Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment最新文献

There is growing interest in enhancing soil carbon sequestration (SCS) as a climate mitigation strategy, including neutralizing atmospheric emissions from fossil-fuel combustion through the development of soil carbon offset markets. Several studies have focused on refining estimates of the magnitude of potential SCS or on developing methods for soil carbon quantification in markets. We call on scientists and policy makers to resist assimilating soils into carbon offset markets due to not only fundamental flaws in the logic of these markets to reach climate neutrality but also environmental justice concerns. Here, we first highlight how carbon offset markets rely on an inappropriate substitution of inert fossil carbon with dynamic stocks of soil carbon. We then note the failure of these markets to account for intersecting anthropogenic perturbations to the carbon cycle, including the soil carbon debt and ongoing agricultural emissions. Next, we invite scientists to consider soil functions beyond productivity and profitability. Finally, we describe and support historical opposition to offset markets by environmental justice advocates. We encourage scientists to consider how their research and communications can promote diverse soil functions and just climate-change mitigation.

Translocations are a critical tool for reversing biodiversity loss but are often characterized by unreasonably high expectations, leading to many translocation programs being brief and terminated before achieving their full potential. To address these issues, we developed the “Translocation Continuum Framework”, an easy-to-use tool that clarifies the criteria, strategies, tactics, progress measures, and expected outcomes for five key translocation “phases”: Feasibility Studies, Pilot Studies, Primary Trials, Secondary Experiments, and Tertiary Reinforcements. By accounting for uncertainty, the Framework aims to empower practitioners to design translocation programs that suit their context. We also discuss the limitations of “success” and “failure” labels in translocations, and the importance of parsimonious decision making to maximize learning with the least amount of loss. Only by managing expectations of the likelihood of establishment, growth, and regulation throughout a program's lifetime can we galvanize trust and investment in translocations so they can contribute meaningfully to long-term restoration.

Conservation priorities and legal protections are often based on confirmed species occurrences. However, imperfect detection is likely the norm in biological surveys, resulting in negative consequences for conservation. Focusing on threatened species in the US and Canada, we show that detectability information appears to be lacking for most species that are conservation priorities. Although more research on species detection is needed, detectability estimates are important for many immediate decisions. Thus, we recommend: (1) estimating and accounting for detectability and designing rigorous surveys when confirming presence or absence is crucial. Otherwise, absence in surveys should be considered suggestive only and critical habitat should be managed even if species presences are unconfirmed. (2) When directly estimating detectability is prohibitively difficult, indirect estimates should be explored, for example through expert elicitation or trait-based predictors. (3) Detectability should be explicitly incorporated into decisions to ensure that surveys and management actions are directed where they have the greatest potential benefit.

Multiple rulemaking iterations have led to variable definitions of the “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS), a rule that determines which waterbodies receive federal protection under the Clean Water Act. The rulemaking process has incorporated American Indian Tribes as “stakeholders” rather than as sovereign peoples, compounding a colonial legacy that limits the ability of Indigenous peoples to choose appropriate strategies for water protection on Tribal lands. For example, protecting waters for Tribal beneficial uses requires applying both Western science and Indigenous knowledge to document patterns of waterbody connectivity and permanence, which underpin WOTUS policy. To honor the federal trust responsibility (a legal obligation) of the US Government to Tribes, policy should incorporate a parallel set of scientific standards for determining WOTUS on Tribal lands. These standards must recognize culturally distinct uses of waters and account for place-based Indigenous knowledge. Examination of the intersection of the science supporting water protection, Indigenous sovereignty, and US policy has relevance to similar issues around the globe.

Urban forests provide ecosystem services important for regulating climate, conserving biodiversity, and maintaining human well-being. However, these forests vary in composition and physiological traits due to their unique biophysical and social contexts. This variation complicates assessing the functions and services of different urban forests. To compare the characteristics of the urban forest, we sampled the species composition and two externally sourced traits (drought tolerance and water-use capacity) of tree and shrub species in residential yards, unmanaged areas, and natural reference ecosystems within six cities across the contiguous US. As compared to natural and unmanaged forests, residential yards had markedly higher tree and shrub species richness, were composed primarily of introduced species, and had more species with low drought tolerance. The divergence between natural and human-managed areas was most dramatic in arid climates. Our findings suggest that the answer to the question of “what is an urban forest” strongly depends on where you look within and between cities.

