Assessing the Design and Management of Protected Areas

trialspecies,therelativemeritsofdifferentapproachesto ensure the long-term persistence of those species remain highly contentious. Most would agree, however, that both establishing protected areas and exercising some form of restraint on extraction of forest resources are among the most effective of all viable conservation measures. Deforestation, wildfires, logging, and hunting are among the leading drivers of species losses in tropical forests, and de facto or de jure protection from these threats can be conferred by either effective enforcement of regulations or physical remoteness. Attempts to assess conservation success of protected areasatlargescaleshaverestedprimarilyonconventional use of remote sensing to quantify spatial or temporal differences in rates of change in land cover due to deforestation and wildfires, rather than on empirical demographic or community-level metrics (Gaston et al. 2008). Q2 However, the former approaches fail to detect most types of subcanopy anthropogenic disturbances that also result, directly or indirectly, in species losses (Peres et al. 2006). Moreover, the effects of habitat loss and degradation on population extirpations and declines are nonlinear, so vegetation cover alone is rarely a robust proxy for the viability of terrestrial biotas. Remotesensing data show vast tracts of apparently intact tropical forests, but in reality levels of hunting and other forms of extraction in these areas are often unsustainable (Peres & Lake 2003). Fundamental questions yet to be answered include whether ostensibly intact protected areas retain full complements of forest species and how the extent of cryptic patterns of disturbance is related to human population density in both protected and unprotected areas. I considered the global to regional emergence of sustainable-use reserves, emphasizing the world’s largest tropical forest region, Amazonia. Sustainable-use reserves often have intermediate levels of disturbance, so I examined the degree of use of natural resources by resident communities and used human population density as a proxy for level of extraction. In both protected and unprotected areas, I also estimated responses of game vertebrate assemblages to hunting on the basis of the relative biomassextractedfromasubsetoftheforestfauna.Iused analysesofcovariance(ANCOVA)toexaminetheassociationbetweenhumandensityandgamebiomassharvested across different reserve categories. Finally, I considered the long-term capacity of sustainable-use forest reserves to maintain populations of all resident species.

For many years humans have benefited from provisioning services such as meat from hunting of wild animals, raw material and livestock grazing; regulating services such as water and climate regulation; supporting services such as soil fertility; and cultural services such as recreation. These Ecosystem Services (ESs) are now being degraded and used unsustainably around the world. Understanding the levels of threats facing various ESs and their conservation status is important for safeguarding them. In this study, the degradation and transformation of five regulating ESs in South Africa have been examined. Results showed that at least 10 % of the total hotspot area and 20 % of the total area that provide substantial amount (the range) of all five ESs has been transformed or degraded. The range of water regulation and supply had the highest level of transformation (30 and 27 %, respectively). The range of carbon storage revealed the highest degradation (10 %) followed by surface water supply (9 %). Amongst the hotspots, again, water flow regulation and supply showed the highest levels of transformation (33 and 25 %, respectively). The hotspot of water supply was the most degraded (12 %). More than 60 % of all transformations that occurred within the hotpots and the ranges of all five ESs could be attributed to cultivation. The second most common driver of transformations were plantations. Although protected areas presented an opportunity for safeguarding ESs, they are rarely included in the identification of areas for the establishment of protected areas. Important areas for providing several ESs in Europe and Africa continue to be found outside protected areas. Apart from recreational services, at least 80 % of such areas remain outside protected areas. Conservation strategies for ESs need to be urgently developed to safeguard them. Effective strategies should consider the benefit of multiple ESs such as provisioning, regulating and supporting services inside and outside protected areas.

Protected areas for conservation and poverty alleviation: experiences from Madagascar Charlie J. Gardner*, Martin E. Nicoll, Tsibara Mbohoahy, Kirsten L. L. Oleson, Anitry N. Ratsifandrihamanana, Joelisoa Ratsirarson, Lily-Arison Ren e de Roland, Malika Virah-Sawmy, Bienvenue Zafindrasilivonona and Zoe G. Davies WWF Madagascar and Western Indian Ocean Programme Office, BP738, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar; Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NR, UK; D epartement de Biologie, Facult e des Sciences, Universit e de Toliara, Toliara 601, BP 185, Toliara, Madagascar; Blue Ventures Conservation, Level 2 Annex, Omnibus Business Centre, 39-41 North Road, N7 9DP London, UK; ESSA-D epartement Eaux et Forets, Universit e d’Antananarivo, BP 175 Antananarivo, Madagascar; and The Peregrine Fund, BP 4113 Antananarivo, Madagascar

Protected areas are an important part of broader landscapes that are often used to preserve biodiversity or natural features. Some argue that protected areas may also help ensure provision of ecosystem services. However, the effect of protection on ecosystem services and whether protection affects the provision of ecosystem services is known only for a few services in a few types of landscapes. We sought to fill this gap by investigating the effect of watershed protection status and land use and land cover on biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services. We compared the ecosystem services provided in and around streams in 4 watershed types: International Union for Conservation of Nature category II protected forests, unprotected forests, unprotected forests with recent timber harvesting, and unprotected areas with agriculture. We surveyed 28 streams distributed across these watershed types in Quebec, Canada, to quantify provisioning of clean water, carbon storage, recreation, wild foods, habitat quality, and terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity richness and abundance. The quantity and quality of ecosystem services and biodiversity were generally higher in sites with intact forest-whether protected or not-relative to those embedded in production landscapes with forestry or agriculture. Clean-water provision, carbon storage, habitat quality, and tree diversity were significantly higher in and around streams surrounded by forest. Recreation, wild foods, and aquatic biodiversity did not vary among watershed types. Although some services can be provided by both protected and unprotected areas, protection status may help secure the continued supply of services sensitive to changes in land use or land cover. Our findings provide needed information about the ecosystem service and biodiversity trade-offs and synergies that result from developing a watershed or from protecting it.

