scholarly journals Climate change and plant dispersal along corridors in fragmented landscapes of Mesoamerica

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (9) ◽  
pp. 2917-2932 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo A. Imbach ◽  
Bruno Locatelli ◽  
Luis G. Molina ◽  
Philippe Ciais ◽  
Paul W. Leadley
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Fragmented Landscapes ◽  
Plant Dispersal

scholarly journals Performance of Multicriteria Evaluation and Heuristic Methods in the Delineation of Green Infrastructure in Areas with Fragmented Landscapes

2021 ◽  
Vol 1203 (2) ◽  
pp. 022059
Author(s):  
Rocío Losada ◽  
Marcos Boullón ◽  
Andrés M. García ◽  
David Miranda
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Simulated Annealing ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Landscape Scale ◽  
Fragmented Landscape ◽  
Heuristic Methods ◽  
Fragmented Landscapes ◽  
Multicriteria Evaluation ◽  
Wide Range

Abstract The EU Commission has established Green infrastructure as one of the tools to preserve biodiversity and grant the provision of ecosystem services that reduce impacts on natural values like those produced by climate change. Therefore, a European green infrastructure strategy has been created that commit member states to incorporate green infrastructure to their territorial planning. Yet, methodologies to delimit green infrastructure so as to facilitate its inclusion in territorial plans are still scarce. The available methods are mainly based in multicriteria evaluation and focus on zoning general green infrastructure areas taking into account the provision potential of just a few ecosystem services. Considering the provision of a wide range of ecosystem services to delimit green infrastructure elements is key to grant their multifunctionality and increase their efficiency mitigating climate change impacts in natural values and human population. However, the lack of data or the high cost to accurately map ecosystem services provision potential, leads most of the time to infer it from land cover data. This creates problems when using these maps to delimit green infrastructure in areas with fragmented landscapes; since identified green infrastructure areas may be irregular and scattered. There are heuristic methods like simulated annealing that have been used to identify ecosystem services hot spots which consider the regularity and size of the identified patches. These methods can be used to delimit green infrastructure in fragmented landscapes finding a balance between the regularity of the areas and their potential to provide multiple ecosystem services. In the current work, a comparison has been made between the performance of simulated annealing and current multicriteria evaluation methods to delimit green infrastructure multifunctional buffer zones in an area of north-western Spain with a very fragmented landscape. Results have shown that simulated annealing delimits more regular multifunctional buffer areas but with a less average potential for providing multiple ecosystem services. The conclusions of the paper indicate that simulated annealing is good produces more regular multifunctional areas but with a lower ESs provision potential. It was observed that in the case of ESs that were mapped considering factors at landscape scale, their provision potential did not vary too much between the multifunctional buffer areas delimited with each of the methods. This indicates that delineation methods may produce more regular GI elements if ESs provision potential is mapped considering the influence of biophysical factors at a wider landscape scale.

scholarly journals Modelling the effect of habitat fragmentation on range expansion in a butterfly

2009 ◽  
Vol 276 (1661) ◽  
pp. 1421-1427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J Wilson ◽  
Zoe G Davies ◽  
Chris D Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Habitat Fragmentation ◽  
Range Expansion ◽  
Metapopulation Model ◽  
Function Model ◽  
Test Species ◽  
Fragmented Landscapes ◽  
Incidence Function Model ◽  
Habitat Patches ◽  
Model Expansion

There is an increasing need for conservation programmes to make quantitative predictions of biodiversity responses to changed environments. Such predictions will be particularly important to promote species recovery in fragmented landscapes, and to understand and facilitate distribution responses to climate change. Here, we model expansion rates of a test species (a rare butterfly, Hesperia comma ) in five landscapes over 18 years (generations), using a metapopulation model (the incidence function model). Expansion rates increased with the area, quality and proximity of habitat patches available for colonization, with predicted expansion rates closely matching observed rates in test landscapes. Habitat fragmentation constrained expansion, but in a predictable way, suggesting that it will prove feasible both to understand variation in expansion rates and to develop conservation programmes to increase rates of range expansion in such species.

