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Acoustic diversity indices have been proposed as low-cost biodiversity monitoring tools. The acoustic diversity of a soundscape can be indicative of the richness of an acoustic community and the structural/vegetation characteristics of a habitat. There is a need to apply these methods to landscapes that are ecologically and/or economically important. We investigate the relationship between the acoustic properties of a coniferous forest with stand-age and structure. We sampled a 73 point grid in part of the UK’s largest man-made lowland coniferous plantation forest, covering a 320ha mosaic of different aged stands. Forest stands ranged from 0–85 years old providing an age-gradient. Short soundscape recordings were collected from each grid point on multiple mornings (between 6am-11am) to capture the dawn chorus. We repeated the study during July/August in 2014 and again in 2015. Five acoustic indices were calculated for a total of 889 two minute samples. Moderate relationships between acoustic diversity with forest stand-age and vegetation characteristics (canopy height; canopy cover) were observed. Ordinations suggest that as structural complexity and forest age increases, the higher frequency bands (4-10KHz) become more represented in the soundscape. A strong linear relationship was observed between distance to the nearest road and the ratio of anthropogenic noise to biological sounds within the soundscape. Similar acoustic patterns were observed in both years, though acoustic diversity was generally lower in 2014, which was likely due to differences in wind conditions between years. Our results suggest that developing these relatively low-cost acoustic monitoring methods to inform adaptive management of production landscapes, may lead to improved biodiversity monitoring. The methods may also prove useful for modelling road noise, landscape planning and noise mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many primate populations inhabit anthropogenic landscapes. Understanding their long-term ability to persist in such environments and associated real and perceived risks for both primates and people is essential for effective conservation planning. Primates in forest-agricultural mosaics often consume cultivars to supplement their diet, leading to potentially negative encounters with farmers. When crossing roads, primates also face the risk of encounters with people and collision with vehicles. Chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes verus) in Bossou, Guinea, West Africa, face such risks regularly. In this study, we aimed to examine their activity budget across habitat types and the influence of anthropogenic risks associated with cultivated fields, roads, and paths on their foraging behavior in noncultivated habitat. We conducted 6-h morning or afternoon follows daily from April 2012 to March 2013. Chimpanzees preferentially used forest habitat types for traveling and resting and highly disturbed habitat types for socializing. Wild fruit and crop availability influenced seasonal habitat use for foraging. Overall, chimpanzees preferred mature forest for all activities. They showed a significant preference for foraging at >200 m from cultivated fields compared to 0-100 m and 101-200 m, with no effect of habitat type or season, suggesting an influence of associated risk. Nevertheless, the chimpanzees did not actively avoid foraging close to roads and paths. Our study reveals chimpanzee reliance on different habitat types and the influence of human-induced pressures on their activities. Such information is critical for the establishment of effective land use management strategies in anthropogenic landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large carnivores such as jaguars (Panthera onca) are species of conservation concern because they are suffering population declines and are keystone species in their ecosystems. Their large area requirements imply that unprotected and ever-increasing agricultural regions can be important habitats as they allow connectivity and dispersal among core protected areas. Yet information on jaguar densities across unprotected landscapes it is still scarce and crucially needed to assist management and range-wide conservation strategies. Our study provides the first jaguar density estimates of Colombia in agricultural regions which included cattle ranching, the main land use in the country, and oil palm cultivation, an increasing land use across the Neotropics. We used camera trapping across two agricultural landscapes located in the Magdalena River valley and in the Colombian llanos (47–53 stations respectively; >2000 trap nights at both sites) and classic and spatially explicit capture-recapture models with the sex of individuals as a covariate. Density estimates were 2.52±0.46–3.15±1.08 adults/100 km2 in the Magdalena valley, whereas 1.12±0.13–2.19±0.99 adults/100 km2 in the Colombian llanos, depending on analysis used. We suggest that jaguars are able to live across unprotected human-use areas and co-exist with agricultural landscapes including oil-palm plantations if natural areas and riparian habitats persist in the landscape and hunting of both jaguar and prey is limited. In the face of an expanding agriculture across the tropics we recommend land-use planning, adequate incentives, regulations, and good agricultural practices for range-wide jaguar connectivity and survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim To project the potential European distribution of seven broad habitat categories (needle-leaved, broad-leaved, mixed and mediterranean forest, urban, grassland and cropland) in order to assess effects of land use, climate change and increase