Peer-reviewed publications

Climate change is having a disproportionate impact on the Arctic. For Arctic breeding birds, basic knowledge of their annual cycle, specifically the timing, route, and movement behavior of migration, is needed to understand when and where populations may experience threats. We used a combination of geolocators and stable isotope analysis to identify route and timing of migration in Smith’s Longspurs (Calcarius pictus) that breed in Alaska’s Brooks Range. We trapped males on their breeding grounds from 2011 to 2014 and collected head feathers for stable isotopes of hydrogen (δ²H). We deployed 22 geolocators on a subset of individuals and retrieved four, which all overwintered in southern Texas. Individual start dates for fall migration based on geolocators were more variable than for the spring, and individuals were highly mobile while on their wintering grounds. Geolocators and stable isotope values were comparable across years and indicated that birds from the Brooks Range undergo their pre-nuptial molt in central Canada. We compared geolocator and stable isotope inferred locations to observations submitted to e-Bird and found that longspurs were distributed farther south during the winter months, but farther north during the spring than most eBird observations. Concurrent deployments of geolocator tags across Smith’s Longspurs’ breeding range would clarify whether migratory behaviors and routes are population-specific or shared widely across breeding locations.

Rewilding is an increasingly popular approach to ecosystem-level restoration whereby strengthening ecosystem resilience and functionality is achieved through restoring previously extirpated species and/or ecological processes. Although rewilding has been broadly applied in many systems globally, there are limited examples that use sociological information to inform multi-species restoration efforts under this paradigm. We surveyed Montana, USA residents representing five stakeholder groups (local ranchers, statewide ranchers, rural residents, urban residents and members of conservation organizations) to assess public attitudes and behaviors towards a suite of species and ecological processes targeted for multi-species restoration in the Northern Great Plains. We also evaluated levels of public support for conservation incentive programs that are commonly used as a mechanism to increase restoration potential on private lands. We found that there were differences in how stakeholders perceived and behaved towards species subject to or targeted for restoration. Species perceived as potential risks to humans and livestock, or possessing regulatory constraints, yielded more negative attitudes, had increased potential for negative behaviors, and support for incentives for those species was lacking. Conversely, we found that stakeholder attitudes towards conserving migration as an ecological process were generally favorable. Our results illustrate how using public tolerance as a metric of social suitability will reveal barriers to acceptance for individual species restoration as well as insights into potential mechanisms for increasing public support for rewilding. More broadly, our study highlights how achieving rewilding in working lands will require community engagement to increase public support and continued assessments of social processes that may limit multi-species restoration.

Achieving inclusive and sustainable ocean economies, long-term climate resilience and effective biodiversity conservation requires urgent and strategic actions from local to global scales. We discuss fundamental changes that are needed to allow equitable policy across these three domains.

CONTEXTAgriculture-driven land conversion poses a significant threat to global biodiversity conservation. Balancing agricultural expansion with conservation is a critical challenge for governments and development partners. Sustainability-oriented agriculture programs such as conservation agriculture and land intensification aim to reduce land conversion and deforestation; however, evidence of their effectiveness remains complex and elusive, especially regarding the role of smallholders.OBJECTIVEThis study addresses this knowledge gap by systematically mapping the drivers of smallholder land conversion and their interconnections across three focal biodiverse contexts including sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia as well as from a global scale.METHODSUsing literature that focuses on the nexus of smallholder farmers and agricultural intensification, this study systematically identified the potential of distinct factors and dynamic processes to serve as system leverage points toward improved outcomes for biodiversity, food security, and smallholder livelihoods, using a combination of structural factor analysis, centrality analysis, and feedback loop analysis.RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONSThe results highlight the importance of strengthening land tenure systems, providing technical support to farmers, improving market access, and prioritizing smallholder livelihoods in mitigating land conversion.SIGNIFICANCEContextual differences emphasize the need for context-specific interventions and further research to explore factors driving land conversion more deeply within specific contextual boundaries. Future studies should map proposed policy interventions onto local systems driving land conversion and incorporate the diverse perspectives of local stakeholders to guide effective and sustainable agriculture interventions.

Landscape ecologists have long suggested that pest abundances increase in simplified, monoculture landscapes. However, tests of this theory often fail to predict pest population sizes in real-world agricultural fields. These failures may arise not only from variation in pest ecology, but also from the widespread use of categorical land-use maps that do not adequately characterize habitat-availability for pests. We used 1163 field-year observations of Lygus hesperus (Western Tarnished Plant Bug) densities in California cotton fields to determine whether integrating remotely-sensed metrics of vegetation productivity and phenology into pest models could improve pest abundance analysis and prediction. Because L. hesperus often overwinters in non-crop vegetation, we predicted that pest abundances would peak on farms surrounded by more non-crop vegetation, especially when the non-crop vegetation is initially productive but then dries down early in the year, causing the pest to disperse into cotton fields. We found that the effect of non-crop habitat on pest densities varied across latitudes, with a positive relationship in the north and a negative one in the south. Aligning with our hypotheses, models predicted that L. hesperus densities were 35 times higher on farms surrounded by high versus low productivity non-crop vegetation (EVI area 350 vs. 50) and 2.8 times higher when dormancy occurred earlier versus later in the year (May 15 vs. June 30). Despite these strong and significant effects, we found that integrating these remote-sensing variables into land-use models only marginally improved pest density predictions in cotton compared to models with categorical land cover metrics alone. Together, our work suggests that the remote sensing variables analyzed here can advance our understanding of pest ecology, but not yet substantively increase the accuracy of pest abundance predictions.

