Efficiency and effectiveness in representative reserve design in Canada: the contribution of existing protected areas

To be effective, reserve networks should represent all target species in protected areas that are large enough to ensure species persistence. Given limited resources to set aside protected areas for biodiversity conservation, and competing land uses, a prime consideration for the design of reserve networks is efficiency (the maximum biodiversity represented in a minimum number of sites). However, to be effective, networks may sacrifice efficiency. We used reserve selection algorithms to determine whether collections of existing individual protected areas in Canada were efficient and/or effective in terms of representing the diversity of disturbance-sensitive mammals in Canada in comparison to (1) an optimal network of reserves, and (2) sites selected at random. Unlike previous studies, we restricted our analysis to individual protected areas that met a criterion for minimum reserve size, to address issues of representation and persistence simultaneously. We also tested for effectiveness and efficiency using historical and presentday data to see whether protected area efficiency and/or effectiveness varied over time. In general, existing protected areas did not effectively capture the full suite of mammalian species diversity, nor are most existing protected areas part of a near-optimal solution set. To be effective, Canada’s network of reserves will require at minimum 22 additional areas of >2700 km2. This study shows that even when only those reserves large enough to be effective are considered, protected areas systems may not be representative, nor were they representative at the time of establishment

What Kind of Scientist Are You? Science and Interdisciplinary Research

Scientific research that crosses disciplinary boundaries (“interdisciplinary research”) – and in particular, research that crosses academic boundaries to engage with industry, government and non-government agencies, and the broader public – can be rewarding personally and yield novel approaches and findings. While the scholarly literature suggests that interdisciplinary approaches are of immense value, interdisciplinary research carries challenges to academics, particularly in terms of funding and in relation to finding an academic “home.” In this article, the author outlines what is meant by interdisciplinary research and reflects on her career leading from graduate school to tenure. She illustrates how the interdisciplinary projects she has been involved in have been both rewarding and challenging. While not every scientist must be interdisciplinary, she concludes that being open to such an approach has many advantages.La recherche scientifique qui dépasse les frontières disciplinaires (la recherche « interdisciplinaire ») —et, particulièrement, celle qui dépasse les frontières académiques pour s’engager avec l’industrie, les agences gouvernementales et nongouvernementales et le public—peuvent être personnellement enrichissantes et engendrer de nouvelles approches et résultats. Même si la littérature académique indique que les approches interdisciplinaires ont beaucoup de mérite, la recherche interdisciplinaire pose des défis aux universitaires, notamment par rapport à l’obtention de subventions et la possibilité de trouver un chez-soi académique. Dans cet article, l’auteure décrit ce que l’on entend par recherche interdisciplinaire et réfléchit sur son propre parcours, des études supérieures à la titularisation. Elle montre ainsi comment les projets interdisciplinaires auxquels elle a participé ont été à la fois enrichissants et stimulants pour elle. Elle conclut que, bien que chaque savant ne doive pas être interdisciplinaire, être ouvert à une telle approche a plusieurs avantages

Drift diving by hooded seals (Cystophora cristata) in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean

This work was funded through the Atlantic Seal Research Programme, International Governance Programme (GBS and MOH), the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources (ARA), and a CFI grant to YFW. The authors also acknowledge the support of the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland) in the completion of this study. MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011) and contributing institutions (LB).Many pinniped species perform a specific dive type, referred to as a ‘drift dive’, where they drift passively through the water column. This dive type has been suggested to function as a resting/sleeping or food processing dive, and can be used as an indication of feeding success by calculating the daily change in vertical drift rates over time, which reflects the relative fluctuations in buoyancy of the animal as the proportion of lipids in the body change. Northwest Atlantic hooded seals perform drift dives at regular intervals throughout their annual migration across the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. We found that the daily change in drift rate varied with geographic location and the time of year and that this differed between sexes. Positive changes in buoyancy (reflecting increased lipid stores) were evident throughout their migration range and although overlapping somewhat, they were not statistically associated with high use areas as indicated by First Passage Time (FPT). Differences in the seasonal fluctuations of buoyancy between males and females suggest that they experience a difference in patterns of energy gain and loss during winter and spring, associated with breeding. The fluctuations in buoyancy around the moulting period were similar between sexes.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

FogoNature.com: Online and on-ocean crowdsourcing for adaptive fisheries management

This project is a participatory citizen project in collaboration with research partners (fishermen and fisherwomen) from Fogo Island. The project deviates from other citizen science projects in that our community partners, and not the university researchers, have developed the research question. Thus, the project outlined here deviates somewhat from the original proposal (as well, we discovered there were large technical limitations to the work originally proposed, which could not be overcome within the scope of this project). The project described here is in two parts, and both form the major components for an MSc(Env) thesis by Matt McWilliams (currently completing year 1 of his graduate program). The first part of the project is the participatory citizen science. Through meetings with fishermen and fisherwomen, we identified a research question about ocean tempeartures and developed a sampling methodology. Matt McWilliams lived on Fogo from May-September and assisted with deploying data loggers and downloading data. We presented these data back in the community and solicited feedback and recommendations for futuresampling. The second part of the project is a digitization exercise of historical (1979-1992) fishing log books. This was completed at the request of community members, who felt it would be useful to compile the data in a format that could be analysed and shared rather than have them sitting on a shelf. Matt McWilliams digitized tabular data into a relational database and the hand-drawn maps as a GIS database. The project is on-going, as Mr. McWilliams has a second year left in his degree. He will spend part of the summer on Fogo, facilitating additional data collection. He anticipates completing thesis work by December 2016

