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Funder: Alfred Benzon Foundation; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100007469, Funder: Gates Cambridge Trust; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100005370, Funder: Graduate Teaching PhD Scholarship, University of Kent, Funder: Homerton College, University of Cambridge; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100008420, Funder: Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100011672, Funder: Newnham College, University of Cambridge; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000663, Funder: Société des Mines de Fer de Guineé S.A. (Conakry, Guinea), Funder: Stichting Lucie Burgers, The Netherlands; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013496, Western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) are Critically Endangered and Guinea is a key stronghold for this subspecies. However, Guinea is also rich in minerals with some of the highest‐grade iron‐ore deposits in the world. Specifically, the Nimba Mountains, home to western chimpanzees, is one of the sites under consideration for mining activities. To assess the impact of mining activities in the area, we used non‐invasive genetic sampling to estimate chimpanzee population size, sex ratio, community composition, and range boundaries on the western flank of the massif. The level of genetic diversity and affinity between communities was estimated and recommendations for future genetic censusing provided. Between 2003 and 2018, we collected 999 fecal samples of which 663 were analyzed using a panel of 26 microsatellites. We identified a minimum of 136 chimpanzees in four communities, with evidence of migratory events, a high level of shared ancestry and genetic diversity. We assessed sampling intensities and capture rates for each community. Saturation was reached in two communities with sampling between 3.2 and 4.3 times the estimated number of chimpanzees. Our findings highlight the utility of genetic censusing for temporal monitoring of ape abundance, as well as capturing migratory events and gauging genetic diversity and population viability over time. We recommend genetic sampling, combined with camera trapping, for use in future Environmental and Social Impact Assessments, as these methods can yield robust baselines for implementing the mitigation hierarchy, future biomonitoring and conservation management.

Long‐term population declines have elevated recovery of grassland avifauna to among the highest conservation priorities in North America. Because most of the Great Plains is privately owned, recovery of grassland bird populations depends on voluntary conservation with strong partnerships between private landowners and resource professionals. Despite large areas enrolled in voluntary practices through U.S. Department of Agriculture's Lesser Prairie‐chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) Initiative (LPCI), the effectiveness of Farm Bill investments for meeting wildlife conservation goals remains an open question. Our objectives were to evaluate extents to which Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and LPCI‐grazing practices influence population densities of grassland birds; estimate relative contributions of practices to regional bird populations; and evaluate percentages of populations conserved relative to vulnerability of species. We designed a large‐scale impact‐reference study and used the Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions program to evaluate bird population targets of the Playa Lakes Joint Venture. We used point transect distance sampling to estimate density and population size for 35 species of grassland birds on private lands enrolled in native or introduced CRP plantings and LPCI‐prescribed grazing. Treatment effects indicated CRP plantings increased densities of three grassland obligates vulnerable to habitat loss, and LPCI grazing increased densities of four species requiring heterogeneity in dense, tall‐grass structure (α = 0.1). Population estimates in 2016 indicated the practices conserved breeding habitat for 4.5 million birds (90% CI: 4.0–5.1), and increased population sizes of 16 species , totaling 1.8 million birds (CI: 1.4–2.4). Conservation practices on private land benefited the most vulnerable grassland obligate species (AICc weight = 0.53). By addressing habitat loss and degradation in agricultural landscapes, conservation on private land provides a solution to declining avifauna of North America and scales up to meet population recovery goals for the most imperiled grassland birds., Article impact statement: Voluntary conservation on private land addressing critical habitat needs provides an emerging solution to the decline of grassland birds.

Understanding how anthropogenic disturbances affect plant–pollinator systems has important implications for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Previous laboratory studies show that pesticides and pathogens, which have been implicated in the rapid global decline of pollinators over recent years, can impair behavioral processes needed for pollinators to adaptively exploit floral resources and effectively transfer pollen among plants. However, the potential for these sublethal stressor effects on pollinator–plant interactions at the individual level to scale up into changes to the dynamics of wild plant and pollinator populations at the system level remains unclear. We developed an empirically parameterized agent‐based model of a bumblebee pollination system called SimBee to test for effects of stressor‐induced decreases in the memory capacity and information processing speed of individual foragers on bee abundance (scenario 1), plant diversity (scenario 2), and bee–plant system stability (scenario 3) over 20 virtual seasons. Modeling of a simple pollination network of a bumblebee and four co‐flowering bee‐pollinated plant species indicated that bee decline and plant species extinction events could occur when only 25% of the forager population showed cognitive impairment. Higher percentages of impairment caused 50% bee loss in just five virtual seasons and system‐wide extinction events in less than 20 virtual seasons under some conditions. Plant species extinctions occurred regardless of bee population size, indicating that stressor‐induced changes to pollinator behavior alone could drive species loss from plant communities. These findings indicate that sublethal stressor effects on pollinator behavioral mechanisms, although seemingly insignificant at the level of individuals, have the cumulative potential in principle to degrade plant–pollinator species interactions at the system level. Our work highlights the importance of an agent‐based modeling approach for the identification and mitigation of anthropogenic impacts on plant–pollinator systems., Article impact statement: Sublethal effects of pesticides and disease on pollinator foraging behavior threaten the stability of pollination systems.