Here, we evaluate the ecosystem functioning and the ecosystems services supply of different vegetation types (grasslands, shrublands and woodlands) under contrasting management regimes by comparing a protected area with the surrounding landscape, which has been subjected to human disturbance in the Eastern Hills of Uruguay. We propose, based on functional attributes and vegetation physiognomy, a State and Transition Model for the dynamics of the grassland–woodland mosaic. We used remote sensing techniques to: (i) develop a land‐cover map of the study area based on supervised Landsat imagery classification, and (ii) compare attributes of the ecosystem functioning (productivity and seasonality) and service supply derived from the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) images provided by the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. The land‐cover map showed that grasslands and shrublands were the most extensive land covers in the study area. These vegetation types presented higher productivity, seasonality and ecosystem service supply, outside the protected area than inside it. On the other hand, woodlands showed higher productivity, ecosystem service supply and lower seasonality inside the protected area than outside of it. Two axes represented the grassland–woodland mosaic dynamic: (i) the mean annual and (ii) the intra‐annual coefficient of variation of the NDVI. Our results highlight that conservation of grasslands, shrublands and woodlands require different management strategies based on particular disturbance regimes like moderate grazing and controlled burns. Moderate disturbances may help to preserve ecosystem services provisioning in grasslands and shrublands. On the contrary, woodland conservation requires a more rigorous regime of protection against disturbances.

Ecosystem services across contrasting forested landscapes in Queensland's Wet Tropics Bioregion: contemporary patterns, processes and likely future trends under a changing climate

Beyond nature conservation? Perceived benefits and role of the ecosystem services framework in protected landscape areas in the Czech Republic

Tropical forests are threatened due to forest clearing and fragmentation which lead to a decrease in forest cover area and landscape connectivity, while also increasing edge effects. These impacts affect biodiversity and ecosystem service provision which are essential for humanity’s well-being. Protected areas are created to minimize these effects on biodiversity, but many of them are threatened due to forest fragmentation in the surrounding areas. Thus, forest restoration is needed to ensure the suitability of protected areas in the landscape. However, restoration planning needs to adopt an ecological landscape approach to ensure the recovery of the biodiversity and the ecological processes. This study developed a forest sustainability index (FSI) which represents the forest patch potential in facilitating landscape restoration in a protected area and its surroundings. A land-use/land-cover map was used to calculate landscape metrics at two levels: landscape and patch. Landscape metrics were subsequently selected to create the index. The tested landscape presents a great number of fragments with most of them being small in size and having irregular shapes. The focus areas for forest restoration are located close to forest fragments with higher FSI values, as these can facilitate natural restoration and guarantee the maintenance of the ecosystem processes.

Understanding land use change impacts on ecosystem services within urban protected areas

Biodiversity and ecosystem services mapping: Can it reconcile urban and protected area planning?

With the acceleration of urbanization, the ecological environment has gradually deteriorated, the supply and demand relationship of ecosystem services has gradually become unbalanced, and human well-being has been seriously threatened. In particular, coal-using cities are facing the dual pressure of the ecological environment and resource depletion due to the concentration of population and resources, and environmental contradictions. Thus, exploring the relationship between the supply and demand of ecosystem services and their evolution help promote scientific ecological management. By using multi-source data from Huainan City in 2010 and 2020 and the ecosystem service supply and demand matrix and ArcGIS quantitative measurement of the supply, the demand and supply of ecosystem services in Huainan City were investigated. The result implies the following. (1) During 2010‒2020, the supply of ecosystem services in Huainan has decreased year by year. In terms of spatial distribution, the ecosystem service supply in Huainan City was high in the south and low in the north, and there is a significant regional differentiation, (2) Between 2010 and 2020, the demand for ecosystem services in Huainan City increased year by year, and its spatial distribution was similar to the distribution of ecosystem service supply. (3) Due to the decline in the supply of ecosystem services between 2010 and 2020, the demand for ecosystem services has increased, which leads to changes in the matching degree of supply and demand of ecosystem services in Huainan City.

Ecosystem services at risk: integrating spatiotemporal dynamics of supply and demand to promote long-term provision

Protected areas (PAs) are essential for biodiversity conservation and the provision of ecosystem services (ES), representing 15% of the earth’s surface and targeted to increase until 17% by 2020. But previous studies showed different results on the effectiveness of PAs in preserving ES and biodiversity, which has implications for landscape conservation. (1) To know whether the spatial distribution of ES (carbon stocks and water provision), biodiversity (woody and bird richness) and conservation variables (threatened bird richness, habitats and geology) varies between PAs (with different protection status) and buffer zones; and (2) to quantify and compare the percentage of high values (hotspots) of ES, biodiversity and conservation variables inside PAs (with different protection status) and buffer zones. We analyzed 108 PAs from a Mediterranean region using linear mixed models with ES, biodiversity and conservation variables as response factors, and type of zone (PA vs buffer) and protection status as fixed factors. We found higher values of carbon stocks in PAs than in buffer zones. We also found more coverage of community-interest habitats, priority-habitats and geological-interest sites in PAs than in buffer zones. However, PAs with higher degree of protection did not provide higher levels of ecosystem services and biodiversity, or vice versa. We found more hotspots of woody richness, bird richness and threatened bird richness in buffer zones than in PAs. This study highlights the importance of landscape planning in conservation, which should include PAs within broader landscapes by considering also their buffer zones and non-PAs. It also emphasizes the importance of integrating ES and biodiversity to define effective conservation policies.

Identification of ecosystem services supply and demand areas and simulation of ecosystem service flows in Shanghai

Mapping and assessing the future provision of lake ecosystem services in Lithuania