Integrating landscape ecology into generic surveillance plans for bark- and wood-boring beetles.

Baited traps are a basic component of both specific and generic surveillance programs targeting wood-boring beetles at risk of introduction to new habitats because of global trade. Among the numerous protocols developed over the years for generic surveillance of longhorn beetles, jewel beetles, and bark and ambrosia beetles is the simultaneous use of black multi-funnel traps set up in the understory and green multi-funnel traps set up in the canopy of forested areas surrounding ports and other entry points. These traps are commonly baited with multi-lure blends of pheromones and host volatiles. In this study, we tested this trapping protocol in areas surrounding eight entry points located in Europe and North America to determine: i) the relative performance of black-understory traps and green-canopy traps among the targeted taxa; and ii) whether the dissimilarity among communities of beetles collected by the understory vs. canopy traps was affected by taxon and amount of forest cover in the traps’ surroundings. A total of 96,963 individuals belonging to 358 species of wood-boring beetles were collected, including 21 non-native species. Black-understory multi-funnel traps were generally more efficient than green-canopy multi-funnel traps for detecting longhorn beetles and bark and ambrosia beetles, whereas the opposite trend was observed for jewel beetles. Differences between beetle communities caught in black-understory and green-canopy traps were mainly attributed to differences in species richness in jewel beetles, while both differences in species richness and species turnover contributed to the dissimilarity between communities of longhorn beetles and bark and ambrosia beetle. The difference in the number of jewel beetle species caught by the two trapping methodologies decreased with increasing forest cover, whereas species turnover increased when moving from an urban-dominated to a forest-dominated landscape. Overall, these results suggest that the simultaneous use of both black-understory and green-canopy multi-funnel traps can be considered a very efficient approach for generic surveillance of longhorn beetles, jewel beetles and bark and ambrosia beetles in both urban-dominated and forest-dominated areas surrounding entry points.

Biodiversity in tropical region has declined in the last decades, mainly due to forest conversion into agricultural areas. Consequently, species occupancy in these landscapes is strongly governed by environmental changes acting at multiple spatial scales. We investigated which environmental predictors best determines the occupancy probability of 68 bird species exhibiting different ecological traits in forest patches. We conducted point-count bird surveys in 40 forest sites of the Brazilian Atlantic forest. Using six variables related to landscape composition and configuration and local vegetation structure, we predicted the occupancy probability of each species accounting for imperfect detections. Landscape composition, especially forest cover, best predicted bird occupancy probability. Specifically, most bird species showed greater occupancy probability in sites inserted in more forested landscapes, while some species presented higher occurrence in patches surrounded by low-quality matrices. Conversely, only three species showed greater occupancy in landscapes with higher number of patches and dominated by forest edges. Also, several species exhibited greater occupancy in sites harbouring either larger trees or lower number of understory plants. Of uttermost importance, our study revealed that a minimum of 54% of forest cover is required to ensure high (> 60%) occupancy probability of forest species. We highlighted that maintaining only 20% of native vegetation in private property according to Brazilian environmental law is insufficient to guarantee a greater occupancy for most bird species. We recommend that policy actions should safeguard existing forest remnants, expand restoration projects, and curb human-induced disturbances to minimise degradation within forest patches.

Basic information on where nonnative plant species have successfully invaded is lacking. We assessed the vulnerability of 22 vegetation types (25 sets of four plots in nine study areas) to nonnative plant invasions in the north-central United States. In general, habitats with high native species richness were more heavily invaded than species-poor habitats, low-elevation areas were more invaded than high-elevation areas, and riparian zones were more invaded than nearby upland sites. For the 100 1000-m2 plots (across all vegetation types), 50% of the variation in nonnative species richness was explained by longitude, latitude, native plant species richness, soil total percentage nitrogen, and mean maximum July temperature (n = 100 plots; P < 0.001). At the vegetation-type scale (n = 25 sets of four 1000-m2 plots/type), 64% of the variation in nonnative species richness was explained by native plant species richness, elevation, and October to June precipitation (P < 0.001). The foliar cover of nonnative species (log) was strongly positively correlated with the nonnative species richness at the plot scale (r = 0.77, P < 0.001) and vegetation-type scale (r = 0.83, P < 0.001). We concluded that, at the vegetation-type and regional scales in the north-central United States, (1) vegetation types rich in native species are often highly vulnerable to invasion by nonnative plant species; (2) where several nonnative species become established, nonnative species cover can substantially increase; (3) the attributes that maintain high native plant species richness (high light, water, nitrogen, and temperatures) also help maintain nonnative plant species richness; and (4) more care must be taken to preserve native species diversity in highly vulnerable habitats.

