Week 1: Ecological challenges and conservation planning Flashcards
Morton et al 2009 summary
Big questions inhibiting effective management in Australia around the world
Identify knowledge gaps
22 questions nested within 4 global issues and 5 Australian issues
morton global issues
Social and ecological systems linked
How do we gather and analyse data?
How much change can ecosystems tolerate?
How can natural systems be valued in terms of $?
Climate change
Potential cascading effects
How do we down-scale to a local level?
How to promote resilience to manage the effects
At what point should we provide options to adjust?
Ocean acidification
Small additions of CO2 lead to substantial changes to carbonate concentrations
40% of Australia’s coast is lined by Cora;
How will it impact other environmental changes and biodiversity?
Coastal inundation
Sea level rising
Conservative estimates 0.4m-0.6 by 2100
How will ecosystems respond?
How will fisheries stocks be effected?
What about ground water?
Morton ecological changes in Australia
Habitat loss and degradation
Some understanding of the management principles for harvesting natural resources
Remains a challenge
What are the ecological processes that we can manipulate to reverse and restore the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem function?
Invasive species
Threat reduction through risk analysis, quarantine, eradication and control
How do we devise and implement an Australian early warning system for potential invaders?
Altered fire regimes
Impacts of decades of fire suppression?
How will fire behaviour change?
How do we predict and manage impacts of altered fire regimes?
Water extraction
Driest continent
Water extraction and regulation has had profound impacts on the environment
How do we design and implement environmental flows to restore resilience of freshwater environments?
Urban development and industrial pollution
Loss of biodiversity
Increased water extraction and run off
Increased invasive species
Nutrient enrichment
How do we manipulate urban intensification to cope with climate change and improve environmental outcomes?
protected areas: how much? what places?
Recent idea
17% land area now protected
Selected based on aesthetic value, wildness or convenience
Low fertility and high slope are more likely to be protected
Australian reserve system: CAR and CARE
CAR - comprehensive, adequate, representative
CARE - connectivity, adequate, representative, efficiency
Reserves should be all of these things - full range of biodiversity, protecting enough to be sustainable, representing genetic diversity and cost effective
systematic conservation planning
Methodical approach for making conservation decisions
Stakeholders
Goals and objectives
Socio-economic variables
Biodiversity
Selecting an area
Monitoring and maintaining the area
limitations to systematic conservation planning
Answer reflects breath and quality of data
Does not set conservation goes
Does not account for species changing ranges
Does not deal well with uncertainty
Does not guarantee sufficient protection
minimum set problem
Minimum set problem - which areas are required to represent all biodiversity features for minimum cost?
maximum coverage problem
Maximum coverage problem - given a set budget which areas would provide best value?
what does GAP analysis do?
how effective are existing reserves?
Marxan software
Software to help select conservation areas
Algorithm called simulated annealing - tries many different combinations of planning units
Good for minimum set problem
Zonation software
Good for maximum coverage problem
Algorithm removes cells in descending order of marginal contribution to conservation value
minimum set problem and conservation
Candidate sites - units considered for selection, can be parcels of land or grid cells
Features - records of species occurrence and point data and species distribution models
Phylogenetic diversity, species data, higher level surrogates (vegetation, physical features)
Can use indicator taxa - look at vertebrates you have data on, ignore others
Different kinds of costs - cost measured as population density etc.
Representation target - marxan or zonation
