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The combined effects of Indigenous fire stewardship and lightning ignitions shaped historical fire regimes, landscape patterns, and available resources in many ecosystems globally. The resulting fire regimes created complex fire–vegetation dynamics that were further influenced by biophysical setting, disturbance history, and climate. While there is increasing recognition of Indigenous fire stewardship among western scientists and managers, the extent and purpose of cultural burning is generally absent from the landscape–fire modeling literature and our understanding of ecosystem processes and development. In collaboration with the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources, we developed a transdisciplinary Monte Carlo simulation model of cultural ignition location, frequency, and timing to simulate spatially explicit cultural ignitions across a 264,399‐ha landscape within Karuk Aboriginal Territory in northern California. Estimates of cultural ignition parameters were developed with Tribal members and knowledge holders using existing interviews, historical maps, ethnographies, recent ecological studies, contemporary maps, and generational knowledge. Spatial and temporal attributes of cultural burning were explicitly tied to the ecology of specific cultural resources, fuel receptivity, seasonal movement patterns, and spiritual practices. Prior to colonization, cultural burning practices were extensive across the study landscape with an estimated 6972 annual ignitions, averaging approximately 6.5 ignitions per Indigenous fire steward per year. The ignition characteristics we document align closely with data on historical fire regimes and vegetation but differ substantially from the location and timing of contemporary ignitions. This work demonstrates the importance of cultural burning for developing and maintaining the ecosystems present at the time of colonization and underscores the need to work collaboratively with Indigenous communities to restore ecocultural processes in these systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how habitat attributes (e.g., patch area and sizes, connectivity) control recruitment and how this is modified by processes operating at larger spatial scales is fundamental to understanding population sustainability and developing successful long‐term restoration strategies for marine foundation species—including for globally threatened reef‐forming oysters. In two experiments, we assessed the recruitment and energy reserves of oyster recruits onto remnant reefs of the oyster Saccostrea glomerata in estuaries spanning 550 km of coastline in southeastern Australia. In the first experiment, we determined whether recruitment of oysters to settlement plates in three estuaries was correlated with reef attributes within patches (distances to patch edges and surface elevation), whole‐patch attributes (shape and size of patches), and landscape attributes (connectivity). We also determined whether environmental factors (e.g., sedimentation and water temperature) explained the differences among recruitment plates. We also tested whether differences in energy reserves of recruits could explain the differences between two of the estuaries (one high‐ and one low‐sedimentation estuary). In the second experiment, across six estuaries (three with nominally high and three with nominally low sedimentation rates), we tested the hypothesis that, at the estuary scale, recruitment and survival were negatively correlated to sedimentation. Overall, total oyster recruitment varied mostly at the scale of estuaries rather than with reef attributes and was negatively correlated with sedimentation. Percentage recruit survival was, however, similar among estuaries, although energy reserves and condition of recruits were lower at a high‐ compared to a low‐sediment estuary. Within each estuary, total oyster recruitment increased with patch area and decreased with increasing tidal height. Our results showed that differences among estuaries have the largest influence on oyster recruitment and recruit health and this may be explained by environmental processes operating at the same scale. While survival was high across all estuaries, growth and reproduction of oysters on remnant reefs may be affected by sublethal effects on the health of recruits in high‐sediment estuaries. Thus, restoration programs should consider lethal and sublethal effects of whole‐estuary environmental processes when selecting sites and include environmental mitigation actions to maximize recruitment success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a leading cause of forest health degradation, non‐native invasive plant species are a key focus for many forest management and conservation efforts. These efforts come at a high price for resource‐limited agencies and organizations making cost‐effectiveness an important objective of invasion response plans. In this paper, we present an approach to guide the prioritization of locations for invasion management using species distribution models that account for the non‐equilibrium of invasive species distributions and use readily available land use data as the primary explanatory variables. This approach takes advantage of the relatively high spatial resolution, as well as the broad, continuous geographic coverage, of land use data to provide results at a landscape scale relevant to practitioners responsible for invasive species management. In our example from northern Virginia, we simultaneously modeled a suite of invasive plant species to identify common indicators of invasion. We found that the proportions of surrounding non‐forested land use types (grasses, crops, and development) were the most common and strongest indicators of invasion risk. These outcomes can guide managers of large protected areas to focus on major divides between forest and non‐forest land over linear disturbances. We also found useful species‐specific traits that can inform specific management actions. Additionally, we demonstrate through a case study how organizations that manage multiple smaller properties can take advantage of the projected distribution maps when considering acquiring or administering properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wild bees are key providers of pollination services in agroecosystems. The abundance of these pollinators and the ecosystem services they provide rely on supporting resources in the landscape. Spatially explicit models that quantify wild bee abundance and pollination services in food crops are built on the foundations of foraging and nesting resources. This dependence limits model implementation as land‐cover maps and pollination experts capable of evaluating habitat resource quality are scarce. This study presents a novel approach to assessing crop pollination services using remote sensing data (RSD) as an alternative to the more conventional use of land‐cover data and local expertise on spatially explicit models. We used landscape characteristics derived from remote sensors to qualify nesting resources in the landscape and to evaluate the delivery of pollination services by mining bees (Andrena spp.) in 30 fruit orchards located in the Flemish region of Belgium. For this study, we selected mining bees for their importance as local pollinators and underground nesting behavior. We compared the estimated pollination services derived from RSD with those derived from the