scholarly journals The conservation physiology of seed dispersal

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1596) ◽  
pp. 1708-1718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme D. Ruxton ◽  
H. Martin Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Seed Dispersal ◽  
Plant Conservation ◽  
Small Population ◽  
Species Dispersal ◽  
Conservation Physiology ◽  
Plant Dispersal ◽  
Animal Physiology ◽  
Population Sizes

At a time when plant species are experiencing increasing challenges from climate change, land-use change, harvesting and invasive species, dispersal has become a very important aspect of plant conservation. Seed dispersal by animals is particularly important because some animals disperse seeds to suitable sites in a directed fashion. Our review has two aims: (i) to highlight the various ways plant dispersal by animals can be affected by current anthropogenic change and (ii) to show the important role of plant and (particularly) animal physiology in shaping seed–dispersal interactions. We argue that large-bodied seed dispersers may be particularly important for plant conservation because seed dispersal of large-seeded plants is often more specialized and because large-bodied animals are targeted by human exploitation and have smaller population sizes. We further argue that more specialized seed-dispersal systems on island ecosystems might be particularly at risk from climate change both owing to small population sizes involved but also owing to the likely thermal specialization, particularly on tropical islands. More generally, the inherent vulnerability of seed-dispersal mutualisms to disruption driven by environmental change (as well as their ubiquity) demands that we continue to improve our understanding of their conservation physiology.

scholarly journals Seed dispersal by dispersing juvenile animals: a source of functional connectivity in fragmented landscapes

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (7) ◽  
pp. 20190264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan P. González-Varo ◽  
Sarah Díaz-García ◽  
Juan M. Arroyo ◽  
Pedro Jordano
Keyword(s):  
Seed Dispersal ◽  
Fragmented Landscape ◽  
Habitat Specialist ◽  
Fragmented Landscapes ◽  
Plant Dispersal ◽  
Link Functions ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Specialist Species ◽  
Mobile Link ◽  
Habitat Specialist Species

Juvenile animals generally disperse from their birthplace to their future breeding territories. In fragmented landscapes, habitat-specialist species must disperse through the anthropogenic matrix where remnant habitats are embedded. Here, we test the hypothesis that dispersing juvenile frugivores leave a footprint in the form of seed deposition through the matrix of fragmented landscapes. We focused on the Sardinian warbler ( Sylvia melanocephala ), a resident frugivorous passerine. We used data from field sampling of bird-dispersed seeds in the forest and matrix of a fragmented landscape, subsequent disperser identification through DNA-barcoding analysis, and data from a national bird-ringing programme. Seed dispersal by Sardinian warblers was confined to the forest most of the year, but warblers contributed a peak of seed-dispersal events in the matrix between July and October, mainly attributable to dispersing juveniles. Our study uniquely connects animal and plant dispersal, demonstrating that juveniles of habitat-specialist frugivores can provide mobile-link functions transiently, but in a seasonally predictable way.

How will climate variability interact with long-term climate change to affect the persistence of plant species in fragmented landscapes?

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL RENTON ◽  
NANCY SHACKELFORD ◽  
RACHEL J. STANDISH
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Variability ◽  
Plant Species ◽  
Habitat Restoration ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Fragmented Landscapes ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Migration Potential ◽  
Explicit Simulation

SUMMARYAs climates change, some plant species will need to migrate across landscapes fragmented by unsuitable environments and human activities to colonize new areas with suitable climates as previously habited areas become uninhabitable. Previous modelling of plant's migration potential has generally assumed that climate changes at a constant rate, but this ignores many potentially important aspects of real climate variability. In this study, a spatially explicit simulation model was used to investigate how interannual climate variability, the occurrence of extreme events and step changes in climate might interact with gradual long-term climate change to affect plant species’ capacity to migrate across fragmented landscapes and persist. The considered types of climate variability generally exacerbated the negative effects of long-term climate change, with a few poignant exceptions where persistence of long-lived trees improved. Strategic habitat restoration ameliorated negative effects of climate variability. Plant functional characteristics strongly influenced most results. Any modelling of how climate change may affect species persistence, and how actions such as restoration may help species adapt, should account for both short-term climate variability and long-term change.

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