Many questions relevant to conservation decision‐making are characterized by extreme uncertainty due to lack of empirical data and complexity of the underlying ecologic processes, leading to a rapid increase in the use of structured protocols to elicit expert knowledge. Published ecologic applications often employ a modified Delphi method, where experts provide judgments anonymously and mathematical aggregation techniques are used to combine judgments. The Sheffield elicitation framework (SHELF) differs in its behavioral approach to synthesizing individual judgments into a fully specified probability distribution for an unknown quantity. We used the SHELF protocol remotely to assess extinction risk of three subterranean aquatic species that are being considered for listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. We provided experts an empirical threat assessment for each known locality over a video conference and recorded judgments on the probability of population persistence over four generations with online submission forms and R‐shiny apps available through the SHELF package. Despite large uncertainty for all populations, there were key differences between species’ risk of extirpation based on spatial variation in dominant threats, local land use and management practices, and species’ microhabitat. The resulting probability distributions provided decision makers with a full picture of uncertainty that was consistent with the probabilistic nature of risk assessments. Discussion among experts during SHELF's behavioral aggregation stage clearly documented dominant threats (e.g., development, timber harvest, animal agriculture, and cave visitation) and their interactions with local cave geology and species’ habitat. Our virtual implementation of the SHELF protocol demonstrated the flexibility of the approach for conservation applications operating on budgets and time lines that can limit in‐person meetings of geographically dispersed experts., Article Impact Statement: Remote expert elicitation can facilitate endangered species decision‐making when available data, budgets, and time frames are limiting.

Mapping and predicting the potential risk of fishing activities to large marine protected areas (MPAs), where management capacity is low but fish biomass may be globally important, is vital to prioritizing enforcement and maximizing conservation benefits. Drifting fish aggregating devices (dFADs) are a highly effective fishing method employed in purse seine fisheries that attract and accumulate biomass fish, making fish easier to catch. However, dFADs are associated with several negative impacts, including high bycatch rates and lost or abandoned dFADs becoming beached on sensitive coastal areas (e.g., coral reefs). Using Lagrangian particle modeling, we determined the potential transit of dFADs in a large MPA around the Chagos Archipelago in the central Indian Ocean. We then quantified the risk of dFADs beaching on the archipelago's reefs and atolls and determined the potential for dFADs to pass through the MPA, accumulate biomass while within, and export it into areas where it can be legally fished (i.e., transit). Over one‐third (37.51%) of dFADs posed a risk of either beaching or transiting the MPA for >14 days, 17.70% posed a risk of beaching or transiting the MPA for >30 days, and 13.11% posed a risk of beaching or transiting the MPA for >40 days. Modeled dFADs deployed on the east and west of the perimeter were more likely to beach and have long transiting times (i.e., posed the highest risk). The Great Chagos Bank, the largest atoll in the archipelago, was the most likely site to be affected by dFADs beaching. Overall, understanding the interactions between static MPAs and drifting fishing gears is vital to developing suitable management plans to support enforcement of MPA boundaries and the functioning and sustainability of their associated biomass., Article impact statement: Left unchecked, drifting fish aggregation devices could reduce the efficacy of static marine protected areas.