conventional qualification of nesting resources. We did not observe significant differences (p = 0.68) in the variation in mining bee activity predicted by the two spatial models. Estimated pollination services derived from RSD and conventional characterizations explained 69% and 72% of the total variation, respectively. These results confirmed that RSD can deliver nesting suitability characterizations sufficient for estimating pollination services. This research also illustrates the importance of nesting resources and landscape characteristics when estimating pollination services delivered by insects like mining bees. Our results support the development of holistic agroenvironmental policies that rely on modern tools like remote sensors and promote pollinators by considering nesting resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting in 2010, rapid fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) population declines in northwestern Europe heralded the emergence of Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), a salamander‐pathogenic chytrid fungus. Bsal poses an imminent threat to global salamander diversity owing to its wide host range, high pathogenicity, and long‐term persistence in ecosystems. While there is a pressing need to develop further research and conservation actions, data limitations inherent to recent pathogen emergence obscure necessary insights into Bsal disease ecology. Here, we use a hierarchical modeling framework to describe Bsal landscape epidemiology of outbreak sites in light of these methodological challenges. Using model selection and machine learning, we find that Bsal presence is associated with humid and relatively cool, stable climates. Outbreaks are generally located in areas characterized by low landscape heterogeneity and low steepness of slope. We further find an association between Bsal presence and high trail density, suggesting that human‐mediated spread may increase risk for spillover between populations. We then use distribution modeling to show that favorable conditions occur in lowlands influenced by the North Sea, where increased survey effort is needed to determine how Bsal impacts local newt populations, but also in hill‐ and mountain ranges in northeastern France and the lower half of Germany. Finally, connectivity analyses suggest that these hill‐ and mountain ranges may act as stepping stones for further spread southward. Our results provide initial insight into regional environmental conditions underlying Bsal epizootics, present updated invasibility predictions for northwestern Europe, and lead us to discuss a wide variety of potential survey and research actions needed to advance future conservation and mitigation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant functional diversity is strongly connected to photosynthetic carbon assimilation in terrestrial ecosystems. However, many of the plant functional traits that regulate photosynthetic capacity, including foliar nitrogen concentration and leaf mass per area, vary significantly between and within plant functional types and vertically through forest canopies, resulting in considerable landscape‐scale heterogeneity in three dimensions. Hyperspectral imagery has been used extensively to quantify functional traits across a range of ecosystems but is generally limited to providing information for top of canopy leaves only. On the other hand, lidar data can be used to retrieve the vertical structure of forest canopies. Because these data are rarely collected at the same time, there are unanswered questions about the effect of forest structure on the three ‐dimensional spatial patterns of functional traits across ecosystems. In the United States, the National Ecological Observatory Network's Airborne Observation Platform (NEON AOP) provides an opportunity to address this structure‐function relationship by collecting lidar and hyperspectral data together across a variety of ecoregions. With a fusion of hyperspectral and lidar data from the NEON AOP and field‐collected foliar trait data, we assessed the impacts of forest structure on spatial patterns of N. In addition, we examine the influence of abiotic gradients and management regimes on top‐of‐canopy percent N and total canopy N (i.e., the total amount of N [g/m2] within a forest canopy) at a NEON site consisting of a mosaic of open longleaf pine and dense broadleaf deciduous forests. Our resulting maps suggest that, in contrast to top of canopy values, total canopy N variation is dampened across this landscape resulting in relatively homogeneous spatial patterns. At the same time, we found that leaf functional diversity and canopy structural diversity showed distinct dendritic patterns related to the spatial distribution of plant functional types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Shifting disturbance regimes can have cascading effects on many ecosystems processes. This is particularly true when the scale of the disturbance no longer matches the regeneration strategy of the dominant vegetation. In the yellow pine and mixed conifer forests of California, over a century of fire exclusion and the warming climate are increasing the incidence and extent of stand‐replacing wildfire; such changes in severity patterns are altering regeneration dynamics by dramatically increasing the distance from live tree seed sources. This has raised concerns about limitations to natural reforestation and the potential for conversion to non‐forested vegetation types, which in turn has implications for shifts in many ecological processes and ecosystem services. We used a California region‐wide data set with 1,848 plots across 24 wildfires in yellow pine and mixed conifer forests to build a spatially explicit habitat suitability model for forecasting postfire forest regeneration. To model the effect of seed availability, the critical initial biological filter for regeneration, we used a novel approach to predicting spatial patterns of seed availability by estimating annual seed production from existing basal area and burn severity maps. The probability of observing any conifer seedling in a 60‐m2 area (the field plot scale) was highly dependent on 30‐yr average annual precipitation, burn severity, and seed availability. We then used this model to predict regeneration probabilities across the entire extent of a “new” fire (the 2014 King Fire), which highlights the spatial variability inherent in postfire regeneration patterns. Such forecasts of postfire regeneration patterns are of importance to land managers and conservationists interested in maintaining forest cover on the landscape. Our tool can also help anticipate shifts in ecosystem properties, supporting researchers interested in investigating questions surrounding alternative stable states, and the interaction of altered disturbance regimes and the changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Wild bees, which are important for commercial pollination, depend on floral and nesting resources both at farms and in the surrounding landscape. Mass‐flowering crops are only in bloom for a few weeks and unable to support bee populations that persist throughout the year. Farm fields and orchards that flower in succession potentially can extend the availability of floral resources for pollinators. However, it is unclear whether the same bee species or genera will forage from one crop to the next, which bees specialize on particular crops, and to what degree