The successful management of watersheds has increasingly become dependent on interdisciplinary study and the use of high technology for the interpretation and understanding of watershed resources. Research into the effects of land use and land cover change on water resources and landscape ecology is a critical component of long-term sustainability, and these results must be integrated and presented in a manner suitable to the people who will implement management decisions. Such investigations and techniques may have value to the management of scarce water resources in Central Asia. Techniques are presented in which spatially distributed landscape data are input to hydrologic modeling and landscape ecology tools and utilized for integrated watershed assessment. These tools, the Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment (AGWA) and Analytical Tools Interface for Landscape Assessment (ATtILA) are automated computer modeling systems based on geographic information systems (GIS) and rely upon remote sensing and commonly available GIS data. Case studies are presented in which these tools were used to assess the impacts of land cover change on the Upper San Pedro River watershed, a critical basin in the southwestern United States, and the Cannonsville watershed in upstate New York that is used to provide drinking water to New York City. Results indicate that trends in land cover change within the San Pedro basin have negative implications for both water resources and landscape ecology, while the opposite trends have occurred within the Cannonsville watershed. Integrated landscape ecology and hydrologic modeling research can be used to investigate the localized and downstream effects of land management, and an approach using specialized GIS tools for these spatial analyses are presented.

Enhancing natural resource management has been a focus of landscape ecology since its inception, but numerous authors argue that landscape ecology has not yet been effective in achieving the underlying goal of planning and designing sustainable landscapes. We developed nine questions reflecting the application of fundamental research topics in landscape ecology to the landscape planning process and reviewed two recent landscape-scale plans in western North America for evidence of these concepts in plan decisions. Both plans considered multiple resources, uses, and values, including energy development, recreation, conservation, and protection of cultural and historic resources. We found that land use change and multiscale perspectives of resource uses and values were very often apparent in planning decisions. Pattern-process relationships, connectivity and fragmentation, ecosystem services, landscape history, and climate change were reflected less frequently. Landscape sustainability was considered only once in the 295 decisions reviewed, and outputs of landscape models were not referenced. We suggest six actionable opportunities for further integrating landscape ecology concepts into landscape planning efforts: 1) use landscape sustainability as an overarching goal, 2) adopt a broad ecosystem services framework, 3) explore the role of landscape history more comprehensively, 4) regularly consider and accommodate potential effects of climate change, 5) use landscape models to support plan decisions, and 6) promote a greater presence of landscape ecologists within agencies that manage large land bases and encourage active involvement in agency planning efforts. Together these actions may improve the defensibility, durability, and sustainability of landscape plan decisions.

Longhorn beetles are among the most important groups of invasive forest insects worldwide. In parallel, they represent one of the most well-studied insect groups in terms of chemical ecology. Longhorn beetle aggregation-sex pheromones are commonly used as trap lures for specific and generic surveillance programs at points of entry and may play a key role in determining the success or failure of exotic species establishment. An exotic species might be more likely to establish in a novel habitat if it relies on a pheromone channel that is different to that of native species active at the same time of year and day, allowing for unhindered mate location (i.e., pheromone-free space hypothesis). In this study, we first tested the attractiveness of single pheromone components (i.e., racemic 3-hydroxyhexan-2-one, racemic 3-hydroxyoctan-2-one, and syn-2,3-hexanediol), and their binary and tertiary combinations, to native and exotic longhorn beetle species in Canada and Italy. Second, we exploited trap catches to determine their seasonal flight activity. Third, we used pheromone-baited "timer traps" to determine longhorn beetle daily flight activity. The response to single pheromones and their combinations was mostly species specific but the combination of more than one pheromone component allowed catch of multiple species simultaneously in Italy. The response of the exotic species to pheromone components, coupled with results on seasonal and daily flight activity, provided partial support for the pheromone-free space hypothesis. This study aids in the understanding of longhorn beetle chemical ecology and confirms that pheromones can play a key role in longhorn beetle invasions.

There is at present enough ecological understanding of Mediterranean ecosystems to provide legitimacy for active management and intervention in these environments. One of the principal threats to biodiversity in Mediterranean environments is posed by the successional processes that turn the landscape into a dense, close stand of woody vegetation, prone to burning. Active management aimed to control the closing up process is required; it should be considered at several levels—species, populations, communities, and ecosystems—and should be applied according to well-defined management/conservation goals. Biodiversity, especially in the animal populations and the herbaceous community, is an expression of the landscape structure, which, in turn, is modulated principally by the woody vegetation. Therefore, a management scheme based on multiscale functional patchiness is required. Scientists, especially landscape ecologists, should provide the required information on the relations between the woody formation and biodiversity and should participate in the management decision-making process.