Conservation is likely to be most successful if it draws on knowledge from across the natural and social sciences. The ecosystem services concept has been called a boundary object in that it facilitates development of such interdisciplinary knowledge because it offers a common platform for researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. However, a question that remains is to what extent the interdisciplinary knowledge needed is provided by disciplinary diversity within the field. We asked where is knowledge on ecosystem services produced, how interdisciplinary is this knowledge, and which disciplines facilitate the greatest disciplinary integration? We defined interdisciplinarity as the extent to which published research draws on knowledge that crosses disciplinary borders and used citations as a quantitative indicator of communication among disciplines, based on journal classification. We used disciplinary diversity, richness, and heterocitation as measures of interdisciplinarity and betweenness centrality as a measure of disciplinary integration. Our data set contained 22,153 publications on ecosystem services, published from 1983 to 2018. We found that ecosystem services research matured; average yearly output growth was 33.8%, more than the 8–9% growth in scientific output across all fields. Over time, the network clustering coefficient, measuring connectedness of individual disciplines, rose from 0.388 to 0.727, suggesting increased density in the network of citations. Researchers in the field published more articles (3566 in 2018 alone) across more disciplines (77 unique disciplines in 2018). However, this growth was not mirrored by an increase in the diversity (stable at 0.7–0.9) or richness (averaging 0.35 unique disciplines per citation) of citation patterns. Heterocitation scores, or out‐of‐group citations, for arts, humanities, social sciences, and law ranged from 56% to 64%, which was lower than we expected, although this may serve to protect the integrity of social science disciplines and attract broader engagement from within. Ultimately, a small number of productive disciplines are central to supporting disciplinary integration. However, opportunities exist for conservation practice to draw on a broader field of research, to realize the potential that the diverse body of knowledge of interdisciplinary work offers., Article impact statement: Ecosystem services holds promise in conservation settings, but STEM disciplines dominate, despite increased involvement of AHSSL disciplines.

Tidal flats are a globally distributed coastal ecosystem important for supporting biodiversity and ecosystem services. Local to continental‐scale studies have documented rapid loss of tidal habitat driven by human impacts, but assessments of progress in their conservation are lacking. With an internally consistent estimate of distribution and change, based on Landsat satellite imagery, now available for the world's tidal flats, we examined tidal flat representation in protected areas (PAs) and human pressure on tidal flats. We determined tidal flat representation and its net change in PAs by spatially overlaying tidal flat maps with the World Database of Protected Areas. Similarly, we overlaid the most recent distribution map of tidal flats (2014–2016) with the human modification map (HMc) (range from 0, no human pressure, to 1, very high human pressure) to estimate the human pressure exerted on this ecosystem. Sixty‐eight percent of the current extent of tidal flats is subject to moderate to very high human pressure (HMc > 0.1), but 31% of tidal flat extent occurred in PAs, far exceeding PA coverage of the marine (6%) and terrestrial (13%) realms. Net change of tidal flat extent inside PAs was similar to tidal flat net change outside PAs from 1999 to 2016. Substantial shortfalls in protection of tidal flats occurred across Asia, where large intertidal extents coincided with high to very high human pressure (HMc > 0.4–1.0) and net tidal flat losses up to 86.4 km² (95% CI 83.9–89.0) occurred inside individual PAs in the study period. Taken together, our results show substantial progress in PA designation for tidal flats globally, but that PA status alone does not prevent all habitat loss. Safeguarding the world's tidal flats will thus require deeper understanding of the factors that govern their dynamics and effective policy that promotes holistic coastal and catchment management strategies., Article impact statement: Thirty‐one percent of the world's tidal flats are protected, but more is needed to counter human pressure and avoid further global tidal flat loss.

Indigenous Peoples’ lands cover over one‐quarter of Earth's surface, a significant proportion of which is still free from industrial‐level human impacts. As a result, Indigenous Peoples and their lands are crucial for the long‐term persistence of Earth's biodiversity and ecosystem services. Yet, information on species composition on these lands globally remains largely unknown. We conducted the first comprehensive analysis of terrestrial mammal composition across mapped Indigenous lands based on data on area of habitat (AOH) for 4460 mammal species assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. We overlaid each species’ AOH on a current map of Indigenous lands and found that 2695 species (60% of assessed mammals) had ≥10% of their ranges on Indigenous Peoples’ lands and 1009 species (23%) had >50% of their ranges on these lands. For threatened species, 473 (47%) occurred on Indigenous lands with 26% having >50% of their habitat on these lands. We also found that 935 mammal species (131 categorized as threatened) had ≥ 10% of their range on Indigenous Peoples’ lands that had low human pressure. Our results show how important Indigenous Peoples’ lands are to the successful implementation of conservation and sustainable development agendas worldwide., Article impact statement: Indigenous Peoples’ lands are important for the successful implementation of international conservation and sustainable development agendas.