inter‐crop visitation patterns will be mediated by landscape context. We therefore studied local‐ and landscape‐level drivers of bee diversity and species turnover in apple orchards, blueberry fields, and raspberry fields that bloom sequentially in southern Quebec, Canada. Despite the presence of high bee species turnover, orchards and small fruit fields complemented each other phenologically by supporting two bee genera essential to their pollination: mining bees (Andrena spp.) and bumble bees (Bombus spp.). A number of bee species specialized on apple, blueberry, or raspberry blossoms, suggesting that all three crops could be used to promote regional bee diversity. Bee diversity (rarefied richness, wild bee abundance) was highest across crops in landscapes containing hedgerows, meadows, and suburban areas that provide ancillary nesting and floral resources throughout the spring and summer. Promoting phenological complementarity in floral resources at the farmstead and landscape scales is essential to sustaining diverse wild bee populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Megafauna strongly affect vegetation structure and composition, often leading to management concern. However, the extent of their influence across large scales and varying ecosystems remains largely unknown. Using high resolution airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), we investigated landscape‐scale changes in vegetation height and three‐dimensional (3D) structure across landscapes of varying elephant densities and presence over time, and in response to surface water distribution and terrain variability in the heavily managed thicket biome of the Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa. Elephants caused up to a fourfold reduction in vegetation height and altered the vertical profile, but increased vegetation height variability. Vegetation height also increased with elevation and distance from water, particularly in areas that elephants had long occupied at high densities. Slope had opposing effects on vegetation height, with height increasing with slope in areas long exposed to elephants, but decreasing where elephants had only recently been granted access. Our results suggest that elephants are the primary agents of vegetation change in this ecosystem, but that the strength of their effects varies across the landscape, enabling management to use water and terrain as mitigation tools. We further highlight the necessity of landscape‐level experimental studies on megafaunal effects to untangle mechanisms and establish causality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We measured the influence of landscape setting on estuarine food web connectivity in five macrotidal Pacific Northwest estuaries across a gradient of freshwater influence. We used stable isotopes (δ13C, δ15N, δ34S) in combination with a Bayesian mixing model to trace primary producer contributions to suspension- and deposit-feeding bivalve consumers ( Mytilus trossulus and Macoma nasuta) transplanted into three estuarine vegetation zones: emergent marsh, mudflat, and eelgrass. Eelgrass includes both Japanese eelgrass ( Zostera japonica) and native eelgrass ( Zostera marina). Fluvial discharge and consumer feeding mode strongly influenced the strength and spatial scale of observed food web linkages, while season played a secondary role. Mussels displayed strong cross-ecosystem connectivity in all estuaries, with decreasing marine influence in the more fluvial estuaries. Mussel diets indicated homogenization of detrital sources within the water column of each estuary. In contrast, the diets of benthic deposit-feeding clams indicated stronger compartmentalization in food web connectivity, especially in the largest river delta where clam diets were trophically disconnected from marsh sources of detritus. This suggests detritus deposition is patchy across space, and less homogenous than the suspended detritus pool. In addition to fluvial setting, other estuary-specific environmental drivers, such as marsh area or particle transport speed, influenced the degree of food web linkages across space and time, often accounting for unexpected patterns in food web connectivity. Transformations of the estuarine landscape that alter river hydrology or availability of detritus sources can thus potentially disrupt natural food web connectivity at the landscape scale, especially for sedentary organisms, which cannot track their food sources through space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how and why lakes vary and respond to different drivers through time and space is needed to understand, predict, and manage freshwater quality in an era of rapidly changing land use and climate. Water clarity regulates many characteristics of aquatic ecosystems and is responsive to watershed features, making it a sentinel of environmental change. However, whether precipitation alters the relative importance of features that influence lake water clarity or the spatial scales at which they operate is unknown. We used a data set of thousands of northern temperate lakes and asked (1) How does water clarity differ between a very wet vs. dry year? (2) Does the relative importance of different watershed features, or the spatial extent at which they are measured, vary between wet and dry years? (3) What lake and watershed characteristics regulate long-term water clarity trends? Among lakes, water clarity was reduced and less variable in the wet year than in the dry year; furthermore, water clarity was reduced much more in high-clarity lakes during the wet year than in low-clarity lakes. Climate, land use/land cover, and lake morphometry explained most variance in clarity among lakes in both years, but the spatial scales at which some features were important differed between the dry and wet years. Watershed percent agriculture was most important in the dry year, whereas riparian zone percent agriculture (around each lake and upstream features) was most important in the wet year. Between 1991 and 2012, water clarity declined in 23% of lakes and increased in only 6% of lakes. Conductance influenced the direction of temporal trend (clarity declined in lakes with low conductance), whereas the proportion of watershed wetlands, catchment-to-lake-area ratio, and lake maximum depth interacted with antecedent precipitation. Many predictors of water clarity, such as lake depth and landscape position, are features that cannot be readily managed. Given trends of increasing precipitation, eliminating riparian zone agriculture or keeping it <10% of area may be an effective option to maintain or improve water clarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how habitat and nutritional condition affect ungulate populations is necessary for informing management, particularly in areas experiencing carnivore recovery and declining ungulate population trends. Variations in forage species availability, plant phenological stage, and the abundance of forage make it challenging to understand landscape-level effects of nutrition on ungulates. We developed an integrated spatial modeling approach to estimate landscape-level elk ( Cervus elaphus) nutritional resources in two adjacent study areas that differed in coarse measures of habitat quality and related the consequences of differences in nutritional resources to elk body condition and pregnancy rates. We found no support for differences in dry matter digestibility between plant samples or in phenological