Landscape ecologists have been eager to make their research applicable to forest management. We examine how landscape ecology has contributed to shaping the way forest management is currently practiced. Landscape ecology research in forested ecosystems can be divided into two general areas: (1) the study of fragmentation issues, which focuses on the effects of forest fragmentation on species conservation; and (2) the development of landscape projection models, which focuses on patch dynamics and the effects of spatial arrangement of patches on ecosystem processes. Fragmentation issues have become priorities in the minds of forest managers, but research to date has overemphasized the effects of landscape structure on species conservation. We suggest that the research focus should move toward the study of threshold effects of landscape change on the relative influence of habitat loss and habitat configuration on species conservation in forest-dominated landscapes. Landscape projection models are rapidly becoming important tools in forest management planning, and they hold great promise as a means to bring landscape ecologists and forest managers together. The ability to produce future landscapes under different management scenarios and to compare these to landscapes produced by natural disturbance regimes will help to focus both managers and scientists on understanding the key interactions among human activities, landscape features, and ecological processes.

Lignocellulosic energy crops can produce substantial amounts of biomass for energy purposes, but their introduction implies land-use changes as they are mainly cultivated in agriculturally dominated landscapes. This thesis presents a land-use analysis of lignocellulosic energy crops in the agricultural landscape in Sweden, specifically aiming to i) assess different energy crops’ regarding production, location and climatic profiles, ii) characterise and define the surrounding agricultural landscape, and iii) study the overall land-use changes derived from the establishment of energy crops in the country. The analysis is based on empirical data from commercial fast-growing tree plantations (willow, poplar, and hybrid aspen) and energy grasses (reed canary grass) at multiple spatial scales from field to landscape level, during the period 1986-2018. At field level, there is a trend for smaller and more regular fields dedicated to energy crops, with cultivation patterns moving towards more productive lands, reflecting an intensification in the land-use management. Willow was initially established mainly on fallow lands, but many plantations were subsequently replaced by cereals due to changes in global cereal prices. In the case of grasses, this pattern was similar, although changes appeared later and not so markedly. At landscape level, energy crops significantly diversify the agricultural landscape, as fast-growing tree plantations are largely introduced in cereal areas and grasses in forest-dominated landscapes. The methods and analysis of this thesis contribute to a better understanding of land-use changes associated to energy crops, and help define their contribution to diversifying the agricultural landscape.

ABSTRACTHabitat loss is the greatest contributor to the decline of species globally. To prioritize protection of imperiled species, it is important to examine habitat use at multiple spatial scales because the availability of different resources and habitat features is scale dependent. We conducted a radio‐telemetry study in the Long Point region of Ontario, Canada, in 2009 and 2010 to examine habitat selection at multiple spatial scales by eastern hog‐nosed snakes (Heterodon platirhinos), a species at risk in Canada. We documented the habitat composition of home ranges compared to the surrounding landscape, the selection of locations within home ranges based on classified satellite imagery, and the use of microhabitat features based on site characterization in the field. At the scale of the home ranges, hog‐nosed snakes avoided areas of agriculture and selected sand barrens. Within home ranges, hog‐nosed snakes selectively used areas altered by humans (e.g., residential sites, openings in tree plantations). Microhabitats used by hog‐nosed snakes had more woody debris, logs, and lower vegetative coverage than adjoining random sites. Because hog‐nosed snakes prefer open areas and require sandy soils for nesting, management efforts should focus on the conservation and maintenance of sand barrens and patches of early successional forest. © 2021 The Wildlife Society.

Trap lure blends that maximize the diversity of captured insect species help to reduce the costs of detection programs that target native and nonnative invasive species of bark and woodboring beetles. In 2007, the effects of the bark beetle pheromones ipsdienol and ipsenol on catches of beetles (Coleoptera) in multiple-funnel traps baited with ethanol + α-pinene were evaluated in a trapping study in one stand of mature loblolly pine, Pinus taeda L., in northcentral Georgia. Ipsenol and/or ipsdienol increased catches of Acanthocinus obsoletus (LeConte) and Monochamus titillator (F.) (Cerambycidae), Ips avulsus (Eichhoff), Ips calligraphus (Germar), Ips grandicollis (Eichhoff) (Curculionidae), Temnoscheila virescens (F.), and Aulonium tuberculatum (LeConte) (Zopheridae) in traps baited with ethanol and α-pinene. However, catches of most species in traps baited with ipsenol + ipsdienol were the same as those baited with either ipsenol or ipsdienol alone. Only catches of I. avulsus were greatest in traps baited with both ipsdienol and ipsenol. Catches of Thanasimus dubius (F.) (Cleridae), Platysoma spp. (Histeridae), and Lasconotus spp. (Zopheridae) increased with the addition of ipsenol but decreased with the addition of ipsdienol. In contrast, catches of Orthotomicus caelatus (Eichhoff) (Curculionidae) increased with the addition of ipsdienol; attraction was interrupted by the addition of ipsenol. A number of trade-offs exist in retaining ipsdienol and/or ipsenol in the multicomponent pine lure blend for detection programs in Georgia.

