Sustaining altitude pastures in mountain landscapes–a fuzzy cognitive model approach

There has been a large decline in the managed pastures of Mediterranean European countries. This has led to decreased biodiversity in the herbaceous layer, shrub encroachment and accumulation of fuel biomass (woody plants). This, in turn, has increased the risk of large forest fires. Consequently pasture management to prevent these effects is nowadays a big issue in many marginal areas. This trend is also present in the Pyrenees (Spain), where research was carried out to analyse the influence of different land use on characteristics related to botanical composition of vegetation and fire hazards. The study was conducted in Vall d'Alinyà (Alt Urgell), where three different pastoral management systems were identified. Botanical composition, biomass production and presence of fuel biomass during summer were assessed. Grazing contributed to reduce shrub encroachment and thus fire risk. Botanical composition and amount of fuel biomass was influenced by actuality management and age of abandoning. However, it emerged that the current animal stocking rate is too low in comparison to the actual carrying capacity and livestock numbers should be increased to limit shrub encroachment and fire risk.

Mountain areas of Europe have been managed by humans for a long time, leading to a prevalence of semi-natural habitats in mountain landscapes today. These landscapes contain both natural and cultural heritage; however, natural and cultural heritage are rarely considered together when valuing landscapes and developing management plans in protected areas. Here we present a case study of seven protected areas in the mountains of Great Britain and Norway. We take a long-term perspective on landscape and land-use change and propose an integrated model of landscape valuation on the basis of combined natural and cultural heritage. Our model plots indicators of natural and cultural heritage along a gradient of land-use intensity, allowing simultaneous assessment and highlighting how valuation depends on what type of heritage is considered. We show that while contemporary land-use changes follow similar trajectories in Norway and Britain, different land-use histories mean that the loss of heritage differs between the regions. The model presented here thus allows for the consolidation of valuation based on both cultural and natural heritage in landscapes.

Cattle Grazing Fails to Control Shrub Encroachment in Mediterranean Landscapes

Carabid beetles as indicators for shrub encroachment in dry grasslands

Among the challenges to sustainable development, two primary obstacles stand out: poverty and biodiversity loss. Despite the acknowledged significance of the link between poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation, this relationship remains underexplored due to its complex nature, a lack of integrated data, and the tendency to address poverty and biodiversity separately in research and policy. This study aims to explore the complex relationship between biodiversity conservation and poverty in semi-arid ecosystems in Iran, focusing on the natural, social, economic, and governmental drivers involved. The results revealed a spatially varied relationship between biodiversity conservation and poverty, with both positive and negative outcomes. The structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that nature (p < 0.001), economy (p < 0.01), society (p < 0.01), and government (p < 0.01), with poverty serving as a mediating factor, significantly influence biodiversity conservation. Further analysis of the SEM revealed that specific factors play key roles: ecosystem production was identified as the most important natural driver (p < 0.001), income as the primary economic driver (p < 0.001), population as the most influential social driver (p < 0.001), and government services as the leading governmental driver (p < 0.01) of biodiversity conservation. Results revealed that ecosystem production and government services positively correlate with biodiversity conservation, while population negatively impacts it. The relationship between income and biodiversity conservation, however, is more complex. This study offers a novel approach for the spatial assessment of both poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation, using key drivers to inform policy and management decisions.

Conceptualizing and achieving industrial system transition for a dematerialized and decarbonized world