stage based on ground sampling plots in the two study areas. Our index of nutritional resources, measured as digestible forage biomass, varied among land cover types and between study areas. We found that altered plant composition following fires was the biggest driver of differences in nutritional resources, suggesting that maintaining a mosaic of fire history and distribution will likely benefit ungulate populations. Study area, lactation status, and year affected fall body fat of adult female elk. Elk in the study area exposed to lower summer range nutritional resources had lower nutritional condition entering winter. These differences in nutritional condition resulted in differences in pregnancy rate, with average pregnancy rates of 89% for elk exposed to higher nutritional resources and 72% for elk exposed to lower nutritional resources. Summer range nutritional resources have the potential to limit elk pregnancy rate and calf production, and these nutritional limitations may predispose elk to be more sensitive to the effects of harvest or predation. Wildlife managers should identify ungulate populations that are nutritionally limited and recognize that these populations may be more impacted by recovering carnivores or harvest than populations inhabiting more productive summer habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimating the abundance or density of populations is fundamental to the conservation and management of species, and as landscapes become more fragmented, maintaining landscape connectivity has become one of the most important challenges for biodiversity conservation. Yet these two issues have never been formally integrated together in a model that simultaneously models abundance while accounting for connectivity of a landscape. We demonstrate an application of using capture-recapture to develop a model of animal density using a least-cost path model for individual encounter probability that accounts for non-Euclidean connectivity in a highly structured network. We utilized scat detection dogs ( Canis lupus familiaris) as a means of collecting non-invasive genetic samples of American mink ( Neovison vison) individuals and used spatial capture-recapture models ( SCR) to gain inferences about mink population density and connectivity. Density of mink was not constant across the landscape, but rather increased with increasing distance from city, town, or village centers, and mink activity was associated with water. The SCR model allowed us to estimate the density and spatial distribution of individuals across a 388 km2 area. The model was used to investigate patterns of space usage and to evaluate covariate effects on encounter probabilities, including differences between sexes. This study provides an application of capture-recapture models based on ecological distance, allowing us to directly estimate landscape connectivity. This approach should be widely applicable to provide simultaneous direct estimates of density, space usage, and landscape connectivity for many species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important asset for the management of wild ungulates is recognizing the spatial distribution of forage quality across heterogeneous landscapes. To do so typically requires knowledge of which plant species are eaten, in what abundance they are eaten, and what their nutritional quality might be. Acquiring such data, however, may be difficult and time consuming. Here, we are proposing a rapid and cost-effective forage quality monitoring tool that combines near infrared (NiR) spectra of fecal samples and easily obtained data on plant community composition. Our approach rests on the premise that NIR spectra of fecal samples collected within low population density exclosures reflect the optimal forage quality of a given landscape. Forage quality can thus be based on the Mahalanobis distance of fecal spectral scans across the landscape relative to fecal spectral scans inside exclosures (referred to as DISTEX). The Gi* spatial autocorrelation statistic can then be applied among neighboring DISTEX values to detect and map "hot spots'' and "cold spots'' of nutritional quality over the landscape. We tested our approach in a heterogeneous boreal landscape on Anticosti Island (Quebec, Canada), where white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) populations over the landscape have ranged from 20 to 50 individuals/km2 for at least 80 years, resulting in a loss of most palatable and nutritious plant species. Our results suggest that hot spots of forage quality occur when old-growth balsam fir stands comprise >39.8% of 300 ha neighborhoods, whereas cold spots occur in laggs (i.e., transition zones from forest to peatland). In terms of groundlevel indicator plant species, the presence of Canada bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) was highly correlated with hot spots, whereas tamarack (Larix laricina) was highly correlated with cold spots. Mean DISTEX values were positively and significantly correlated with the neutral detergent fiber and acid detergent lignin contents of feces. While our approach would need more independent field trials before it is fully validated, its low cost and ease of execution should make it a valuable tool for advancing both the basic and applied ecology of large herbivores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The local ecological footprinting tool (LEFT) uses globally available databases, modeling, and algorithms to remotely assess locally important ecological features across landscapes based on five criteria: biodiversity (beta-diversity), vulnerability (threatened species), fragmentation, connectivity, and resilience. This approach can be applied to terrestrial landscapes at a 300-m resolution within a given target area. Input is minimal (latitude and longitude) and output is a computer-generated report and series of maps that both individually and synthetically depict the relative value of each ecological criteria. A key question for any such tool, however, is how representative is the remotely obtained output compared to what is on the ground. Here, we present the results from comparing remotely- vs. field-generated outputs from the LEFT tool on two distinct study areas for beta-diversity and distribution of threatened species (vulnerability), the two fields computed by LEFT for which such an approach is feasible. The comparison method consists of a multivariate measure of similarity between two fields based on discrete wavelet transforms, and reveals consistent agreement across a wide range of spatial scales. These results suggest that remote assessment tools such as LEFT hold great potential for determining key ecological features across landscapes and for being utilized in preplanning biodiversity assessment tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected areas are a central strategy for achieving global conservation goals, but their continued existence depends heavily on maintaining sufficient social and political support to outweigh economic interests or other motives for land conversion. Thus, the resilience of protected areas can be considered a function of their perceived benefits to society. Nature-based tourism (NBT), a cultural ecosystem service, provides a key source of income to protected areas, facilitating a sustainable solution to conservation. The ability of tourism to generate income depends, however, on both the scales at which this cultural service is