There is a resurgent enthusiasm for Indigenous Knowledges (IK) across settler–colonial institutions of research, education, and conservation. But like fitting a square peg in a round hole, IK are being forced into colonial systems, and then only as marginal alternatives. To address this mismatch, the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Section of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) hosted a 2-day workshop—entitled Elevating Indigenous Knowledges in Ecology—at the 2022 ESA Annual Meeting, which was held on Kanien'keháka (Mohawk) and Ho-de-no-sau-nee-ga (Haudenosaunee) territories in Montreal, Canada. This gathering of 21 interdisciplinary Indigenous ecologists included scholars from across the career and professional spectrum. By consensus, workshop participants (including the authors of this article) identified four emergent themes and respective guiding questions as a pathway toward the transformation of settler–colonial institutions into IK-led spaces. We highlight this pathway to support actions toward systemic change, inspire future directions for Indigenous and non-Indigenous ecologists, and nurture stronger relationships between Indigenous communities and the Western sciences, toward actualized decoloniality.

Black and female landowners, two of the largest groups of underserved landowners in the southeastern US, have considerably less land enrolled in the US Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) than White and male landowners. The reasons for this discrepancy are complex and interrelated. Previous studies approached different facets of this problem using a variety of methods and analyses. Here, we conducted a synthetic literature review that demonstrates how the intertwined ecological, economic, and cultural concerns of underserved landowners influence their decisions about potential land conversion in the context of CRP requirements. Other studies have rarely considered such relevant factors as the sociocultural importance of land to underserved populations or the links between the limited participation of these groups in the CRP and historical racism and sexism in land management industries and agencies. Explicitly addressing these issues will help promote conservation equity in the CRP and other conservation programs.

Biodiversity knowledge gaps, which limit scientific research and conservation planning, are especially acute for the most poorly known organisms. Citizen science offers a powerful and effective means to fill these gaps. The recent growth of citizen-science platforms has resulted in near-complete coverage of global avian diversity (~11,849 species). Because shrinking knowledge gaps increasingly reveal meaningful absences, we evaluated the potential of citizen-science data to establish “lost” bird taxa: those without documentation for more than 10 years. Collating more than 42 million photographic, audio, and video records returned 144 bird species (1.2%) as lost, the majority of which (62%) are in danger of extinction. The higher the coverage by citizen scientists and the longer the interval since their last documented record, the more likely that lost birds are to be imperiled. Our approach provides a data-driven and reproducible method to identify lost species and elucidates high-priority knowledge gaps to inform future conservation action.

The bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) is the most threatened vulture species in Europe. On 14 May 2009, during our long-term study on its conservation in the Pyrenees (Spain, France, Andorra) (Ecol Monog 2020; doi.org/10.1002/ecm.1414), we captured a four-year-old subadult male (Adrian) using a net remotely activated from a distance. He was tagged with a 70-g solar-powered (GPS/PTT) satellite transmitter (Microwave Telemetry Inc, Columbia, Maryland, US), attached using a Teflon backpack harness (see photograph). In May 2023, 14 years after his initial capture, Adrian was still alive at the age of 18 years and, more surprisingly, the transmitter still worked.

Long-term monitoring of Adrian provided >15,000 location records (see map: minimum convex polygon home range in yellow; 95% and 50% of the kernel density estimate [K₉₅ and K₅₀] in orange and red, respectively) and showed how he first established a territory at eight years of age. Adrian bred successfully for the first time in 2013 (red large area) and reared two chicks between 2013 and 2016. In 2016, he abandoned the territory and remained at large until 2019, when he again took up a new territory 70 km away (red small area). He bred successfully on one occasion between 2020 and 2023. Although Egyptian vultures (Neophron percnopterus) can live for over 30 years (Front Ecol Environ 2021; doi.org/10.1002/fee.2328), Adrian's lifetime reproductive success after 18 years has only been three fledglings.

Long-term movement research is fundamental to developing conservation and management plans for long-lived species. However, the operational lifetimes of GPS devices are limited, and most avian transmitters have an average working duration of 2–3 years (https://www.microwavetelemetry.com/faq). Unfortunately, Adrian's transmitter is currently no longer functional. But thanks to its unusually long life, empirical data on the demographic parameters, spatial behavior, and breeding dispersal of this bearded vulture were accurately gathered over an extended period.

Imagery from Google Earth Pro (data: SIO, NOAA, US Navy, NGA, GEBCO; image: Landsat, Copernicus) obtained through Movebank.org.