Participatory Design for User-generated Content: Understanding the challenges and moving forward

Research on participatory design (PD) dates back to the 1970s, and has focused historically on internal organization settings. Recently, the proliferation of content-producing technologies such as social media and crowdsourcing has led to the explosion of user-generated content (UGC) that originates outside of organizations. Participative challenges in UGC differ from those in traditional organizational, as well as other distributed multi-user, settings; e.g.; open source software, multi-party systems. UGC is an interesting emerging domain and exploring PD in this context may contribute to knowledge and practices in PD itself. In this paper, we analyze the challenges and opportunities associated with PD in organization-directed UGC development, illustrate these with two UGC projects, and propose fruitful directions for future research

Representing Crowd Knowledge: Guidelines for Conceptual Modeling of User-generated Content

Organizations’ increasing reliance on externally produced information, such as online user-generated content (UGC) and crowdsourcing, challenges common assumptions about conceptual modeling in information systems (IS) development. We demonstrate UGC’s societal importance, analyze its distinguishing characteristics, identify specific conceptual modeling challenges in this setting, evaluate traditional and recently proposed approaches to modeling UGC, propose a set of conceptual modeling guidelines for developing IS that harness structured UGC, and demonstrate how to implement and evaluate the proposed guidelines using a case of development of a real crowdsourcing (citizen science) IS. We conclude by considering implications for conceptual modeling research and practice

Past Imperfect: Using Historical Ecology and Baseline Data for Contemporary Conservation and Restoration Projects

Conservation and restoration programs usually involve nostalgic claims about the past, along with calls to return to that past or recapture some aspect of it. Knowledge of history is essential for such programs, but the use of history is fraught with challenges. This essay examines the emergence, development, and use of the “ecological baseline” concept for three levels of biological organization. We argue that the baseline concept is problematic for establishing restoration targets. Yet historical knowledge—more broadly conceived to include both social and ecological processes—will remain essential for conservation and restoration

How Landscape Ecology Informs Global Land-Change Science and Policy

Landscape ecology is a discipline that explicitly considers the influence of time and space on the environmental patterns we observe and the processes that create them. Although many of the topics studied in landscape ecology have public policy implications, three are of particular concern: climate change; land use–land cover change (LULCC); and a particular type of LULCC, urbanization. These processes are interrelated, because LULCC is driven by both human activities (e.g., agricultural expansion and urban sprawl) and climate change (e.g., desertification). Climate change, in turn, will affect the way humans use landscapes. Interactions among these drivers of ecosystem change can have destabilizing and accelerating feedback, with consequences for human societies from local to global scales. These challenges require landscape ecologists to engage policymakers and practitioners in seeking long-term solutions, informed by an understanding of opportunities to mitigate the impacts of anthropogenic drivers on ecosystems and adapt to new ecological realities

Compositional diversity of rehabilitated tropical lands supports multiple ecosystem services and buffers uncertainties

High landscape diversity is assumed to increase the number and level of ecosystem services. However, the interactions between ecosystem service provision, disturbance and landscape composition are poorly understood. Here we present a novel approach to include uncertainty in the optimization of land allocation for improving the provision of multiple ecosystem services. We refer to the rehabilitation of abandoned agricultural lands in Ecuador including two types of both afforestation and pasture rehabilitation, together with a succession option. Our results show that high compositional landscape diversity supports multiple ecosystem services (multifunction effect). This implicitly provides a buffer against uncertainty. Our work shows that active integration of uncertainty is only important when optimizing single or highly correlated ecosystem services and that the multifunction effect on landscape diversity is stronger than the uncertainty effect. This is an important insight to support a land-use planning based on ecosystem services

Compositional diversity of rehabilitated tropical lands supports multiple ecosystem services and buffers uncertainties

High landscape diversity is assumed to increase the number and level of ecosystem services. However, the interactions between ecosystem service provision, disturbance and landscape composition are poorly understood. Here we present a novel approach to include uncertainty in the optimization of land allocation for improving the provision of multiple ecosystem services. We refer to the rehabilitation of abandoned agricultural lands in Ecuador including two types of both afforestation and pasture rehabilitation, together with a succession option. Our results show that high compositional landscape diversity supports multiple ecosystem services (multifunction effect). This implicitly provides a buffer against uncertainty. Our work shows that active integration of uncertainty is only important when optimizing single or highly correlated ecosystem services and that the multifunction effect on landscape diversity is stronger than the uncertainty effect. This is an important insight to support a land-use planning based on ecosystem services