provided and the scales at which tourists respond to services on offer. This observation raises a set of location-, context-, and scale-related questions that need to be confronted before we can understand and value cultural service provision appropriately. We combine elements of resilience analysis with a systems ecology framework and apply this to NBT in protected areas to investigate cross-scale interactions and scale mismatches. We postulate that cross-scale effects can either have a positive effect on protected area resilience or lead to scale mismatches, depending on their interactions with crossscale feedbacks. To demonstrate this, we compare spatial scales and nested levels of institutions to develop a typology of scale mismatches for common scenarios in NBT. In our new typology, the severity of a scale mismatch is expressed as the ratio of spatial scale to institutional level, producing 25 possible outcomes with differing consequences for system resilience. We predict that greater differences between interacting scales and levels, and greater magnitudes of cross-scale interactions, will lead to greater magnitudes of scale mismatch. Achieving a better understanding of feedbacks and mismatches, and finding ways of aligning spatial and institutional scales, will be critical for strengthening the resilience of protected areas that depend on NBT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The behavior of long-distance migrants during stopover is constrained by the need to quickly and safely replenish energetic reserves. Replenishing fuel stores at stopover sites requires adjusting to unfamiliar landscapes with little to no information about the distribution of resources. Despite their critical importance to the success of songbird migration, the effects of landscape composition and configuration on fuel deposition rates (FDR [g/d]), the currency of migration, has not been tested empirically. Our objectives were to understand the effects of heterogeneous landscapes on FDR of forest-dwelling songbirds during spring migration. The results of field experiments were used to parameterize a spatially explicit, individual-based model of forest songbird movement and resulting FDR. Further field experiments were used to validate the results from the individual-based model. In simulation experiments, we altered a Gulf South landscape in a factorial design to predict the effects of future patterns under different scenarios of land use change in which the abundance of high-quality hardwood habitat and the spatial aggregation of habitat varied. Simulated FDR decreased as the amount of hardwood in the landscape decreased from 41% to 22% to 12%. Further, migrants that arrived in higher-quality habitat types gained more mass. Counter to our expectations, FDR was higher with lower spatial aggregation of habitat. Differences in refueling rates may be most influenced by whether or not an individual experiences an initial searching cost after landing in poor-quality habitat. Therefore, quickly locating habitat with sufficient food resources at each stopover may be the most important factor determining a successful migration. Our findings provide empirical evidence for the argument that hardwood forest cover is a primary determinant of the quality of a stopover site in this region. This study represents the first effort to empirically quantify FDRs based on the configuration of landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural ecosystems benefit human communities by providing ecosystem services such as water purification and crop pollination. Mapping ecosystem service values has become popular, but most are static snapshots of average value. Estimating instead the economic impacts of specific ecosystem changes can better inform typical resource decisions. Here we develop an approach to mapping marginal values, those resulting from the next unit of ecosystem change, across landscapes. We demonstrate the approach with a recent model of crop pollination services in Costa Rica, simulating deforestation events to predict resulting marginal changes in pollination services to coffee farms. We find that marginal losses from deforestation vary from zero to US$700/ha across the landscape. Financial risks for farmers from these losses and marginal benefits of forest restoration show similar spatial variation. Marginal values are concentrated in relatively few forest parcels not identified using average value. These parcels lack substitutes: nearby forest parcels that can supply services in the event of loss. Indeed, the marginal value of forest parcels declines exponentially with the density of surrounding forest cover. The approach we develop is applicable to any ecosystem service. Combined with information on costs, it can help target conservation or restoration efforts to optimize benefits to people and biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of its role in many ecological processes, movement of animals in response to landscape features is an important subject in ecology and conservation biology. In this paper, we develop models of animal movement in relation to objects or fields in a landscape. We took a finite mixture modeling approach in which the component densities are conceptually related to different choices for movement in response to a landscape feature, and the mixing proportions are related to the probability of selecting each response as a function of one or more covariates. We combined particle swarm optimization and an expectation‐maximization (EM) algorithm to obtain maximum‐likelihood estimates of the model parameters. We used this approach to analyze data for movement of three bobcats in relation to urban areas in southern California, USA. A behavioral interpretation of the models revealed similarities and differences in bobcat movement response to urbanization. All three bobcats avoided urbanization by moving either parallel to urban boundaries or toward less urban areas as the proportion of urban land cover in the surrounding area increased. However, one bobcat, a male with a dispersal‐like large‐scale movement pattern, avoided urbanization at lower densities and responded strictly by moving parallel to the urban edge. The other two bobcats, which were both residents and occupied similar geographic areas, avoided urban areas using a combination of movements parallel to the urban edge and movement toward areas of less urbanization. However, the resident female appeared to exhibit greater repulsion at lower levels of urbanization than the resident male, consistent with empirical observations of bobcats in southern California. Using the parameterized finite mixture models, we mapped behavioral states to geographic space, creating a representation of a behavioral landscape. This approach can provide guidance for conservation planning based on analysis of animal movement data using statistical models, thereby linking connectivity evaluations to empirical data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the quantification of hydrological and ecological connectivity to understand the transport and dispersal processes and for assessing the ecosystem degradation. It informs that directional connectivity provides critical information for predicting contaminant transport and planning conservation corridor design. It also highlights directional connectivity index (DCI) which is used to generalize a range of different structural and functional connectivity application.