Semi-arid African ecosystems influence trends and variability in global terrestrial carbon dynamics. However, there are uncertainties in potential effects of future climates for semi-arid ecosystems, especially for niche ecosystems. At the same time, African ecosystems provide the livelihoods and ecosystem services for around 1.4 billion people. Future population growth and associated changes in land use pose a challenge for the protection of African biodiversity. Therefore, this work focussed on future impacts of climate change on African ecosystems and carbon dynamics and also for African protected areas (PAs), where they may cooccur with other global change factors. Another focus was on uncertainties associated with future projections and with modelling the Nama Karoo, as an example of a semi-arid niche ecosystem. Dynamic vegetation models (DVMs) were the main research tool. In Chapter 2, we analysed climate change impacts on African ecosystems and carbon pools until the end of the 21st century and associated uncertainties based on an ensemble of vegetation simulations with the DVM adaptive dynamic vegetation model (aDGVM). We investigated the impact of increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations and two climate change scenarios (medium (RCP4.5) and high emissions (RCP8.5); RCP - representative concentration pathway) on vegetation changes. Differences in the simulated vegetation were primarily driven by assumptions about the influence of CO2 on plants. Elevated CO2 concentrations led to increased total aboveground vegetation biomass and shrub encroachment into grasslands and savannas for both climate scenarios. In simulations without the direct influence of CO2 on plants, there was hardly any shrub encroachment and vegetation biomass decreased or varied between a slight decrease in some cases and a slight increase in others. Based on these results, biome changes due to climate change are likely in Africa in the future. Due to the large uncertainties in future projections, strategies to adapt to climate change must be flexible. The simulated vegetation in Chapter 2 represented potential, natural vegetation and is particularly suitable to investigate PAs. However, PAs do not exist isolated from their environment and social developments. In Chapter 3, the vegetation projections with CO2 effect from Chapter 2 were combined with projections for population density and land use. Except for many PAs in North Africa, most PAs were adversely affected by at least one of the three drivers by the end of the 21st century in both investigated scenarios ("middle-of-the-road" and "fossil-fuelled development"). Cooccurrence of the drivers varied by region and scenario for PAs. Both scenarios implied increasing challenges for the conservation of African biodiversity in PAs. The impact of climate change on vegetation is likely to be exacerbated by socio-economic change for most African PAs. Strong mitigation of future climate change together with equitable societal development may facilitate successful ecosystem conservation. The simulations in Chapters 2 and 3 showed large-scale patterns of vegetation change, but their low resolution makes them unsuitable for local analyses. In Chapter 4, the challenges of simulating smaller scale, semi-arid ecosystems and their carbon cycle were analysed for the Nama Karoo with the aDGVM2 and its shrub module. The aDGVM2 is based on the aDGVM, but represents plants more flexibly. In all tested aDGVM2 configurations, the carbon fluxes improved compared to initial simulations but still overestimated them. The measured morphology of the dwarf shrubs and soil water dynamics were not reproduced in aDGVM2. Semi-arid soil water dynamics and coping strategies of semi-arid dwarf shrubs under drought stress are not adequately implemented in the aDGVM2. Further field research on semi-arid water and carbon dynamics of vegetation is necessary to parameterise the aDGVM2 for dwarf shrubs. If these challenges are overcome, DVMs can be a powerful tool for much-needed research on the impacts of climate change on the Nama Karoo. The analyses have shown that climate change under medium to high emission scenarios is likely to lead to large-scale changes in ecosystems and the carbon balance in Africa. Because lower emissions scenarios come with less uncertainty, climate change adaptation strategies likely need to be less complex or extensive if climate change is minimised. For African PAs, the challenges of climate change may be exacerbated by socio-economic factors to a regionally varying extent. This research suggests that successful ecosystem conservation depends on climate change mitigation measures and ensuring equitable, sustainable development. The shown uncertainties, e.g., in the implementation of the CO2 effect on plants or vegetation dynamics in more niche ecosystems, help to focus future research efforts and increase our understanding of the range of plausible futures we may need to adapt to.

Environment and anthropogenic impacts as main drivers of plant assemblages in forest mountain landscapes of Southern Patagonia

'Wild rangelands' compiles 15 scholarly chapters which speak to the challenges of conserving biodiversity in the face of domesticated livestock production. Conservation of biodiversity is its clear and stated focus, but it explores conservation in the context of landscapes that support millions of livelihoods. To build this case 'Wild rangelands' compiles seven case studies, across which the role of humans varies from between coexistence to a form of co-dependence. The cases are from Australia, the American west, Mongolia and trans-Himalayas, and two from eastern Africa. These case studies are first framed by six overarching chapters, covering internationally relevant topics - resilience, scale mismatches, shrub encroachment, disease, carnivore-human conflict and economic incentives for conservation. A concluding chapter provides a synthesis of the challenges and solutions.

The most significant European forest-related strategies highlight the importance of multifunctional forests for human wellbeing, due to the provision of a wide range of goods and services. However, managing competing aims, such as timber production, economic drivers and biodiversity conservation is often difficult for practitioners. In order to assess the loss and gain of ecosystem services caused by forestry, trade-off evaluation has been increasingly used to aid decision-making. In this study, four silvicultural scenarios are simulated using the Marteloscope approach to evaluate the trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and timber production. Tree-related Microhabitats (TreMs) are used as a proxy to evaluate forest habitat value, while timber production is assessed by the number of harvested trees, biomass removal and economic income. This study takes an innovative approach by investigating TreMs using the Marteloscope in mixed Mediterranean forest. The main findings from this paper confirm that tree-related microhabitats can be considered ecological indicators effective in identifying important habitat trees, to assess forest habitat value and support tree marking for thinning operations and management.