in CO2 on predicted habitat changes up to the year 2050. Location Europe. Method We modelled the response of European vegetation to changes in land use, climate and CO2 by combining the land-use model Dyna- CLUE (based on the CORINE land-cover data) and the dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS. Two reforestation options were explored: maintaining the current range of tree species ( EFI) or promoting naturally occurring tree species ( NAT). Climate data from two general circulation models and two SRES scenarios ( A2 and B1) were used. The broad habitat types were classified according to a combination of land use and the dominant plant species. Results Our models predicted that croplands and grasslands are expected to decrease due to land-use change. Although climate change has a negative effect on needle-leaved forest, it is expected to maintain its area or even increase in the EFI reforestation option while mediterranean, broad-leaved and mixed forests are expected to increase markedly. All investigated drivers have shown some effect, but land use is the dominant contributor to broad habitat change except for needle-leaved and mixed which are mainly influenced by climate change. Main conclusions Land use is predicted to have the greatest effect on broad habitat distribution according to our simulations. Hence in most parts of Europe mitigating actions should focus on land-use change rather than climate change. According to our simulation, the effects of the different drivers are not in general additive. In some cases they act synergistically and in some cases antagonistically. The projected habitat changes are a valuable tool for species distribution modelling and are available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how overall patterns of spatial variation in species richness are affected by distributional patterns of species has been an area of growing concern. In the present study, we investigated the relative importance of common and rare species as contributors in overall plant species richness. We further examined if the effects of common or rare species in richness patterns are affected by the size of the sampling units and if the observed patterns hold at different habitats. We used a dataset of 5,148 higher plant species distributed across 16,114 sampling plots located in 240 sites of the NATURA 2000 network of Greece. We ranked all species based on the number of sites they occupied and we developed a common to rare and a rare to common sequence. We correlated those sequences with cumulative species distributions. We performed this analysis in nine different sizes of sampling units and in three different datasets referring to (a) all habitat types together, (b) coniferous habitats only and (c) alpine habitats only. Our analysis showed that despite the proportionally higher numbers of restricted species, widespread species make a greater contribution to overall richness patterns and that this observed pattern does not depend on the size of the sampling units. Moreover, the observed pattern stands for different habitat types. Our findings support the generality of this pattern and highlight the importance of widespread species as adequate indicators of biodiversity patterns at various habitat types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A perennial issue for land use policy is the evaluation of landscape biodiversity and the associated cost effectiveness of any biodiversity conservation policy actions. Based on the CUA methodology as applied to species conservation, this paper develops a methodology for evaluating the impact on habitats of alternative landscape management scenarios. The method incorporates three dimensions of habitats, quantity change, quality change and relative scarcity, and is illustrated in relation to the alternative landscape management scenarios for the Scottish Highlands (Cairngorms) study area of the BioScene project. The results demonstrate the value of the method for evaluating biodiversity conservation policies through their impact on habitats. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Species rich semi-natural grasslands are an important but threatened habitat throughout Europe and much of the former area has been lost since the 1950s. However, in some countries large areas have been preserved and the demand for meadow recreation by sowing seed mixtures is increasing. In the White Carpathians Protected Landscape Area (Czech Republic) the use of commercial seed mixtures is undesirable and the use of regional mixtures has been investigated. The costs for seeding large areas are high and lower cost techniques are needed. In 1999 a field experiment was set up to investigate the establishment of hay meadow vegetation comparing sowing a regional mixture all over a plot with sowing narrow 2.5m strips of regional seed mixtures into a matrix of a commercial grass mixture or into natural regeneration. The results after five seasons showed good establishment of the sown species in the meadow treatment. Spread of sown species from the sown strips into the surrounding matrix occurred but the cover of species was lower in the commercial grass matrix compared with the natural regeneration matrix. Colonisation of some plots by unsown desirable grassland species from adjacent grassland habitats also occurred, but more species colonised the natural regeneration matrix than the commercial grasses or the sown meadow matrix itself. Overall, the results indicate that, in appropriate situations, sown strips can provide a lower cost but slower and longer-term alternative to field scale sowing of regional seed mixtures for recreation of hay meadow vegetation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]