Landscape Ecology最新文献

Context: Understanding the effects of landscape composition on biodiversity is crucial, especially in human-dominated agricultural landscapes. This study focuses on dung beetles, an ecologically significant group, to explore how landscape composition and configuration influences species richness, abundance and community structure of dung beetles in Eastern Austrian agricultural areas.

Objectives: The primary objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between landscape composition and dung beetle communities. Specifically, we aim to determine how different habitat types within agricultural landscapes affect dung beetle species richness, abundance and community structure.

Methods: We sampled dung beetles across 14 study landscapes, each with a diameter of 1 km, varying from homogenous landscapes dominated by annual crops to highly heterogeneous landscapes with diverse habitats such as woodlands, hedgerows, and set-aside land (areas left fallow or uncultivated). The study design focused on comparing dung beetle communities across these varying landscape compositions.

Results: Our results reveal that dung beetle species richness is positively correlated with woodland cover, set-aside land and hedgerow length, while beetle abundance is associated with woodland cover and hedgerow length. Additionally, dung beetle communities were highly nested, with communities from landscapes with less woodland cover nested within those from landscapes with higher woodland cover. This underscores the importance of heterogeneously structured landscapes, such as woodlands, for maintaining diverse dung beetle communities. These findings highlight that a decline in structural diversity, often caused by agricultural intensification, likely reduces the ecosystem services provided by dung beetles.

Conclusions: The study's findings emphasize the significance of maintaining landscape structural diversity to support dung beetle communities and their associated ecosystem services. Recommendations for landscape management and planning include promoting heterogeneous landscapes with set-aside land to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in agricultural areas.

Context: Throughout their annual cycle and life stages, animals depend on a variety of habitats to meet their vital needs. However, habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation are making it increasingly difficult for mobile species such as birds to find suitable habitats. Wetlands are highly productive systems of great importance to many animals, but their continued degradation threatens their capacity to support different species, including waterbirds. In this context, waterbirds are likely to benefit not only from the creation and management of protected wetlands, but also from the existence of anthropogenic wetlands, managed for economic or recreational activities.

Objectives: We investigated the habitat use of Eurasian spoonbills within an extensive and heterogeneous area in Southern France, and how it varies across the annual cycle and for different age classes.

Methods: We tracked 91 spoonbills of different ages throughout their annual cycle and tested for overall differences in the use of strongly protected areas in Camargue between periods and age classes. Additionally, we identified the main sites used and their management practices.

Results: Our study shows that privately managed wetland areas play a complementary role to strongly protected areas: they may provide spoonbills (and other waterbirds) with suitable foraging habitat at certain periods of the year when these are less available in strongly protected areas.

Conclusions: This study illustrates how the spoonbill, a moderately specialized species, is benefiting from current global changes due to its ability to use suitable habitats, natural and artificial, in fragmented landscapes. Nevertheless, reliance on privately managed wetland areas may have serious consequences for species that are highly dependent on them, and thus, habitat management promoting natural conditions may be crucial to maintain species resilience. It is therefore essential to understand how specific management actions may affect waterbird presence and habitat use, not only to enhance the effectiveness of conservation efforts, but also to promote wetland connectivity and species resilience, particularly in fragmented landscapes.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-024-02017-5.

Context: Landscape changes can alter habitat availability for species over time. There can be a time-lagged response of species to such changes, leading to possible extinction debts. In human-modified landscapes, understanding these dynamics is critical to inform conservation actions and mitigate biodiversity loss.

Objectives: This study examines temporal trajectories of habitat availability over 113 years from 1899 to 2012 in the Swiss Plateau and evaluates their relationship with current occurrences of an indicator generalist species group that inhabits mosaic agricultural landscapes.

Methods: Time-series of resistance surfaces were derived from roads and buildings. Resistance kernels were then used to calculate the Amount of Habitat Available (AHA) metric across five maximum dispersal distances. Spatio-temporal patterns of AHA were analysed using multi-dimensional K-Means time-series clustering. The clusters were evaluated based on their overlap with species occurrences. The suitability of AHA to predict species presences was also determined. The results were compared with current best-practice approaches that use contemporary landscape data and fixed-shape moving-windows.

Results: Ten AHA trajectories were identified, showing variable patterns of decline in AHA over time. Time-series clusters with higher historical AHA were associated significantly with greater contemporary species occurrences. The AHA in 1933 showed the strongest link to current species presences, highlighting a time-lagged response. The presented approach outperformed the current best-practice approaches.

Conclusions: Historical trajectories of habitat availability are essential for understanding species occurrences and time-lagged responses to landscape changes. The presented approach is generic and effectively links historical dynamics to current biodiversity, supporting conservation planning in human-modified landscapes.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-025-02124-x.

