II. Conservation biogeography Flashcards
What are the current statuses of the Amazon, Caatinga and Cerrado?
Amazon: 80% (deforested for timber and cattle)
Caatinga: 10% (deforested for agriculture, fertile soils)
Cerrado: 30% (large-scale farming for soy, cattle)
What are the two main forms of conservation?
Conservation: to prevent injury, decay, waste or loss
Restoration: the action of returning something to former owner, place or conditions.
What are some key assumptions at work within conservation priority assessments? (Optimality analysis)
Plant biodiveristy (what scale, fauna, endemism, C storage or stability?)
Plant functional diversity (traits, but what ones, scale)
Carbon assimilation (keep biomes that store most?)
Ecosystem services (water, pollinators, agriculture, air quality, medicine)
Indigenous land (vulnerable populations dependent on land)
What some key influneces on conservation and restoration?
Society and environment - viable for both, the people that depend on land, how used/managed.
Economics - natural capital? Cost-benefit.
Politics - regulations, funding, incentives, legislation change
What are global restoration agreements and national restoration targets, and what have they achieved?
Global e.g. Bonn Challenge aiming to retore 350M ha of deforested/degraded land by 2030 but not legally binding.
National e.g. national targets set by governments, but limited application of science, how best to do it, will be engage/help?
What are the two forms of restoration?
Passive - do notin’. Needed if soils intact few invasives, resilient, fast-growing, low disturbance.
Active - manual care, more spenny. Needed if soils are really degraded, invasives abundant, non-resilient, slow growing
What is the relation to climate change in conservation?
Questions over what should/should not be restored? Not all ecosystems we restore will be able to survive, or they may shift geographic location -> we lack sufficient knowledge of the responses and changes to come.
Interdisciplinary problem.
What has Cernansky (2017) contributed to conservation discourse?
Functional trait diversity as a means of arguing for conservation - we don’t know what function each species serves and whether the loss of just one could be detrimental.
Ecosystem health not necessarily about species richness, but could be about trait diversity - rich in operation rather than numbers (quality over quantity?)
What have Crouzeilles et al. (2017) found regarding restoration strategies in tropical forests?
Natural regeneration better than active restoration in tropical forests - up to 50% more ecologically successful.
Although more spenny.
What have Pellizzaro et al. (2017) found regarding Cerrado restoration?
Coexistence of grasses, herbs, shrubs and trees characterizes savannas so to restore them all these growth forms need to be considered.
Lack of knowledge about the species still, most focused on tree seedling planting.
Direct seeding experiments for 2.5 years -> 62 species became established under field conditions, large survival rates.
What have Silveira et al. (2016) said about campo rupestre conservation?
Central/E Brazil - old mountainous ecosystems, a ‘museum of ancient lineages and cradle of continuing diversification of endemic lineages’
Some species pre-date diversification of lowland Cerrado
> 5000 plant species nearly 15% of Brazil’s plant diversity
Loss by humans
‘An irreplaceable threatened and megadiverse vegetation’
No estimates for endemics yet but suggested as higher than cerrado
Poorly regarded in conservation
More research to see if worthy of being a ‘biodiversity hotspot’ (Myers et al., 2000 criteria)
What role does science play in conservation/restoration decisions?
Fundamental role to understand best ways to effectively restore and conserve, although defining and deciding what to do practically goes beyond environmental science due to cost-benefit analyses that have to be taken out by governments. It mixes political agendas, social needs, environmental needs…
What is threatening the success of conservation and restoration?
Land-use and climate change.