Biodiversity maintenance in human-altered landscapes (HALs) depends on the species turnover among localities, but the patterns and determinants of β-diversity in HALs are poorly known. In fact, declines, increases and neutral shifts in β-diversity have all been documented, depending on the landscape, ecological group and spatial scale of analysis. We shed some light on this controversy by assessing the patterns and predictors of bird β-diversity across multiple spatial scales considering forest specialist and habitat generalist bird assemblages. We surveyed birds from 144 point counts in 36 different forest sites across two landscapes with different amount of forest cover in the Brazilian Atlantic forest. We analysed β-diversity among points, among sites and between landscapes with multiplicative diversity partitioning of Hill numbers. We tested whether β-diversity among points was related to within-site variations in vegetation structure, and whether β-diversity among sites was related to site location and/or to differences among sites in vegetation structure and landscape composition (i.e. per cent forest and pasture cover surrounding each site). β-diversity between landscapes was lower than among sites and among points in both bird assemblages. In forest specialist birds, the landscape with less forest cover showed the highest β-diversity among sites (bird differentiation among sites), but generalist birds showed the opposite pattern. At the local scale, however, the less forested landscape showed the lowest β-diversity among points (bird homogenization within sites), independently of the bird assemblage. β-diversity among points was weakly related to vegetation structure, but higher β-diversity values were recorded among sites that were more isolated from each other, and among sites with higher differences in landscape composition, particularly in the less forested landscape. Our findings indicate that patterns of bird β-diversity vary across scales and are strongly related to landscape composition. Bird assemblages are shaped by both environmental filtering and dispersal limitation, particularly in less forested landscapes. Conservation and management strategies should therefore prevent deforestation in this biodiversity hotspot.

Summary Ecosystem recovery is influenced by processes at different spatial scales, yet land managers lack specific predictions on the relative importance of such processes that might guide management decisions. We tested whether ideas from landscape ecology (local vs. landscape scales) and island biogeography theory (patch size and isolation) predict restoration success for understorey plant communities in a highly fragmented riparian landscape, in an effort to provide guidance on how to allocate scarce restoration resources. We sampled naturally colonizing riparian forest understorey plant communities in 15 riparian forests restored by planting native woody species along a 150‐km stretch of the Sacramento River in central California. We analysed native and exotic understorey species richness and cover as a function of biotic and abiotic local and landscape variables. Cover and species richness of exotic understorey plants decreased strongly with increasing overstorey cover, and were lower in quadrats closer to river base flow. Native understorey species richness and cover were negatively related to exotic cover and positively related to connectivity with remnant forest. Cover of native wind‐dispersed species was best explained by higher percentage forest cover surrounding a site within a 1000‐m buffer, whereas cover of native water‐dispersed species was higher closer to the river. Neither patch size nor time since restoration explained a significant amount of native or exotic species richness or cover. Synthesis and applications. Local factors explained more of the variance in understorey plant communities, but much of the variance remained unexplained. Our results provide weak support for the predictions of island biogeography theory and the importance of landscape‐scale variables. These theories did not have strong predictive power in this applied restoration context at this temporal scale. Given limited resources, efforts to restore understorey plant communities in this highly fragmented system should focus on local‐scale restoration methodologies, such as increasing cover of native overstorey species and reducing cover of exotic plants.

Forest fragmentation, structure, and age characteristics as a legacy of forest management

Urban forest patches (UFP) face challenges related to climate change and anthropic impacts on natural ecosystems and their biodiversity, mainly due to the presence of invasive exotic species. The objective of this research was to characterize the invasive flora of two urban forest patches located in Curitiba, Paraná. The research was conducted in the Papa João Paulo II and Gutierrez woods, located in Curitiba, Paraná. Ten sample plots of 20x30 m (600 m²) were installed, all individuals with DBH &gt;15 cm were sampled, six in Papa João Paulo II, and four in Gutierrez. A floristic characterization was carried out in each plot, separating native and exotic species. The ecological indices of Shannon-Weaver Diversity, Pielou, Simpson and Jaccard Equability were calculated to quantify vegetation diversity. Floristic analyzes were carried out in an R ambient. Altogether, 546 tree individuals were measured, belonging to 61 species of 31 families. The mean values of the Shannon-Weaver and Pielou indices were higher in Bosque Gutierrez. There was low similarity in floristic composition between sample plots. There were statistically significant differences between the categories of variables, in relation to native and exotic species, and between UFP. The presence of native species still exceeds that of exotic and invasive alien species in both UFP. The exotic invasive species Ligustrum lucidum already has a worrying influence on the ecological sustainability of UFP. The evaluated UFP are going through the process of biotic homogenization in their floristic composition.