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Conclusions: Areas for roosting are likely the most limiting factor for the Western Small-footed Myotis. Unlike various other bats, this myotis does not roost in trees, but rather under rocks, and in holes and crevices found in rock outcrops within cliffs and coulees. Summer roosts can be found in cavities within cliffs, boulders, vertical banks, the ground, and talus slopes. Distance to water was also a significant factor affecting habitat suitability Thresholds/Learnings: Habitat for western small-footed myotis bats is ideally located within 1000m of water. Habitat located >3000m from water is deemed unsuitable. Synopsis: Areas for roosting are likely the most limiting factor for the Western Small-footed Myotis....
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Conclusions: Four plant species have been tested in the majority of field evaluations, while plants native to the test area and perennial plants are particularly underrepresented. Native plants useful in restoration of rare ecosystems can increase natural enemy abundance and provide ecosystem services as much as widely recommended non-natives. Thresholds/Learnings: Synopsis: The intentional provision of flowering plants and plant communities in managed landscapes to enhance natural enemies is termed habitat management and is a relatively new but growing aspect of conservation biology. The focus of most habitat management research has been on understanding the role of these plant-provided resources on natural enemy...
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Synopsis: Preliminary research and observations made by farmers suggest that shelterbelts placed around livestock production facilities may effectively reduce movement of odors emitted by manure to neighbouring properties. Essentially, trees can be 'put to work' to reduce the movement of livestock production odors off-site. An odor-emitting source can include a livestock production barn, manure storage or a farm field where manure is being spread. Shelterbelts have the ability to reduce odor concentrations significantly at or very near the source, which greatly improves the effectiveness of separation distances. There are five ways that treed windbreaks and shelterbelts can reduce the effects of livestock odor...
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Synopsis: This study evaluated the effects of landscape management on the spread of mountain pine beetle colonization in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada. Researchers used annual aerial survey data and geo-referenced locations of colonized trees that were cut and removed to assess if the area colonized and the spatial extent of pine beetles differed between monitoring and management zones. Pine beetles were allowed to follow their natural course in the monitoring zone, while an extensive eradication program involving cutting and burning colonized trees was established in the management zone. Management resulted in no detectable effect on the scale of the zone. However, at the sub-zone scale, the area affected...
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Synopsis: Beneficial arthropods, including native bees, predators, and parasitoids, provide valuable ecosystem services worth $8 billion to US agriculture each year. These arthropod-mediated ecosystem services (AMES) include crop pollination and pest control, which help to maintain agricultural productivity and reduce the need for pesticide inputs. Maximizing survival and reproduction of beneficial arthropods requires provision of pollen and nectar resources that are often scarce in modern agricultural landscapes. Increasingly, native plants are being evaluated for this purpose. Native plants can outperform recommended non-natives and also provide local adaptation, habitat permanency, and support of native biodiversity....
Conclusions: Report outlines habitat-based biodiversity standards specific to the prairie ecozone. It is intended to contribute to the delivery of habitat-based biodiversity standards in the prairie region via landscape-level indicators and targets Thresholds/Learnings: Synopsis: This report synthesizes the work completed to date on habitat-based biodiversity standards specific to the prairie ecozone. The intent of this report is to contribute to the delivery of habitat-based biodiversity standards in the Prairie region via landscape-level indicators and targets. Examples of key landscape targets for prairie landscapes that were identified included: * A minimum of 3 to 7% (<10%) of each major watershed should be...
Conclusions:Habitat heterogeneity is often perceived as fragmentation by certain species depending on spatial scales.Thresholds/Learnings:
Conclusions:Influx of woody vegetation associated with fragmentation correlates with decline in grassland bird speciesThresholds/Learnings:When native grassland cover dropped below 60% at one site, and 30-40% at another site, the arrangement or habitat patches became more important to the survival of populations than habitat amount alone
Conclusions:Swift foxes are typically found in open flat prairies, where visibility and prey availability are high. They prefer short or mixed grass unfragmented prairies that are predominately flat with sparse vegetation that allows them easy mobility and high visibility when it comes to eluding and detecting predators. Forest, coulees, steep slopes, broad agricultural areas, and dense shrubs are usually avoided because they often function as barriers between populations. *Note that this study generated landscape level models with coarse variables, and the thresholds and values used may not be directly applicable to other areas or for site-specific analysis.Thresholds/Learnings:75-100% grassland cover were deemed...
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Synopsis: Agronomic intensification has transformed many agricultural landscapes into expansive monocultures with little natural habitat. A pervasive concern is that such landscape simplification results in an increase in insect pest pressure, and thus an increased need for insecticides. We tested this hypothesis across a range of cropping systems in the Midwestern United States, using remotely sensed land cover data, data from a national census of farm management practices, and data from a regional crop pest monitoring network. We found that, independent of several other factors, the proportion of harvested cropland treated with insecticides increased with the proportion and patch size of cropland and decreased...
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Synopsis: Because recent bark beetle population eruptions have exceeded the frequencies, impacts, and ranges documented during the previous 125 years, researchers have been prompted to determine what factors trigger broad scale outbreaks, and how do these factors interact? How do human activities, such as forest management, alter these interactions, and thus the frequency, extent, severity, and synchrony of outbreaks? Extensive host tree abundance and susceptibility, concentrated beetle density, favorable weather, optimal symbiotic associations, and escape from natural enemies must occur jointly for beetles to surpass a series of thresholds and exert widespread disturbance. Eruptions occur when key thresholds are...