Biodiversity offsetting is an increasingly applied tool aiming to compensate for environmental damage caused by exploitation projects. Critics, however, raise concerns over the purported effectiveness of offsetting and question the ethical underpinnings and implications of offsetting. These ethical dimensions have largely been overlooked in research, which may lead to offsetting systems that fail to respect the values intended to be safeguarded. To address these dimensions, 5 ethical objections in the scientific literature were identified: offsetting violates nature's intrinsic value; losses of nature cannot be compensated for by human interventions; too little is known to make adequate trades; offsetting impedes virtuous dispositions toward nature; and offsetting has negative justice implications. We examined these objections and arguments against them based on the ethical concepts of intrinsic and instrumental values, anthropocentrism, nonanthropocentrism, and deontological, consequentialist, and virtue‐ethical paradigms. Both nonanthropocentric and anthropocentric concerns were expressed in deontological, consequential, and virtue‐ethical framings. Objections mostly had a deontological or virtue‐ethical basis, whereas counterarguments were based on consequential reasoning, but common ground in practice is often conceivable. Based on our findings, we formulated 10 recommendations for policy makers and 5 questions for practitioners to consider. We propose, for example, that policy makers clarify aims, legislate on no‐go areas, and govern the use of multipliers. We suggest that practitioners consider, for instance, how to improve case‐specific knowledge and promote learning and stakeholder engagement. We hope these recommendations and questions will encourage further discussion of the ethics of biodiversity offsets and ultimately strengthen the respect for biodiversity and human‐welfare values at stake in offsetting projects., Article impact statement: Five ethical objections should be considered in the design and implementation of biodiversity offsetting.

As declines in biodiversity accelerate, there is an urgent imperative to ensure that every dollar spent on conservation counts toward species protection. Systematic conservation planning is a widely used approach to achieve this, but there is growing concern that it must better integrate the human social dimensions of conservation to be effective. Yet, fundamental insights about when social data are most critical to inform conservation planning decisions are lacking. To address this problem, we derived novel principles to guide strategic investment in social network information for systematic conservation planning. We considered the common conservation problem of identifying which social actors, in a social network, to engage with to incentivize conservation behavior that maximizes the number of species protected. We used simulations of social networks and species distributed across network nodes to identify the optimal state‐dependent strategies and the value of social network information. We did this for a range of motif network structures and species distributions and applied the approach to a small‐scale fishery in Kenya. The value of social network information depended strongly on both the distribution of species and social network structure. When species distributions were highly nested (i.e., when species‐poor sites are subsets of species‐rich sites), the value of social network information was almost always low. This suggests that information on how species are distributed across a network is critical for determining whether to invest in collecting social network data. In contrast, the value of social network information was greatest when social networks were highly centralized. Results for the small‐scale fishery were consistent with the simulations. Our results suggest that strategic collection of social network data should be prioritized when species distributions are un‐nested and when social networks are likely to be centralized., Article impact statement: The value of collecting social network information for conservation planning depends on both species distributions and social network structure.

Estimating the effectiveness of protected areas (PAs) in reducing deforestation is useful to support decisions on whether to invest in better management of areas already protected or to create new ones. Statistical matching is commonly used to assess this effectiveness, but spatial autocorrelation and regional differences in protection effectiveness are frequently overlooked. Using Colombia as a case study, we employed statistical matching to account for confounding factors in park location and accounted for for spatial autocorrelation to determine statistical significance. We compared the performance of different matching procedures—ways of generating matching pairs at different scales—in estimating PA effectiveness. Differences in matching procedures affected covariate similarity between matched pairs (balance) and estimates of PA effectiveness in reducing deforestation. Independent matching yielded the greatest balance. On average 95% of variables in each region were balanced with independent matching, whereas 33% of variables were balanced when using the method that performed worst. The best estimates suggested that average deforestation inside protected areas in Colombia was 40% lower than in matched sites. Protection significantly reduced deforestation, but PA effectiveness differed among regions. Protected areas in Caribe were the most effective, whereas those in Orinoco and Pacific were least effective. Our results demonstrate that accounting for spatial autocorrelation and using independent matching for each subset of data is needed to infer the effectiveness of protection in reducing deforestation. Not accounting for spatial autocorrelation can distort the assessment of protection effectiveness, increasing type I and II errors and inflating effect size. Our method allowed improved estimates of protection effectiveness across scales and under different conditions and can be applied to other regions to effectively assess PA performance., Article impact statement: Spatial autocorrelation and sampling design can distort estimations of protected area effectiveness at reducing forest loss.

