Peer-reviewed publications

Marine reserves are a commonly applied conservation tool, but their size is often chosen based on considerations of socioeconomic rather than ecological impact. Here, we use a simple individual-based model together with the latest empirical information on home ranges, densities and schooling behaviour in 66 coral reef fishes to quantify the conservation effectiveness of various reserve sizes. We find that standard reserves with a diameter of 1–2 km can achieve partial protection (≥50% of the maximum number of individuals) of 56% of all simulated species. Partial protection of the most important fishery species, and of species with diverse functional roles, required 2–10 km wide reserves. Full protection of nearly all simulated species required 100 km wide reserves. Linear regressions based on the mean home range and density, and even just the maximum length, of fish species approximated these results reliably, and can therefore be used to support locally effective decision making.

Inclusion of ecosystem services (ES) information into national-scale development and climate adaptation planning has yet to become common practice, despite demand from decision makers. Identifying where ES originate and to whom the benefits flow–under current and future climate conditions–is especially critical in rapidly developing countries, where the risk of ES loss is high. Here, using Myanmar as a case study, we assess where and how ecosystems provide key benefits to the country’s people and infrastructure. We model the supply of and demand for sediment retention, dry-season baseflows, flood risk reduction and coastal storm protection from multiple beneficiaries. We find that locations currently providing the greatest amount of services are likely to remain important under the range of climate conditions considered, demonstrating their importance in planning for climate resilience. Overlap between priority areas for ES provision and biodiversity conservation is higher than expected by chance overall, but the areas important for multiple ES are underrepresented in currently designated protected areas and Key Biodiversity Areas. Our results are contributing to development planning in Myanmar, and our approach could be extended to other contexts where there is demand for national-scale natural capital information to shape development plans and policies.

It is necessary, yet challenging, to manage coral reefs to simultaneously address a suite of global and local stressors that act over the short and long term. Therefore, managers need practical guidance on prioritizing the locations and types of conservation that most efficiently address their goals using limited resources. This study is one of the first examples of a vulnerability assessment for coral reefs that uses downscaled global climate change projections and local anthropogenic stress data to prioritize coral reef locations for conservation investment. Vulnerability was separated into manageable and unmanageable components (bleaching likelihood and local anthropogenic stressors, respectively), and the highest priority was given to places with low levels of unmanageable threats and high levels of manageable threats. Following prioritization, resilience characteristics were derived from standard reef monitoring data and used to identify the specific conservation strategies most likely to succeed given local ecological conditions and threats. Using Indonesian coral reefs as a case study, 9.1% of total coral reef area was identified as of high conservation priority, including parts of Raja Ampat, Sulawesi, and Sumatra that are not currently included in marine protected areas (MPAs). Existing MPAs tend to be located in areas less threatened by local-scale anthropogenic activities, which has implications for both the implementation costs and the likely impact of conservation investment. This approach employs common and publicly available data and can therefore be replicated wherever managers face the familiar challenge of allocating limited conservation resources in the face of rapid global change and uncertainty.

Floodplains provides an overview of floodplains and their management in temperate regions. It synthesizes decades of research on floodplain ecosystems, explaining hydrologic, geomorphic, and ecological processes and how under appropriate management these processes can provide benefits to society ranging from healthy fish populations to flood-risk reduction. Drawing on the framework of reconciliation ecology, the authors explore how new concepts for floodplain ecosystem restoration and management can increase these benefits. Additionally, they use case studies from California’s Central Valley and other temperate regions to show how innovative management approaches are reshaping rivers and floodplains around the world.

To the Nakoda and Dakota people, bison are seen as a people, Tatanga/Tatanka Oyate, or Buffalo People. In 2012, the Fort Peck Tribes in Montana (Sioux and Assiniboine) had the opportunity to bring back a herd of heritage bison from Yellowstone National Park to Fort Peck reservation lands; in 2014, an additional herd was returned to reservation lands. Seeing this as an opportunity to connect and re-connect with their relations, Tatanga/Tatanka Oyate, and to educate the young people in their communities about the historic and cultural importance of buffalo, the Fort Peck Tribes embarked on a community initiative in conjunction with the return of the buffalo to reservation land. In this article, Roxann Smith, Robert McAnally, Lois Red Elk, Elizabeth Bird, Elizabeth Rink, Dennis Jorgensen, and Julia Haggerty, collaborators from three different institutions involved in this initiative, document the efforts to educate about and re-connect with the buffalo, as well as their own research inquiry process, which involved utilizing community-based participatory research methods to investigate four strands of inquiry, education, and service: the impact of buffalo restoration on the Fort Peck Tribes, the Buffalo People Summit (a community education and outreach event), an oral history project documenting the history of buffalo restoration in Fort Peck, and the Buffalo Values Survey, an effort to understand community perception and needs regarding the management of the buffalo herds and wildlife conservation. This initiative, involving a collaboration among the Fort Peck Tribes, Fort Peck Community College, Montana State University, and the World Wildlife Fund, is collectively known as the Fort Peck Buffalo Project.