The article presents a study aims to determine the condition under which the habitat patches can create a closed population. The study employs normal dispersal kernel and measures the self-recuitment or population openness interpreted in the habitat patches. Result reveal that closed populations with few immigrants were more common patch spacing than the dispersal spread.

The article discusses the influence of landscape-level on terrestial snake occupancy within the southeastern U.S. The study uses occupancy modeling to identify habitat variables that affect in determining the presence of a particular species. Results show that some species were positively associated with scrub or shrub and grassland like Slowinski's cornsnake (Elaphe slowinskii), while copperhead snake and eastern diamond-backed rattlesnake were positively associated with forested habitats.

The article offers information that landscape corridors or strips of habitat that connect isolated habitat patches are commonly employed during management of fragmented landscapes. It discusses whether corridors promote propagates fire. It mentions that corridors altered patterns of fire temperature through a direct connectivity effect and an indirect edge effect. It mentions that connectivity effect was independent of fuel levels and was hypothesized wind driven bellows effect.

The article offers the trends in and tree phylogenetic diversity in 7,000 forested plots in eastern United States. It mentions that testing of three hypothesis including phylogenetic diversity changes in forest communities, the difference of phylogenetic diversity from species richness and the consistency of patterns with climate change effects. It finds that species richnesss and phylogenetic diversity are decoupled at medium and small scales.