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted fisheries at every step of the global seafood supply chain, through such challenges as trade stoppages, lockdowns, and restaurant closures. We performed a scoping review of the literature published during the first two years of the pandemic to examine the challenges of new and unpredictable shocks to fisheries in countries around the world, with a specific focus on development status. We identified a robust body of published work that illustrates a rapid mobilization around COVID-19 research by scholars around the world. Pressures were governmental, economic, and societal in nature. Across developed and emerging countries, we found the greatest number of reports of impacts on fish harvest/production and fish trade. In least developed countries, impacts reported were often more cross cutting, affecting multiple aspects of the supply chain simultaneously. Individuals were most frequently reported as bearing the burden of responses to COVID-19 pressures in lower development status nations, while a larger proportion of responses reported for developed nations happened at the fishery and farm/firm level. In developed nations the pandemic also created new opportunities for people to respond innovatively and capitalize on supply chain disruptions. Importantly, while the literature offers robust details on fishers and fisheries from geographically and economically diverse locales, it fails to provide the necessary baseline information or other quantitative details that would be required to evaluate the magnitude and extent of harms experienced that may create long-term legacies for fisheries and small-scale fishing communities in least developed and emerging economies.

The conservation community needs to improve the quality and quantity of evidence to address urgent and complex environmental challenges. The growth of Upstream Conservation Initiatives (UCIs) such as those designed to eliminate deforestation by shifting consumer or corporate behavior, exemplify the tension between the urgency to act and the need to build evidence to enable progressive improvements in implementation. These initiatives—often led by non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—are rarely evaluated rigorously in terms of their causal effect on intended outcomes, contributing to the evidence deficit. Impact evaluations have been useful tools to analyze effectiveness and build evidence in other fields. However, they are seldom used in the conservation field broadly or in UCIs specifically. To help practitioners involved in UCIs make better use of these tools, we introduce the field of impact evaluation, its core concepts, and how it contrasts with and complements traditional performance measurement approaches. Using these concepts, we propose a guidance process which can be used by practitioners at the project design phase to weigh tradeoffs and consider the most appropriate impact evaluation methodologies. We then use this guidance process to analyze two UCIs implemented by an NGO in Indonesia. Through these case studies we show how impact evaluation concepts could have been employed in project design to improve implementation and promote progressive learning, even if actual impact evaluations were infeasible. We conclude by proposing recommendations on how implementers, donors, and academia can build off these ideas to improve learning and strengthen the evidence base.

Community-based conservation has been increasingly recognized as critical to achieve both conservation and socio-economic development goals worldwide. However, the long-term sustainability of community-based conservation programs is dependent on a broadly shared perception among community members that management actions are achieving their stated goals. Thus, understanding the underlying factors driving differences in perceptions of management effectiveness can help managers prioritize the processes and outcomes most valued by resource users and thereby promote sustained support for conservation efforts. Here, we utilize large-scale interview survey data and machine learning to identify the factors most strongly associated with differences in perceived management effectiveness between resource users engaged in marine community-based conservation programs in Kenya and Tanzania. Perceptions of management effectiveness were generally favorable in both countries, and the most important predictors of positive perceptions were associated with community and individual empowerment in resource management and use, but within disparate focal domains. Improved perceptions of management effectiveness in Kenya were closely related to increases in women’s empowerment in community-based conservation programs, while inclusionary and transparent governance structures were the most important factors driving improved perceptions in Tanzania. Additionally, the strongest predictors of differences between individuals in both countries often interacted synergistically to produce even higher rates of perceived effectiveness. These findings can help future initiatives in the region tailor management to match community-level priorities and emphasize the need for community-based conservation programs to understand local context to ensure that metrics of “success” are aligned with the needs and desires of local resource users.

Based on an extensive model intercomparison, we assessed trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services from historical reconstructions and future scenarios of land-use and climate change. During the 20th century, biodiversity declined globally by 2%-11% estimated by a range of indicators. Provisioning ecosystem services increased several-fold while regulating services decreased moderately. Going forward, policies towards sustainability have the potential to slow biodiversity loss resulting from land-use change and the demand for provisioning services, while reducing or reversing declines in regulating services. However, negative impacts on biodiversity due to climate change appear poised to increase, particularly in the higher emissions scenarios. Our assessment identifies remaining modelling uncertainties but also robustly shows that renewed policy efforts are needed to meet the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Forestalling the decline of global biodiversity requires urgent and transformative action at all levels of government and society, particularly in the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas where rapid changes are already underway. Amid growing scientific support and mounting pressure, the majority of nations have committed to the most ambitious conservation targets yet. However, without an approach that inclusively and equitably reconciles conservation and sustainable ocean use, these targets will likely go unmet. Here, we present ArcNet: a network design framework to help achieve ocean-scale, area-based marine conservation in the Arctic. The framework is centred around a suite of web-based tools and a ~ 5.9 million km2 network of 83 priority areas for conservation designed through expert-driven systematic conservation planning using conservation targets for over 800 features representing Arctic biodiversity. The ArcNet framework is intended to help adapt to new and emerging information, foster collaboration, and identify tailored conservation measures within a global context at different levels of planning and implementation.