Increasing the size and number of marine protected areas (MPAs) is widely seen as a way to meet ambitious biodiversity and sustainable development goals. Yet, debate still exists on the effectiveness of MPAs in achieving ecological and societal objectives. Although the literature provides significant evidence of the ecological effects of MPAs within their boundaries, much remains to be learned about the ecological and social effects of MPAs on regional and seascape scales. Key to improving the effectiveness of MPAs, and ensuring that they achieve desired outcomes, will be better monitoring that includes ecological and social data collected inside and outside of MPAs. This can lead to more conclusive evidence about what is working, what is not, and why. Eight authors were asked to write about their experiences with MPA effectiveness. The authors were instructed to clearly define “effectiveness” and discuss the degree to which they felt MPAs had achieved or failed to be effective. Essays were exchanged among authors and each was invited to write a shorter “counterpoint.” The exercise shows that, while experiences are diverse, many authors found common ground regarding the role of MPAs in achieving conservation targets. This exchange of perspectives is intended to promote reflection, analysis, and dialogue as a means for improving MPA design, assessment, and integration with other conservation tools.

Temperate grasslands are a highly threatened global biome. Complicating management and conservation strategy development, modern grasslands can be difficult to characterize across landscapes since they range from native and semi-native to completely non-native species compositions such as those found in heavily managed pastures. Similar to methods used to differentiate C3 and C4 grasses, we investigate the ability of using temporal variations in growth characteristics as an alternative pathway to predicting native versus introduced species composition across grassland landscapes. To do this, we conducted an exploratory analysis using a time-series of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index values as a measure of vegetation greenness with Landsat 5 TM imagery across a growing season and performed an unsupervised classification. Results from the classification were compared with field observation to determine if we can differentiate between native and introduced grassland types in the Northwest Glaciated Plains subecoregion of northeastern Montana. Our results indicated that we predicted grassland cover with 81% accuracy within our 200 km2 study area and 71% accuracy in our 5000 km2 secondary study area. Further extrapolation of our methodology, combined with the refinement of vegetation indices of time-series imagery, classification algorithms and the availability of data from planned Landsat and Sentinel missions, may provide the spatial detail necessary to improve grassland monitoring and rangeland management over large areas.

Assessments of programs offering payments for forest conservation have largely focused on their contribution to avoiding deforestation but have overlooked degradation. We integrated remotely-sensed forest cover images, georeferenced landscape information, field-level forest inventories and face-to-face landowner surveys to quantify avoided deforestation and degradation within the context of Ecuador's Socio Bosque Program (PSB). We found the PSB prevented 9% of enrolled forest area in Ecuador's Amazon Basin from being deforested over the 2008-2014 period. This value is higher than previous assessments conducted in other Latin American nations. Inventory data suggest that forests within PSB-enrolled areas exhibited less evidence of degradation although statistical differences were only marginally significant On average, PSB-enrolled forests had between one and two more tree species per hectare than non-enrolled forests. These additional tree species were twice as likely to be of commercial timber value and at greater threat of extinction.

Conversion of grassland to cropland has accelerated over the past decade due to high crop prices, government incentives and a growing global human population. Conversion of grasslands leads to loss of habitat and threatens the ability of the land to provide ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, water filtration and reduced erosion. We developed a method for identifying remaining intact habitat across the Mississippi River Basin-Great Plains geography by stacking subsequent years of the Cropland Data Layer (United States) and Annual Crop Inventory (Canada). We call the resulting cumulative plowed lands the “plowprint”. The total size of the plowprint increased by 27,159,278 ha from 2009-2013. As of 2013, approximately one-third of the study area had been plowed. We conclude that developing the ability to monitor cumulative change over time will allow disparate agencies and organizations to align their goals, strategies and activities, and measure progress in a uniform way.

The Missouri River Basin (MRB) functions as the “life zone” for the larger Mississippi River Basin, providing grassland habitat that infiltrates precipitation and recharges groundwater, reduces sediment erosion, filters nutrients, stores carbon, and provides critical habitat for wildlife. The role of this region as a producer of food and fuel, both nationally and internationally, creates unique challenges for conservation. To support conservation efforts and sustainable management of this invaluable resource, a large-scale, screening-level evaluation of the water quantity and quality benefits of land conservation efforts in the MRB was performed. This paper describes the development and application of a Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to the MRB study area to provide estimates of water quantity and quality (sediment, total phosphorus, total nitrogen) benefits from the avoided conversion of intact grassland to cultivated cropland. The results of this study indicate that the avoided conversion of grassland to cropland could potentially prevent more than 1.7 trillion gallons of surface runoff as well as prevent the export of approximately 46 million tons of sediment, 87 million pounds of total phosphorus, and 427 million pounds of total nitrogen from the MRB study area landscape every year.