Renewable energy sources, such as wind energy, are essential tools for reducing the causes of climate change, but wind turbines can pose a collision risk for bats. To date, the population‐level effects of wind‐related mortality have been estimated for only 1 bat species. To estimate temporal trends in bat abundance, we considered wind turbines as opportunistic sampling tools for flying bats (analogous to fishing nets), where catch per unit effort (carcass abundance per monitored turbine) is a proxy for aerial abundance of bats, after accounting for seasonal variation in activity. We used a large, standardized data set of records of bat carcasses from 594 turbines in southern Ontario, Canada, and corrected these data to account for surveyor efficiency and scavenger removal. We used Bayesian hierarchical models to estimate temporal trends in aerial abundance of bats and to explore the effect of spatial factors, including landscape features associated with bat habitat (e.g., wetlands, croplands, and forested lands), on the number of mortalities for each species. The models showed a rapid decline in the abundance of 4 species in our study area; declines in capture of carcasses over 7 years ranged from 65% (big brown bat [Eptesicus fuscus]) to 91% (silver‐haired bat [Lasionycteris noctivagans]). Estimated declines were independent of the effects of mitigation (increasing wind speed at which turbines begin to generate electricity from 3.5 to 5.5 m/s), which significantly reduced but did not eliminate bat mortality. Late‐summer mortality of hoary (Lasiurus cinereus), eastern red (Lasiurus borealis), and silver‐haired bats was predicted by woodlot cover, and mortality of big brown bats decreased with increasing elevation. These landscape predictors of bat mortality can inform the siting of future wind energy operations. Our most important result is the apparent decline in abundance of four common species of bat in the airspace, which requires further investigation., Article impact statement: Data from 594 wind turbines suggest rapid declines in abundance for 4 common species of bat and identify spatial predictors of bat mortality at turbines.

Small‐scale fisheries are an important livelihood and primary protein source for coastal communities in many of the poorest regions in the world, yet many are overfished and thus require effective and scalable management solutions. Positive ecological and socioeconomic responses to management typically lag behind immediate costs borne by fishers from fishing pressure reductions necessary for fisheries recovery. These short‐term costs challenge the long‐term success of these interventions. However, social marketing may increase perceptions of management benefits before ecological and socioeconomic benefits are fully realized, driving new social norms and ultimately long‐term sustainable behavior change. By conducting underwater visual surveys to quantify ecological conditions and by conducting household surveys with community members to quantify their perceptions of management support and socioeconomic conditions, we assessed the impact of a standardized small‐scale fisheries management intervention that was implemented across 41 sites in Brazil, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The intervention combines TURF reserves (community‐based territorial use rights for fishing coupled with no‐take marine reserves) with locally tailored social‐marketing behavior change campaigns. Leveraging data across 22 indicators and 4 survey types, along with data from 3 control sites, we found that ecological and socioeconomic impacts varied and that communities supported the intervention and were already changing their fishing practices. These results suggest that communities were developing new social norms and fishing more sustainably before long‐term ecological and socioeconomic benefits of fisheries management materialized., Article impact statement: Moving from overfishing to sustainability, behavior change campaigns can be used to transition fisheries from near‐term losses to long‐term gains.

