aarde²

2012

Ecosphere

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Abstract. Biodiversity persistence in human-modified landscapes is crucial for conservation and maintaining ecosystem services. Studies of biodiversity in landscapes where humans live, work, and extract resources could support defensible policy-making to manage land-use. Yet, research should cover relevant regions, and biases in study topics should not lead to gaps in the evidence base. We systematically reviewed the literature of biogeography in human-modified landscapes published in eight eminent biogeography, conservation, and ecology journals to assess geographical bias among biomes and geopolitical regions and taxonomic bias among species groups. We compared research output per biome to area, biome type, species richness, proportion of transformed land, and the ratio of transformed to protected land. We also compared research output per geopolitical region to area, proportion of transformed land, the ratio of transformed to protected land, and human population density. Research output was distributed unequally among biomes, geopolitical regions, and species groups. Biome type was a clear factor in research bias, and forest biomes were the subject of 87% of papers, while species richness was not generally associated with bias. Conservation in human-modified landscapes is most important in regions with low protected area coverage, high land conversion, and high pressure from human populations, yet the distribution of published papers did not generally reflect these threats. Seventy-five percent of studies focused on the Americas and Europe, while Africa and Asia were critically understudied. Taxonomically, plants and invertebrates were the most studied groups; however, research output was not correlated with species richness per group. Protected areas alone will not conserve biodiversity in the long term. Thus, a strong biogeographical evidence base is required to support policies for biodiversity maintenance on human-modified land. Under-studied regions and species groups deserve further research to elucidate what, where, and how biodiversity persists in human-modified landscapes to inform conservation policy and enhance efficacy.

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Section: Patterns Of Geographical Bias In Research Outputmentioning

confidence: 67%

Section: Origins Of Bias and New Directions For Researchmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Geographical and taxonomic biases in research on biodiversity in human‐modified landscapes

Trimble¹,

Aarde²

2012

Ecosphere

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“…As with many ecological meta-analyses, studies were heavily biased towards North America (Lawler et al, 2006;Felton et al, 2009;Conrad, Christie & Fazey, 2011). It is important, however, to focus ecological monitoring in areas most susceptible to environmental degradation.…”

Section: (1) Summary Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of human‐induced environmental change in wetlands on aquatic animals

et al. 2017

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Many wetlands harbour highly diverse biological communities and provide extensive ecosystem services; however, these important ecological features are being altered, degraded and destroyed around the world. Despite a wealth of research on how animals respond to anthropogenic changes to natural wetlands and how they use created wetlands, we lack a broad synthesis of these data. While some altered wetlands may provide vital habitat, others could pose a considerable risk to wildlife. This risk will be heightened if such wetlands are ecological traps -preferred habitats that confer lower fitness than another available habitat. Wetlands functioning as ecological traps could decrease both local and regional population persistence, and ultimately lead to extinctions. Most studies have examined how animals respond to changes in environmental conditions by measuring responses at the community and population levels, but studying ecological traps requires information on fitness and habitat preferences. Our current lack of knowledge of individual-level responses may therefore limit our capacity to manage wetland ecosystems effectively since ecological traps require different management practices to mitigate potential consequences.We conducted a global meta-analysis to characterise how animals respond to four key drivers of wetland alteration: agriculture, mining, restoration and urbanisation. Our overarching goal was to evaluate the ecological impacts of human alterations to wetland ecosystems, as well as identify current knowledge gaps that limit both the current understanding of these responses and effective wetland management. We extracted 1799 taxon-specific response ratios from 271 studies across 29 countries. Community-(e.g. richness) and population-level (e.g. density) measures within altered wetlands were largely comparable to those within reference wetlands. By contrast, individual fitness measures (e.g. survival) were often lower, highlighting the potential limitations of using only community-and population-level measures to assess habitat quality. Only four studies provided habitat-preference data, preventing investigation of the potential for altered wetlands to function as ecological traps. This is concerning because attempts to identify ecological traps may detect previously unidentified conservation risks. Although there was considerable variability amongst taxa, amphibians were typically the most sensitive taxon, and thus, may be a valuable bio-indicator of wetland quality. Despite suffering reduced survival and reproduction, measures such as time to and mass at metamorphosis were similar between altered and reference wetlands, suggesting that quantifying metamorphosis-related measures in isolation may not provide accurate information on habitat quality.Our review provides the most detailed evaluation to date of the ecological impacts of human alterations to wetland ecosystems. We emphasise that the role of wetlands in human-altered ecosystems can be complex, as they may represent important habitat b...

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“…The protection and management of cultural landscapes have attracted broad attention from scientists, policy makers, and the general public (Conrad et al 2011) because of the visibility, for instance, caused by the acknowledgement of cultural landscapes in the UNESCO World Heritage Convention (Rössler 2006). Over the past years, several initiatives have called for integrated landscape approaches to the management of natural resources.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustaining ecosystem services in cultural landscapes

Plieninger¹,

Horst²,

Schleyer³

et al. 2014

E&S

114

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ABSTRACT. Classical conservation approaches focus on the man-made degradation of ecosystems and tend to neglect the socialecological values that human land uses have imprinted on many environments. Throughout the world, ingenious land-use practices have generated unique cultural landscapes, but these are under pressure from agricultural intensification, land abandonment, and urbanization. In recent years, the cultural landscapes concept has been broadly adopted in science, policy, and management. The interest in both outstanding and vernacular landscapes finds expression in the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, the European Landscape Convention, and the IUCN Protected Landscape Approach. These policies promote the protection, management, planning, and governance of cultural landscapes. The ecosystem services approach is a powerful framework to guide such efforts, but has rarely been applied in landscape research and management. With this paper, we introduce a special feature that aims to enhance the theoretical, empirical and practical knowledge of how to safeguard the resilience of ecosystem services in cultural landscapes. It concludes (1) that the usefulness of the ecosystem services approach to the analysis and management of cultural landscapes should be reviewed more critically; (2) that conventional ecosystem services assessment needs to be complemented by socio-cultural valuation; (3) that cultural landscapes are inherently changing, so that a dynamic view on ecosystem services and a focus on drivers of landscape change are needed; and (4) that managing landscapes for ecosystem services provision may benefit from a social-ecological resilience perspective.

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Is research keeping up with changes in landscape policy? A review of the literature

Cited by 51 publications

References 41 publications

Geographical and taxonomic biases in research on biodiversity in human‐modified landscapes

Geographical and taxonomic biases in research on biodiversity in human‐modified landscapes

Impacts of human‐induced environmental change in wetlands on aquatic animals

Sustaining ecosystem services in cultural landscapes

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