Abstract
An effective strategy to resolve conservation conflicts on lands outside of nature reserves is to consider the spatial arrangement of agricultural and native vegetation parcels such that the ecological value of the landscape is improved without reducing the amount of land used for agricultural production. Global optimization methods have been used to identify the best spatial arrangement of land parcels for a given project goal, but these methods are not designed to provide pathways to reach the optimum from the initial landscape. Here we describe how local search algorithms can be used to develop land parcel rearrangement pathways to obtain a landscape that sustains greater species richness than the initial landscape without changing the amount of land used for agricultural production. To demonstrate how the local optimization framework can be applied, an ecological setting based on a forest-grassland mosaic ecosystem in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil was constructed. Plant samples collected from this region were used to construct species area curves. Multiple locally optimal solutions that improved the modeled species richness of the landscape almost to globally optimal levels were identified. To support the results, the algorithm was also applied to a 306,250 ha forest-grassland region of Rio Grande do Sul. The case study results suggested that conservation polices solely based on landowners satisfying a legal reserve percentage on their property should be revised to consider landscape-level connectivity. Providing multiple possible solutions for landscape configurations using local optimization methods may improve managerial flexibility for decision-makers, compared to global optimization approaches providing a single solution. Furthermore, the algorithm details the parcel exchange pathways that are required to reach the optimal land state. We conclude that local and global optimization approaches can be used in combination to improve land use decision-making for conservation, in mosaic ecosystems as well as other terrestrial ecosystems.
Highlights
The introduction of sustainable land-use practices to regional landscapes often results in conflicts between the agricultural sector and conservation [1,2,3]
Proof by induction is used to show that, for a fixed number of parcels that are in a given state, fewer patches will always result in a higher mosaic richness index
We have introduced a landscape optimization framework that provides an additional resource to decision-makers attempting to resolve conservation conflicts through the spatial rearrangement of landscape elements such as what occurs under Brazil’s environmental reserve quota (CRA), and focusing on application to the forest-grassland mosaics in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Summary
The introduction of sustainable land-use practices to regional landscapes often results in conflicts between the agricultural sector and conservation [1,2,3]. Due to a growing global population that continues to drive the demand for land for agricultural purposes higher, conservation strategies outside of the creation of nature reserves must be developed [15]. Polasky et al [16] and others [17,18,19,20] have investigated optimal spatial arrangements for multi-use landscapes found outside nature reserves (working lands), but have focused on the nontrivial problem of obtaining globally optimal solutions, i.e., a spatial arrangement that satisfies the project objective better than any other arrangement. Identifying a flexible landscape rearrangement schedule equipped to handle these challenges in a way that ensures the persistence of ecological and evolutionary processes throughout the transition period, is of utmost importance [21]
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