Context: Marine restoration is increasingly recognized as a key activity to regenerate ecosystem integrity, safeguard biodiversity, and enable ocean sustainability. Global policies such as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework include area-based targets to improve ecosystem integrity and connectivity. Achieving these targets requires scaling up restoration in ecologically and socially meaningful ways.

Objectives: The objective was to establish a consistent language and framework for seascape restoration practitioners that complements existing marine restoration guidelines and can help to achieve cross-scale restoration targets.

Methods: We proposed that the integration of the 5Cs of seascape ecology-Context, Configuration, Connectivity, Consideration of scale, and Culture- can offer a valuable framework for advancing marine restoration practice and policy. We synthesized existing ecological and social science evidence to demonstrate how the 5Cs framework can be applied to seascape restoration efforts.

Results: We established a consistent language and framework for marine restoration practitioners and recommended four key operational pathways: (1) focusing on the recovery of interconnected habitats across the land-sea interface; (2) integrating the 5Cs from site selection through to monitoring; (3) representing social, historical, cultural, and ecological variables when assessing site suitability; and (4) fostering transdisciplinary collaborations to support integrative, multifaceted projects.

Conclusions: Integrating landscape ecology concepts and methods into coastal restoration will enable the effective scaling up of regenerative actions. Applying the 5Cs can help achieve global restoration targets through more strategic, inclusive, and effective marine restoration across coastal seascapes.

Context: There are urgent calls to transition society to more sustainable trajectories, at scales ranging from local to global. Landscape sustainability (LS), or the capacity for landscapes to provide equitable access to ecosystem services essential for human wellbeing for both current and future generations, provides an operational approach to monitor these transitions. However, the complexity of landscapes complicates how and what to consider when assessing LS.

Objectives: To identify important features of landscapes that remain challenging to consider in LS assessments and provide guidance to strengthen future assessments.

Methods: We conducted two workshops to identify the complex features of landscapes that remain under-considered in LS assessments, and developed guidelines on how to better incorporate these features.

Results: We identify open and connected boundaries and diversity of values as landscape features that must be better considered in LS assessments or risk exacerbating offstage sustainability burdens and power inequalities. We provide guidelines to avoid these pitfalls which emphasize assessing ecosystem service interactions across interconnected landscapes and incorporating local actors' diverse values.

Conclusions: Our guidelines provide a stepping stone for researchers and practitioners to better incorporate landscape complexities into LS assessments to inform landscape-level decisions and actions.

Context: Changes in landscape patterns, which refer to the composition and spatial configuration of land use and land cover (LULC) classes in a landscape, can have negative impacts on biodiversity and environmental processes such as carbon cycles. Such impacts are both dependent on the spatial extent of changes and which LULC classes are affected, but previous global-scale landscape pattern assessments have focused on single LULC classes or landscape-level measurements only. A comprehensive, multiscale analysis across multiple LULC types is therefore key for understanding the full impact of landscape pattern change on the environment.

Objectives: We assessed global-scale change in landscape patterns for six LULC classes from the HILDA+ dataset (urban, cropland, pasture/rangeland, forest, unmanaged grass/shrubland, and sparse/no vegetation) between 1992 and 2020.

Methods: Six class-level landscape metrics with predictable scaling behaviour across landscape extents were calculated at global scale for each LULC class and year. Landscape metrics were quantified for five landscape extents (100, 400, 1600, 6400 and 25,600 km²). Trends in landscape metrics were evaluated and linked to changes in LULC composition (area) and configuration over time.

Results: Unmanaged grass/shrubland LULC expanded in area and showed increased number of patches, edge length, and complexity in shapes, while pasture/rangeland and forest LULC tended to decline in area, number of patches, and edge length. Even though there was high spatial heterogeneity in landscape pattern change for all LULC classes, neighbouring 100 km² landscapes often showed the same directional change in area and fragmentation.

Conclusions: Global landscape pattern change was highly variable for all LULC classes between 1992 and 2020, suggesting that drivers of LULC change act on local to regional scales. We expect that the multiscale global dataset of landscape metrics generated here will have future applications in understanding the drivers of landscape pattern change and its environmental impacts.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-025-02210-0.

Context: Sandy shorelines, including beaches and embryo dunes, are important spaces for both recreation and nature. Balancing these landscape functions remains a challenge. Directing recreation pressure via visitor footpaths (pathways) is widely used to mitigate recreation pressure in nature reserves. However, its potential to support multifunctionality on beaches is poorly quantified.

Objectives: To assess the response relationship between directed recreation pressure and the establishment of characteristic plant species alongside associated topographical development on the upper beach.

Methods: We experimentally introduced seeds and rhizomes (diaspores) of five common dune-building plant species in 30 locations at varying distance from main pathways at a beach near The Hague, the Netherlands. Species were a mix of grasses and herbs and ranged from pioneer to early successional species. We measured shoot emergence per species and initiation of embryo dunes, as well as environmental conditions and visitor numbers across one growing season.

