Related Research Articles
Nature conservation is a conservation movement focused on protecting species from extinction, maintaining and restoring habitats, enhancing ecosystem services and protecting biological diversity. A range of values underlie conservation, which can be guided by biocentrism, anthropocentrism, ecocentrism and sentientism. There has recently been a movement towards evidence-based conservation which calls for greater use of scientific evidence to improve the effectiveness of conservation efforts.
Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an interdisciplinary subject drawing on natural and social sciences, and the practice of natural resource management.
Broadly speaking, a risk assessment is the combined effort of:
- identifying and analyzing potential (future) events that may negatively impact individuals, assets, and/or the environment ; and
- making judgments "on the tolerability of the risk on the basis of a risk analysis" while considering influencing factors.
Habitat conservation is a management practice that seeks to conserve, protect and restore habitats and prevent species extinction, fragmentation or reduction in range. It is a priority of many groups that cannot be easily characterized in terms of any one ideology.
Population viability analysis (PVA) is a species-specific method of risk assessment frequently used in conservation biology. It is traditionally defined as the process that determines the probability that a population will go extinct within a given number of years. More recently, PVA has been described as a marriage of ecology and statistics that brings together species characteristics and environmental variability to forecast population health and extinction risk. Each PVA is individually developed for a target population or species, and consequently, each PVA is unique. The larger goal in mind when conducting a PVA is to ensure that the population of a species is self-sustaining over the long term.
Adaptive management (AM), also known as adaptive resource management (ARM) or adaptive environmental assessment and management (AEAM), is a structured, iterative process of robust decision making in the face of uncertainty, with an aim to reducing uncertainty over time via system monitoring. In this way, decision making simultaneously meets one or more resource management objectives and, either passively or actively, accrues information needed to improve future management. Adaptive management is a tool which should be used not only to change a system, but also to learn about the system. Because adaptive management is based on a learning process, it improves long-run management outcomes. The challenge in using the adaptive management approach lies in finding the correct balance between gaining knowledge to improve management in the future and achieving the best short-term outcome based on current knowledge. This approach has more recently been employed in implementing international development programs.
Ecosystem valuation is an economic process which assigns a value to an ecosystem and/or its ecosystem services. By quantifying, for example, the human welfare benefits of a forest to reduce flooding and erosion while sequestering carbon, providing habitat for endangered species, and absorbing harmful chemicals, such monetization ideally provides a tool for policy-makers and conservationists to evaluate management impacts and compare a cost-benefit analysis of potential policies. However, such valuations are estimates, and involve the inherent quantitative uncertainty and philosophical debate of evaluating a range non-market costs and benefits.
Ecological engineering uses ecology and engineering to predict, design, construct or restore, and manage ecosystems that integrate "human society with its natural environment for the benefit of both".
Restoration ecology is the scientific study supporting the practice of ecological restoration, which is the practice of renewing and restoring degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems and habitats in the environment by active human intervention and action. Effective restoration requires an explicit goal or policy, preferably an unambiguous one that is articulated, accepted, and codified. Restoration goals reflect societal choices from among competing policy priorities, but extracting such goals is typically contentious and politically challenging.
Ecosystem services are the many and varied benefits to humans provided by the natural environment and from healthy ecosystems. Such ecosystems include, for example, agroecosystems, forest ecosystems, grassland ecosystems and aquatic ecosystems. These ecosystems, functioning in healthy relationship, offer such things like natural pollination of crops, clean air, extreme weather mitigation, human mental and physical well-being. Collectively, these benefits are becoming known as 'ecosystem services', and are often integral to the provisioning of clean drinking water, the decomposition of wastes, and resilience and productivity of food ecosystems.
Ecological indicators are used to communicate information about ecosystems and the impact human activity has on ecosystems to groups such as the public or government policy makers. Ecosystems are complex and ecological indicators can help describe them in simpler terms that can be understood and used by non-scientists to make management decisions. For example, the number of different beetle taxa found in a field can be used as an indicator of biodiversity.
An ecosystem model is an abstract, usually mathematical, representation of an ecological system, which is studied to better understand the real system.
The Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) system is an application framework for knowledge-based decision support of ecological analysis and planning at any geographic scale.
Ecosystem management is a process that aims to conserve major ecological services and restore natural resources while meeting the socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs of current and future generations.
Island ecology is the study of island organisms and their interactions with each other and the environment. Islands account for nearly 1/6 of earth’s total land area, yet the ecology of island ecosystems is vastly different from that of mainland communities. Their isolation and high availability of empty niches lead to increased speciation. As a result, island ecosystems comprise 30% of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, 50% of marine tropical diversity, and some of the most unusual and rare species. Many species still remain unknown.
Ecosystem health is a metaphor used to describe the condition of an ecosystem. Ecosystem condition can vary as a result of fire, flooding, drought, extinctions, invasive species, climate change, mining, overexploitation in fishing, farming or logging, chemical spills, and a host of other reasons. There is no universally accepted benchmark for a healthy ecosystem, rather the apparent health status of an ecosystem can vary depending upon which health metrics are employed in judging it and which societal aspirations are driving the assessment. Advocates of the health metaphor argue for its simplicity as a communication tool. "Policy-makers and the public need simple, understandable concepts like health." Critics worry that ecosystem health, a "value-laden construct", is often "passed off as science to unsuspecting policy makers and the public."
The Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCC) are a network of 22 regional conservation bodies covering the entire United States and adjacent areas, established in 2009. They are autonomous cooperatives sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Interior, and aim to develop coordinated conservation strategies applicable to large landscape areas. Partnerships are formed with governmental and non-governmental conservation organisations. Similar initiatives have been started or advocated in other parts of the world.
Kerrie Ann Wilson is an Australian environmental scientist and the executive director of the Institute for Future Environments at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Wilson is also an affiliated professor in conservation science at the University of Copenhagen, honorary professor at The University of Queensland, a member of the Australian Heritage Council and the Australian Natural Sciences Commissioner for UNESCO.
Leah Gerber is a Professor of Conservation Science and Founding Director of the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes at Arizona State University. She looks to inform policy and sustain the biodiversity of the world's oceans. She serves on the Arizona State University President's Council on Women in Leadership.
References
- ↑ Hobbs, Richard J.; Kristjanson, Linda J. (2003-02-01). "Triage: How do we prioritize health care for landscapes?". Ecological Management & Restoration. 4: S39–S45. doi:10.1046/j.1442-8903.4.s.5.x. ISSN 1442-8903.
- 1 2 McDonald-Madden, Eve; Baxter, Peter W.J.; Possingham, Hugh P. (2008-12-01). "Making robust decisions for conservation with restricted money and knowledge". Journal of Applied Ecology. 45 (6): 1630–1638. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2008.01553.x . ISSN 1365-2664.
- ↑ Burgman, M. A.; Lindenmayer, D. B.; Elith, J. (2005-08-01). "Managing Landscapes for Conservation Under Uncertainty". Ecology. 86 (8): 2007–2017. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.477.4238 . doi:10.1890/04-0906. ISSN 1939-9170.
- ↑ "Pannell Discussions " 262 – Environmental triage" . Retrieved 2016-12-06.