The article presents a comparative study on the effects of land-sparing and land-sharing on the richness of landscape-scale species. The study sensitivity analysis of the model shows that relative grains from land-sparing have greatest landscapes and low non-crop habitat amount. The study indicates that most of the plant species in the agroecosystems can be found in non-crop habitat and suggests that richness can be conserved by land-sparing approach.

The article presents a research study on the spatial, historical, and environmental factors in the heterogeneous distribution of the aboveground biomass (AGB). It explores the potential use of airborne lidar data in accurate mapping of AGB among plant functional groups. The study employs statistical modeling, field surveys, and airborne remote sensing.

The article analyzes the densities of maize pests Western corn rootworm and European corn borer in landscapes of varying habitat diversity. It examines the insects' host specificity through stable carbon isotope analysis and determines whether insecticide use targeting the pests was related to land use. The study suggests that landscape diversification may not suppress all pests, and diverse agricultural landscapes are correlated with consistently lower pesticide usage.

The article presents a study that assesses the effects of land use on landscape connectivity between loss and fragmentation of forests in western U.S. The study identifies undisturbed contiguous areas of forest that could be considered high-quality patches, computes the effective distance between forest patches and land cover types, and measures network connectivity. It reveals that one-quarter of the forested land in the region were integral to a network of forested patches.

The article presents a study which aims to corroborate coral identity relative to the architectural complexity of ecosystems in the Caribbean reefs. It asserts that comprehending the factors inherent to the complexity of reefs can help in the development of efficient approaches for ecosystem conservation. It notes the importance of understanding the changes in the structure and function of the coral reef community to boost reef and habitat complexity.

The article focuses on the effects of agricultural intensification (AI) on biodiversity in Europe. It investigates the diversity of vascular plants, carabid beetles, and birds in agricultural landscapes in cereal crop field at the field, farm, and European-region scale. The study suggests that a more detailed understanding of AI effects on diversity patterns of various plants and animals in multiple spatial scales would contribute to more efficient agri-environmental schemes in agroecosystems.

The article presents a study which examines the influence of forest species traits on landscape fragmentation in Guatemala. It explores the method of the study that measures vulnerability and identify the effect of species traits on patch occupancy rates of the same set of mammals. It notes the result of the study which indicates that management efforts in fragmented landscapes do not motivate hunting pressure and suggests that species traits may be useful in predicting relative patch.

The article presents a study which examines the effects of landscaping on modularity patterns in farm food webs. The study uses organic and conventional farms, wherein modularity, habitat groups, and interactions among herbivores, plants, and parasitoid species were observed. Result shows modularity of 0.70 to 0.82 in organic, while conventional farms show 0.73 to 0.88 modularity and lower module links. Moreover, landscaping is shown to have little effects on habitat groups diversity.

The article presents a study on the implication of the decline in forest bird occurrence in early-seral broadleaf forest to bird population. The study used two avian point-count data from southwestern and northwestern Oregon that were gathered using fixed-radius point counts while gradient nearest neighbor (GNN) method was used to characterize the number of broadleaf cover. Results show that the viability of forest birds in Oregon is affected by broadleaf and early-seral broadleaf forest.

The article focuses on the study on the importance of proper arrangements of patches between predator and agricultural pests. The study uses spatial simulation model, where it dispersed group of pest predators across computer simulated landscapes and analyzed the its ability to dominate pests. Moreover, the study concludes that spatial understanding of proper habitat of predators for pests can have a good effect on their ability in colonizing crops and limit the population of pest.

The article evaluates the relationships between housing and distribution of invasive exotic plant species in New England. It was found through regression analysis that this plant strongly relates to housing variables than other human and environmental variables. The richness of this plant relates positively to area of wildland-urban interface, low-density residential areas, and change in number of housing units. It is expected that the number of this plant increases as housing grows.

The article presents a study on the restoration programs of forest in Azores using the two experimental designs, the so-called "before-after control-impact" (BACI) and the "control-impact" (CI). Based on the experiment, after two years of the removal of alien plants, it is found out that using BACI, there was an increase of abundance on native plants while a decrease on using CI. Both methods lead to a positive effect on the weeding process.

The article presents a study which analyzes the influence of landscape and local variables on the assembly of plant community in restored wetlands in the U.S. The study used the constrained ordination with variation partitioning to identify the effects of macroscale, mesoscale landscape and local factors. It shows that landscape and local scale variables influence the composition of plant species. It notes that wetland restoration needs landscape processes and species pools considerations.

The article presents a study which evaluates the measures of patch connectivity for fragmented populations. The study observed the performance of the three most commonly used types of patch connectivity, the nearest neighbor (NN), the buffer, and the incidence function model (IFM) measures. These types of patch connectivity are used for predicting patch occupancy and colonization patterns. It reveals that NN is considered as the worst predictors of species occupancy as well as colonization. Moreover, the study also highlights several problems concerning the parameterization and the function of IFM measures.