Results: We found that the likelihood of establishment and shoot density were significantly higher beyond the first 20 m from pathways, irrespective of species or diaspore type, suggesting a limited zone of influence of beach visitors. Similarly, the number of surviving species and embryonic dune initiations were significantly higher beyond the pathways. Indeed, visitor observations showed that most visitors followed existing pathways across the beach, confirming the limited zone of influence of recreation pressure in the presences of pathways.

Conclusions: Recreation hampers the establishment of plant species and associated dune initiation on the upper beach. However, constraining recreation pressure on the upper beach by stimulating development of pathways can improve coexistence between nature development and recreation in coastal areas.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-025-02246-2.

Context: Human activities, particularly intensive agriculture, have caused significant environmental degradation, reduced ecosystem diversity, and increased vulnerability to global change. Recent international policies, such as the Global Biodiversity Framework's 30 × 30 target, advocate for nature-based solutions (NbS) such as ecological restoration to address these impacts. In agricultural landscapes, however, there are concerns that restoration may impact food production.

Objectives: We investigated how forest restoration, as an NbS, changes the supply of ecosystem services (ES), including potential trade offs with agricultural output. Using the Montérégie region of Québec (southeastern Canada) as a case study, we assessed the influence of restoration extent, spatial configuration, and the original agricultural site conditions on the ES outcomes.

Methods: We modeled ES outcomes for seven ES (crop production, maple syrup production, deer hunting, water quality, carbon storage, pollination, and outdoor recreation) under nine scenarios, which varied by total amount of the landscape restored (3.3%, 10.8%, 30%) and initial conditions of the agricultural fields restored (randomly selected, degraded agricultural field, or abandoned agricultural field).

Results: Our findings indicate that increasing the amount of land restored enhances provision of most ES, though improvement varied by service. The initial condition of restored sites minimally influences ES outcomes. However, the spatial pattern of restoration plays a significant role in determining ES delivery, as restored sites enhance most ES through spillover effects up to 500 m.

Conclusion: This study underscores the potential for combining landscape ecology approaches and ES tools to forecast NbS outcomes and inform landscape planning.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-025-02121-0.

Context: Approaches estimating landscape effects on biodiversity frequently focus on a single extent, finding one 'optimal' extent, or use narrow extents. However, species perceive the environment in different ways, select habitat hierarchically, and respond to multiple selection pressures at extents that best predict each pressure.

Objective: We aimed to assess multi-scale relationships between primary productivity and species occurrences and abundances.

Methods: We used a multi-scale approach, called 'scalograms', to assess landscape level effects of primary productivity, in the form of Dynamic Habitat Indices (DHIs) on the occurrences and abundances of 100 Argentinian forest bird species. We used average DHI values within multiple extents (3 $\times$ 3 to 101 $\times$ 101 pixels; 30 m resolution), and 11 'scalogram' metrics as environmental inputs in occurrence and abundance models.

Results: Average cumulative DHI values in extents 81 $\times$ 81 to 101 $\times$ 101 pixels (5.9 - 9.2 km²) and maximum cumulative DHI across extents were in the top three predictors of species occurrences (included in models for 41% and 18% of species, respectively). Average cumulative DHI values in various extents contributed ~ 1.6 times more predictive power to occurrence models than expected. For species abundances, average DHI values and scalogram measures were in the top three predictors for < 2% of species and contributed less model predictive power than expected, regardless of DHI type (cumulative, minimum, variation).

Conclusions: Argentinian forest bird occurrences, but not abundances, respond to high levels of primary productivity at multiple, broad extents rather than a single 'optimal' extent. Factors other than primary productivity appear to be more important for predicting abundance.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-025-02081-5.

Context

Ecological corridors are one of the most recommended ways to mitigate biodiversity loss. With growing recognition of corridor importance, corridor modeling lags others in the development of robust, quantitative validation methods.

Objective

We propose a post-hoc corridor validation framework, considering the range of methods across data needs and statistical intensity. We demonstrate the importance of post-hoc corridor validation by testing several validation methods on different corridor model outputs.

Methods

We used three different transformations on a Florida black bear (Ursus americanus floidanus) habitat suitability model to create different resistance grids, independent GPS collar data from a case study population, and Circuitscape to create corridor models. We used several validation methods, including a novel method, to compare resulting corridors.

Results

Transformed resistance grids were all correlated, yet differing validation and resistance grids resulted in different recommended corridors. The use of one resistance surface and one validation type can result in the selection of inefficient or ineffective corridors. At a minimum, modelers should determine what proportion of an independent population falls within resulting corridors and should move towards more robust, documented methods as resources allow. The use of multiple validation methods can ensure greater confidence of modeling results.

Conclusions

We encourage the use and further development of the framework presented here to drive the corridor modeling field towards more effective corridor creation and improved conservation outcomes. If validation methods are not improved, the ecological and economic cost of poor corridor science will continue to increase with increasing biodiversity loss.