Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment最新文献

Global conservation targets include protecting genetic diversity within species. Yet few studies have assessed whether protected areas (PAs) include genetically diverse populations across species globally. A first step is understanding the availability of population genetic data that could be used in these assessments. We surveyed georeferenced population-level nuclear (as opposed to mitochondrial or plastid-based) genetic data across continents and marine biomes (36,354 populations, 2809 species) and found substantial geographic and taxonomic gaps. Most data were concentrated in Europe and North America, with major gaps in Africa and Asia. For most taxonomic groups, data were available for <1% of described species. Globally, 52.08% of the total areal extent of PAs lacked genetically sampled populations. These gaps in data availability highlight the need for targeted genetic data collection, harmonization, and sharing to improve genetic diversity monitoring and conservation planning. Combined with proxy-based genetic indicators, such data are needed to inform PA assessments, bolster area-based conservation initiatives like 30 × 30, and support achievement of global genetic conservation targets.

Blue carbon ecosystems (BCEs) are well-recognized for their considerable potential in climate mitigation. However, current understanding of carbon (C) gains and losses of BCEs is rarely based on a net ecosystem carbon budget (NECB) framework, which incorporates all C budget components. We propose a comprehensive NECB framework for BCEs that includes C inputs from riverine flows, exchanges between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere, burial in sediments, and exchanges between BCEs and the continental shelf. Focusing on the Yellow River estuary in China as a case study, we applied the proposed NECB framework to quantify the C budget of this BCE. We show that C balance assessments of BCEs that rely solely on limited measurements of C accumulation rates or C flux are characterized by large degrees of uncertainty. The proposed NECB framework could improve our understanding of the role of BCEs in climate mitigation. We emphasize the need for revisiting the C balance of BCEs using an NECB framework, which integrates multi-disciplinary approaches.

The Montreal-Kunming Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) substantially advances biodiversity protection. We systematically reviewed the scholarly literature published during the UN Decade on Biodiversity (2010–2020) to assess whether GBF targets align with scientific approaches and improve upon the Aichi Targets in recognizing the complexity of marine biodiversity. Our findings showed that the new targets have improved to address the full suite of essential biodiversity variable (EBV) classes, reducing the risk of changes in crucial aspects of biodiversity being overlooked. We observed a high degree of alignment between research and policy in EBVs and a relative increase in the reliance of the GBF on secondary variables such as ecosystem function. While this alignment mirrors that within other global frameworks, we caution against overemphasizing secondary variables at the expense of foundational variables such as community composition. Our analysis demonstrates that global policy targets align well with scientific understanding of marine biodiversity. Future efforts should focus on improving national-level implementation and refining indicators to foster transformative change in biodiversity conservation.

Pathways to achieving net-zero and net-negative greenhouse-gas (GHG) emission targets rely on land-based contributions to carbon (C) sequestration. However, projections of future contributions neglect to consider ecosystems, climate change, legacy impacts of continental-scale fire exclusion, forest accretion and densification, and a century or more of management. These influences predispose western North American forests (wNAFs) to severe drought impacts, large and chronic outbreaks of insect pests, and increasingly large and severe wildfires. To realistically assess contributions of future terrestrial C sinks, we must quantify the amount and configuration of stored C in wNAFs, its vulnerability to severe disturbance and climatic changes, costs and net GHG impacts of feasible transitions to conditions that can tolerate active fire, and opportunities for redirecting thinning-derived biomass to uses that retain harvested C while reducing emissions from alternate products. Failing to adopt this broader mindset, future forest contributions to emission targets will go up in smoke.

Industrialized agriculture often uses marginal-land restoration to reduce environmental impacts, seeking to generate ecosystem services while maintaining food production on better soils. Here, we describe benefit trajectories for biodiversity, nutrient retention, and soil organic carbon (SOC) accumulation up to a decade after conversion of marginal farmlands to grasslands or wetlands. Even in small areas that were restored, biodiversity increased across most trophic levels, driven by colonization of non-agronomic taxa. Nutrient retention by grassland buffers was substantive but seasonal, with losses common outside of the growing season. Although initial SOC gains were modest, a 20-fold increase in recalcitrant root biomass to a depth of 60 cm suggests that SOC storage will accelerate. Overall, even if it were unable to unilaterally and immediately offset nutrient pollution or SOC loss, restoration created multiple benefits. Marginal-land restoration can serve as a necessary and critical component to improved sustainable intensification, especially if partnered with on-field crop management targeting nutrient retention and SOC accumulation.

In a changing climate, resource management depends on anticipating changes and considering uncertainties. To facilitate effective decision making on public lands, we regionally summarized the magnitude and uncertainty of projected change in management-relevant climate variables for 332 national park units across the contiguous US. Temperature, frequency of extreme precipitation events, and drought exposure are all projected to increase within seven regions delineated in the US National Climate Assessment. In particular, the anticipated collective impacts of droughts and flooding events will lead to unique management challenges, including combinations of management actions that may seem inconsistent. Furthermore, uncertainty in the magnitude of change varied by region and climate variable considered, pointing to specific opportunities for prioritization, transferability, and innovation of climate adaptation regionally and at the park-unit scale.