The article offers information on the conceptual model used for managing trade-off in landscape restoration and revegetation projects in Australia. Technically, this graphical method is accordingly conceived as a set of illustrative and regional planning tools. On the other hand, researchers on the issue are believed to have employed the project-scale possibilities in developing the production side of the model, as much as the regional-scale possibilities is used for the examination of the relevance of the different trade-off relationships.

The article presents the study that discusses the ability of network centrality in managing landscape connectivity. Accordingly, researchers use a graph-theoretical landscape modeling approach in investigating how to identify central patches in the landscape. It founds out that centrality depends on the way the graph-theoretical model of habitat patches is constructed. Even the simplest network representation still provides a coarse-grained assessment of the most important patches. Moreover, two general classes of centrality were identified wherein one accounts for the local flow of organisms in the neighboring patch and the other accounts for the ability to maintain connectivity beyond the scale of the local neighborhood.

The article discusses about the landscape ecology of eastern coyotes derived from large-scale estimates of abundance. According to the article, coyotes have become the top predator in eastern North America since their range expansion in the mid-1990s. A research was conducted about the distribution and abundance of coyotes by collecting coyote feces from 54 sites around Adirondacks of northern New York. Feces were genotyped with microsatellites and discovered a close correlation between the number of individuals detected and the total number of scats at a site. The resulting map presents a prediction of coyote density to be highest in the southwestern edge of the Adirondack State Park.

The article reports on the research conducted by J. Thad Scott and colleagues on watershed and lacustrine controls on planktonic N2 in Waco Reservoir, Texas. Research shows that N2 fixation can be an important source of N to limnetic ecosystems and influence the structure of phytoplankton communities. They found that lacustrine conditions showed greater predictive capability temporarily. They found that the study provides evidence that watershed anthropogenic activity can exert control on planktonic N2.

The article determines how a plant species invasion affects avian abundance and composition across a range of submontane ecosystems in Hawaii. In doing so, the researchers use airborne imaging spectroscopy and scanning light detection and ranging (LiDAR), along with bioacoustic recordings. Results showed that total avian abundance and the ratio of native to exotic avifuana were highest in habitat with the highest canopy cover and height. Comparing biophysically equivalent sites, stands dominated by native Metrosideros polymorpha trees hosted larger native avian communities than did mixed stands of Metrosideros and the invasive tree Morella faya. Other significant analyses relative to the matter are provided.

The article presents information related to a research on reptile and arboreal marsupial responses to vegetation planting and remnant native vegetation in agricultural landscapes in southern Australia. Landscapes with varying amounts of remnant native vegetation were selected on which native vegetation was planted. Two farms that were selected for the research, out of which, only one had plantings. Arboreal marsupials and reptiles on all the four sites having four vegetation types were studied. According to researchers, landscapes and farms with fewer paddock trees and less woody debris had lower numbers of reptiles and arboreal marsupials, despite the areas having enough plantings. Therefore, it is evident that native clearing of vegetation has negative effects on several species.

The article reports on a study that intends to identify critical nesting and brood-rearing habitat for the endangered Greater Sage-Grouse in Alberta at a landscape scale. This study provided a detailed theoretical and empirical models within the context of potential reclamations or landscape improvements, which helped in linking resources to both animal occurrence and fitness measures. As a part of the study, researchers developed a landscape-level occurrence models for predicting where Sage-Grouse likely nest and raise their young. This study defines the utility of the habitat states modeling approach to population viability assessments for species across different ecological systems.

The article presents a study on the reproductive success of savannah sparrow and bobolinks, grassland songbirds, in a dynamic management landscape in the U.S. The study, which was conducted with four grassland treatments, has differed among treatments and between species regarding both the number of fledglings per female per year and nest success. The study has suggested a 65-day interval between cuts might provide enough time for both species to successfully fledge young for fields first cut in May.

The article presents a study to test patch occupancy models on chucao tapaculo, a forest bird with limited dispersal ability, in two South American temperate rain forest landscapes that differed in duration and levels of forest loss. Researchers have developed incidence-based predictive models independently for each landscape and have tested each model reciprocally in the alternative study area. The models have substantially differed in the magnitudes of effects concerning patch size wherein more advanced stage of fragmentation to larger unoccupied patches observed in the landscape. The data also suggested that landscapes used as standards for model building should be selected cautiously.

The article investigates the effects of road network dynamics to landscape patterns in northern Wisconsin, and identifies relationships between road changes and other land-use shifts. The researchers mapped roads from aerial photographs between 1937 and 1999 from 17 towns in a densely forested landscapes in the state. They used both patch-level landscape metrics in calculating terrestrial area outside 15-meter road-effect zone and generalized least-squares regression models in relating road density shifts and landscape pattern to concurrent housing density changes. Their findings revealed that road density increases attributed to landscape fragmentation. They stressed that recognizing road network dynamics is significant for forecasting their ecological impacts over time.