Simple SummaryUnderstanding the ecological processes involved in establishing a metacommunity, a collection of small communities linked by species dispersal, could help with biodiversity conservation. In this work, we examine how local community connectivity affects the distributional patterns of various bird species across metacommunities in the strikingly different Altai landscapes. We discovered that connectivity was most important for determining community composition in metacommunities. High beta diversity and a high turnover component in the research region showed that regional-scale conservation efforts should consider overall biodiversity. Although they are not part of the Altai-Sayan biodiversity ecoregion, the riparian and desert landscapes are essential to the birds that reside in the mountain ranges and should be regarded as integral parts of the ecoregion, and high connectivity stepping-stone habitats in these landscapes should be protected.Located on the southwest slope and plain areas of the Altai Mountains in China, this study aims to explore bird composition variation (beta diversity) in mountain landscape (metacommunity M), riparian landscape (metacommunity R), desert landscape (metacommunity D) and across the three landscapes (metacommunity A), and to assess how patch connectivity with environmental and spatial factors influence species distributional patterns across multiple metacommunities. In 78 transect lines over the study area, 9724 detections of 139 bird species were detected. We calculated the beta diversity, its turnover and nestedness components in four metacommunities. We used the variation partitioning method to investigate the relative importance between the environment, spatial variation and locality connectivity in driving bird community composition variation. We found high beta diversities with a small contribution of nestedness components in all four metacommunities. When only a single set of predictors is contained in the model, the predictor that best explains the variation of bird community composition is connectivity in metacommunity M, R and D and spatial predictor in metacommunity A. In all three sets of predictors, 73.8~85.4% of variations of community composition can be explained in the four metacommunities, and connectivity always contributed the most. High beta diversity and a high turnover component imply that regional-scale conservation efforts should be thought of as preserving overall biodiversity. A conservation strategy is to keep stepping-stone habitats with good connectivity in the middle of the riparian landscape. Along with the Altai-Sayan biodiversity ecoregion, the desert and riparian environments are essential for birds residing in the mountainous terrain. Furthermore, they should be regarded as integral parts of the ecoregion.

Commentary on the Subsampling Procedures Used for Rapid Bioassessments

This research examines global issues concerning the development of mountain areas considered as territories difficult to manage. The case study area is part of the sub-region of High Alpine Steppes belonging to the Tunisian Ridge and reaching Tebessa Mountains in Algeria. The central question of this article is based on the analysis of the links between the representations produced by mountain landscapes and the construction of a border line that must meet the requirements of sustainable development. Eco-landscape determinants and the role of public authorities and population must be better defined so that the products of this space provide a better quality of life endowed with the alternatives of local and sustainable development. Our hypothesis is that the mountain areas of West Central Tunisia still have a real ecological potential little disturbed by a chimerical development, and can constitute assets for the territorial development of the area. The approach adopted by this work is a scoping audit based on the floristic richness and the monitoring of its spatiotemporal dynamics. The results of this research allowed us to draw rich conclusions; the phyto-ecology approach has shown a relative floristic richness that remains highly dependent on the climatic cycles and intervention of human action; this area must be considered as a priority of the public planning policies aimed at improving the quality of lives in these fragile zones in the context of sustainable development.

