Treesearch

With accelerating global declines in biodiversity, establishment and expansion of conservation areas (CAs) have increasingly been advocated in recent decades. Gap analysis has been useful to evaluate the sufficiency and performance of CAs. Objectives Researchers often identify putative gaps in the protection of biodiversity in CA networks, drawing on evidence from species occurrence patterns (i.e., representation), yet the effect on the gap analyses of the spatial configuration of CAs is poorly understood.

Habitat loss and fragmentation are major threats to global biodiversity. Felids, among the many taxa experiencing population declines and range contraction around the world, are known as ecologically and politically powerful levers in conservation programs. Many felids are wide-ranging, and therefore, identifying and conserving their core habitat patches and corridors is essential for developing an umbrella strategy for protecting coexisting species. We employed a multi-scale, multi-species approach to model habitat suitability and connectivity for six felids across Iran. We identified...

Replicated multiple scale species distribution models (SDMs) have become increasingly important to identify the correct variables determining species distribution and their influences on ecological responses. This study explores multi-scale habitat relationships of the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) in two study areas on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau of western China. Our primary objectives were to evaluate the degree to which snow leopard habitat relationships, expressed by predictors, scales of response, and magnitude of effects, were consistent across study areas or locally landcape-specifi...

The island of Borneo is a biodiversity hotspot of global importance that continues to suffer from one of the highest deforestation rates in the tropics. Selective logging concessions overlay a third of the remaining natural forests in the Indonesian part of Borneo, but many of these concessions have become inactive in recent years. Whereas the cessation of logging could be beneficial to biodiversity, the absence of a logging company's presence in the forest could also leave the concession open to deforestation by other actors. Using remote sensing analyses, we evaluate 1) whether inactive...

Landscape science relies on foundational concepts of landscape ecology and seeks to understand the physical, biological, and human components of ecosystems to support land management decision-making. Incorporating landscape science into land management decisions, however, remains challenging. Many lands in the western United States are federally owned and managed for multiple uses, including recreation, conservation, and energy development.

Dispersal plays a key role in linking populations, habitat (re)-colonization, and species range expansion. As fragmentation and habitat loss are ubiquitous threats and can disrupt dispersal, landscape connectivity modeling has become a valuable tool in conservation planning.

United Nations outlined 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but at the current rate of progress most will not be achieved within the desired timeframe. Since a third of SDGs are directly related to land resources, it is crucial to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of land-use planning. In that regard, there is particular value in algorithmically optimizing land-use planning to better support sustainability. An ideal tool for such optimizations is the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II).

Fire is a dynamic process, predictable but uncertain, that varies over time and landscape space. It is an integral component of most temperate wildland ecosystems and has shaped plant communities for as long as vegetation and lightning have existed on earth (Pyne, 1982; Scott, 2000). Wildland fire occurs across a spectrum ranging from low severity, localized prescribed fires to landscape-level, high-severity wildfires that affect vegetation, soils, water, fauna, air, and cultural resources (Brown and Smith, 2000; Smith, 2000; Sandberg et al., 2002; Neary et al., 2005; Zouhar et al., 2008;...

The effects of harvest on cooperatively breeding species are often more complex than simply subtracting the number of animals that died from the group count. Changes in demographic rates, particularly dispersal, could offset some effects of harvest mortality in groups but this is rarely explored with cooperative breeders. We asked whether a cooperatively breeding species known for long-distance dispersal could compensate for the effect of harvest mortality on density by adopting immigrants into the group. We used genetic samples to estimate the minimum density of gray wolves (Canis lupus)...

Canine distemper virus (CDV) is a multi-host pathogen with variable clinical outcomes of infection across and within species. We used whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to search for viral markers correlated with clinical distemper in African lions. To identify candidate markers, we first documented single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) differentiating CDV strains associated with different clinical outcomes in lions in East Africa. We then conducted evolutionary analyses on WGS from all global CDV lineages to identify loci subject to selection. SNPs that both differentiated East African...