Conclusions: Book provides a comprehensive introduction to the principles and theories in landscape ecology. Early chapters introduce basic concepts and terminology that build a foundation for understanding more complex issues such as landscape disturbance dynamics, formulas and metrics for quantifying landscape patterns, and predictive models of landscape change. Thresholds/Learnings:
Conclusions:The effects of adjacent land-use on wetland sediment and water quality can extend over comparatively large distances. As such, sustaining high wetland water quality will not be achieved merely through the creation of narrow buffer zones between wetlands and more intensive land-uses, but rather by maintaining a heterogeneous regional landscape containing relatively large areas of natural forest and wetlands.Thresholds/Learnings:Water nitrogen and phosphorous levels were negatively correlated with forest cover at 2250m from the wetland edge. Sediment phosphorous levels were negatively correlated with wetland size and forest cover at 4000m from the wetland edge, and positively correlated with the proportion...
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Synopsis: This study investigated the magnitude of change in landscape structure resulting from road and logging since the onset of timber harvesting in 1950. Overall, roads were found to have had a greater impact on landscape structure than logging. A three-fold increase in road density between 1950 and 1993 accounted for most of the changes in landscape configuration including mean patch size, edge density, and core area. Change in landscape structure varied as a function of landscape extent. At a large scale of 228,000 ha, change in landscape change over time was trivial, suggesting that the landscape is capable of incorporating disturbances with minimal impact. At intermediate scales of 1000-10,000 ha, change...
Conclusions:Patch area was shown to be an important determinant of species richness irrespective of habitat heterogeneity. Isolation in space was also a significant factors in determining the degree of species richness in a grassland landscape.Thresholds/Learnings:
Conclusions: Globally, the pattern of East/South-East Asian rice paddy belts have higher ecosystem/habitat diversity index values than Eurasian, American, and Australian wheat or corn belts. Thresholds/Learnings: Synopsis: The most critical of the issues faced in addressing the targets of the Convention of Biological Diversity are ‘biodiversity conservation under agricultural development’ and ‘the sustainable use of natural resources and/or land’. Therefore, appropriate indicators for the status of biodiversity and the pressures placed on biodiversity in relation to the intensification of agriculture are needed. Agricultural development has had major impacts on biodiversity and the abandonment of traditional land...
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Conclusions: Presents environmental indicators for the purpose of guiding future planning efforts. These include 16 key indicators incorporating 64 separate measures highlighting the status and trends in environmental issues, as well targets to guide planning efforts. Thresholds/Learnings: Road density thresholds: Grizzly Bear 0.4km/km2; Black Bear 1.25km/km2; Elk 0.62 km/km2; and Bull Trout 0.1-1.31 km/km2 Synopsis: This document represents British Columbia’s third environmental indicators report, including 16 key indicators incorporating 64 separate measures highlighting the status and trends in environmental issues. The information is grouped into six theme areas: biodiversity, water, stewardship, human health...
Synopsis: This foundational text focuses on the distribution patterns of landscape elements that affect flows of animals, plants, energy, mineral nutrients and water in an ecosystem. The book also discusses the ecological implications of landscape change over time. The book introduces the important and well documented concepts of patches, corridors, and a background matrix and the building blocks of landscape (figure 4). The patch-corridor-matrix model is thus comprised of these three principle components which, together, constitute a landscape mosaic: Patches are “relatively homogenous non-linear areas that differ from their surroundings”. Corridors are “strips of a particular patch type that differ from the adjacent...
Synopsis: This book is the foundational text for understanding landscape ecology in terms of pattern/process relationships. Forman introduces the concept of “indispensible patterns” of habitat and habitat linkages that, if protected, can conserve the majority of important ecological function in a landscape. While all or specific attributes of an ecosystem may not be protected by these measures, the most important assets will retain their integrity if the essential general patterns are maintained. Forman’s Indispensable Landscape Patterns are related to both configuration and connectivity and fragmentation (figure 1). Forman suggests that the following patterns are indispensable in maintaining an ecologically viable...
map background search result map search result map Western Small-footed Myotis (Myotis ciliolabrum ciliolabrum) Environmental Trends in British Columbia 2002 Maximizing ecosystem services from conservation biological control: The role of habitat management Effect of management on spatial spread of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) in Banff National Park. Cross-scale drivers of natural disturbances prone to anthropogenic amplification: the dynamics of bark beetle eruptions Comparative evaluation of experimental approaches to the study of habitat fragmentation effects Agricultural landscape simplification and insecticide use in the Midwestern United States. Maximizing arthropod-mediated ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes: the role of native plants. Using Shelterbelts to Reduce Odors Associated with Livestock Production Barns. Effect of management on spatial spread of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) in Banff National Park. Comparative evaluation of experimental approaches to the study of habitat fragmentation effects Maximizing arthropod-mediated ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes: the role of native plants. Western Small-footed Myotis (Myotis ciliolabrum ciliolabrum) Agricultural landscape simplification and insecticide use in the Midwestern United States. Environmental Trends in British Columbia 2002 Cross-scale drivers of natural disturbances prone to anthropogenic amplification: the dynamics of bark beetle eruptions Maximizing ecosystem services from conservation biological control: The role of habitat management Using Shelterbelts to Reduce Odors Associated with Livestock Production Barns.