In many cultural landscapes, the abandonment of traditional grazing leads to encroachment of pastures by woody plants, which reduces habitat heterogeneity and impacts biodiversity typical of semi-open habitats. We developed a framework of mutually interacting spatial models to locate areas where shrub encroachment in Alpine treeline ecosystems deteriorates vulnerable species’ habitat, using black grouse Tetrao tetrix (L.) in the Swiss Alps as a study model. Combining field observations and remote-sensing information we 1) identified and located the six predominant treeline vegetation types; 2) modelled current black grouse breeding habitat as a function thereof so as to derive optimal habitat profiles; 3) simulated from these profiles the theoretical spatial extension of breeding habitat when assuming optimal vegetation conditions throughout; and used the discrepancy between (2) and (3) to 4) locate major aggregations of homogeneous shrub vegetation in otherwise suitable breeding habitat as priority sites for habitat restoration. All six vegetation types (alpine pasture, coniferous forest, Alnus viridis (Chaix), Rhododendron-dominated, Juniperus-dominated and mixed heathland) were predicted with high accuracy (AUC >0.9). Breeding black grouse preferred a heterogeneous mosaic of vegetation types, with none exceeding 50% cover. While 15% of the timberline belt currently offered suitable breeding habitat, twice that fraction (29%) would potentially be suitable when assuming optimal shrub and ground vegetation conditions throughout the study area. Yet, only 10% of this difference was attributed to habitat deterioration by shrub-encroachment of dense heathland (all types 5.2%) and Alnus viridis (4.8%). The presented method provides both a general, large-scale assessment of areas covered by dense shrub vegetation as well as specific target values and priority areas for habitat restoration related to a selected target organism. This facilitates optimizing the spatial allocation of management resources in geographic regions where shrub encroachment represents a major biodiversity conservation issue.

Pastoral societies have revived strong and renewed interest among the anthropologist. Pastoralism is a subsistence pattern in which people make their living by domesticating large herds of animals. The pastoral subsistence economy provides an adaptation to such conditions since it promotes the conversion of the low quality plant resources into portable, high quality animal foods. However, the overall low level of energy availability necessitates low population density and high mobility among pastoral population. Within a pastoral society the ecosystem diversity does not only means the variety of ecological zones or habitats, but, it encompass cultural diversity and ecological processes related to different pastoral production systems as well. Therefore, biodiversity provides a fundamental base to pastoralism and to the overall economic systems. Sheep and goat pastoralism is a constant feature of traditional mountain societies. It is rare that any pastoral group lives exclusively with the products of their herds. All pastoralists have to look for supplementary forms of economic activity. The pastoral communities of Himalayas make use of resources like high mountain pastures by three different ways by characteristic mobility patterns, socio-economic organisation and property rights. The study deals with three pastoral groups of Himalayas who inhabit Ladakh, Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh. Changpas nomads of Changthang raise herds of sheep and pashmina goats, yaks and horses. Gaddis of Bharmour are agro-pastoralists and raise large flocks of sheep and goats. Bhutias of North Sikkim are agro-pastoralists and raise local cows and ox, yaks, sheep, goats and ponies. These societies use animals as providers of food, fuel, fiber, draught power and transportation. However, nomadic, seminomadic and transhumant pastoralist societies have lifestyles that revolve mainly around their livestock. The transhumant pastoral societies inhabiting the high Himalayan areas exploit the seasonal abundance of grazing areas. As social and ecological conditions change, pastoralists adjust accordingly. Pastoralists play an important role in the ecology of India. Their production of organic manure contributes to the maintenance of soil fertility. Their grazing controls invasive exotic species. Contrary to their reputation, pastoralists have traditional practices for conserving vegetation by rotational grazing. Pastoralists make a significant contribution to India’s economy in terms of food security (milk), provision of draft animal power, as well as foreign exchange earnings (meat, fibre e.g. pashmina wool). Since pastoralists do not own land, their produce is generated by dependence on communally and state-owned grazing land. Currently, the trend towards globalization of the market, with pastoral lands increasingly being commercialised and/or turned in to national parks has created problems for the pastoralists. Due to neglect by officials and policy makers, pastoralists face deprivation from their traditional and customary rights to these grazing areas. The political marginalisation of pastoral communities paved the way for forcible eviction from their land and/or restriction of their movements. In Ladakh, protection of wildlife has proceeded at the expense of the availability of grass biomass for the herds of the pastoralists. Since Independence of India, the pastoralists of Himalayas have faced a series of significant changes from external political and economic changes. These structural alterations have brought adjustments in many aspects of the traditional pastoral system, including migratory cycle, local economy and social organisation. Many of them left their traditional transhumant way of life and settled along valleys. Some have settled in urban areas others stick to the pastoral activities by changing the composition of livestock by increasing number of goats and decreasing number of yaks. State policies regarding forests, agriculture, irrigation, fodder, famine, pastoral rights and migration are some of the mechanisms that contribute to the alteration of pastoral life-style. Development of animal husbandry is a major government goal. All pastoral groups in Himalaya face the similar constraints and stimuli. Natural exigencies-extreme weather conditions, drought, epidemics and predators result in reduction of animals. Likewise, social crisis, such as phases in domestic developmental cycle and work force shortage in herding groups cause concern in the community