Wildlife corridors aim to promote species' persistence by connecting habitat patches across fragmented landscapes. Their implementation is limited by patterns of land ownership and complicated by differences in the jurisdictional and regulatory authorities under which lands are managed. Terrestrial corridor conservation requires coordination across jurisdictions and sectors subject to site-specific overlapping sources of legal authority. Mapping spatial patterns of legal authority concurrent with habitat condition can illustrate opportunities to build or leverage capacity for connectivity conservation. Streamside areas provide pragmatic opportunities to leverage existing policy mechanisms for riverine and terrestrial habitat connectivity across boundaries. Conservation planners and practitioners can make use of these opportunities by harmonizing actions for multiple conservation outcomes. We formulated an integrative, data-driven method for mapping multiple sources of legal authority weighted by capacity for coordinating terrestrial habitat conservation along streams. We generated a map of capacity to coordinate streamside corridor protections across a wildlife habitat gap to demonstrate this approach. We combined values representing coordination capacity and naturalness to generate an integrated legal-ecological resistance map for connectivity modeling. We then computed least-cost corridors across the integrated map, masking the terrestrial landscape to focus on streamside areas. Streamside least-cost corridors in the integrated, local-scale model diverged (∼25 km) from national-scale least-cost corridors based on naturalness. Spatial categories comparing legal- and naturalness-based resistance values by stream reach highlighted potential locations for building or leveraging existing capacity through spatial coordination of policy mechanisms or restoration actions. Agencies or nongovernmental organizations intending to restore or maintain habitat connectivity across fragmented landscapes can use this approach to inform spatial prioritization and build coordination capacity. Article impact statement: Combined mapping of legal authority and habitat condition reveals capacity to coordinate actions along streams for clean water and wildlife.Mapeo de la Autoridad Legal para los Corredores Terrestres de Conservación a lo Largo de Ríos Stahl et al. Resumen Los corredores de fauna buscan promover la persistencia de las especies al conectar los fragmentos de hábitat a lo largo de paisajes fragmentados. Su implementación está limitada por los patrones de propiedad de tierras y se complica con las diferencias entre las autoridades jurisdiccionales y regulatorias que las administran. La conservación por corredores terrestres requiere de coordinación entre las jurisdicciones y los sectores sujetos a fuentes de autoridad legal que se traslapan y que son específicas del sitio. El mapeo de los patrones espaciales de la autoridad legal simultánea a la condición del hábitat puede ilustrar oportunidades para construir o hacer uso de la capacidad para la conservación por conectividad. Las áreas adyacentes a los cauces fluviales proporcionan oportunidades prácticas para hacer uso de los mecanismos políticos existentes para la conectividad de hábitats ribereño y terrestre a través de las fronteras. Los planificadores y practicantes de la conservación pueden usar estas oportunidades al armonizar las acciones para múltiples resultados de conservación. Formulamos un método integrativo orientado por los datos para mapear las múltiples fuentes de autoridad legal ponderadas por la capacidad para coordinar la conservación de hábitats terrestres a lo largo de ríos. Generamos un mapa de la capacidad para coordinar los corredores de protección a lo largo de los vacíos en los hábitats de fauna para demostrar esta estrategia. Combinamos los valores por medio de la representación de la capacidad de coordinación y la naturalidad para generar un mapa de resistencia legal y ecológica para el modelado de la conectividad. Después, computamos los corredores de menor costo en todo el mapa integrado, enmascarando el paisaje terrestre para enfocarnos en las áreas adyacentes al cauce fluvial. Los corredores de menor costo adyacentes a los cauces dentro del modelo integrado de escala local difirieron (∼25 km) de los corredores de menor costo basados en la naturalidad a escala nacional. Las categorías espaciales que compararon los valores de resistencia basada en la legalidad y en la naturalidad por alcance del río resaltaron las localidades potenciales para la construcción o el uso de la capacidad existente por medio de la coordinación espacial de los mecanismos de política o de las acciones de restauración. Las agencias y organizaciones no gubernamentales con la intención de restaurar o mantener la conectividad del hábitat en un paisaje fragmentado pueden utilizar esta estrategia para informar la priorización espacial y construir la capacidad de coordinación.野生动物廊道旨在通过连接破碎景观中的栖息地斑块来提高物种的续存, 但其建设受限于土地所有制模式, 还会因管理土地的管辖及监管机构不同而更加复杂。陆地廊道保护需要多个司法管辖区和各地受到多种法定权威管制的部门之间的协调。将法定权威的空间格局与栖息地条件的分布地图相叠加, 将有利于开展廊道连接度保护的能力建设及利用。河流沿岸地区为现有的跨境河流及陆地栖息地连接度的相关政策机制的应用提供了实践机会。保护规划者和实施者可以利用这些机会协调多方行动以取得各方面的保护成效。我们制定了一个综合的、基于数据驱动的方法, 可以将协调河流沿岸陆地栖息地保护的能力作为权重来绘制多个法定权威来源的地图。为了演示这个方法, 我们绘制了一张协调跨越野生动物栖息地空缺地带的河流沿岸廊道保护力地图。我们将代表协调能力和自然特性的数值相结合, 生成了一张用于连接度建模的法律-生态抵抗力综合地图。随后, 我们忽略陆地景观, 将重点放在河流沿岸地区, 计算了整个综合地图的最低成本廊道。结果显示, 由局部尺度的综合模型得到的河流沿岸最低成本廊道与基于自然特性的国家尺度最低成本廊道偏离约 25 公里。河流沿岸基于法律和自然特性抵抗力比较的空间分类进一步展示了可以通过政策机制或恢复行动的空间协调来建设和利用现有能力的潜在地点。计划恢复或维持破碎景观之间的栖息地连接度的机构或非政府组织可以应用这种方法确定优先保护的空间并建立协调力。【翻译: 胡怡思; 审校: 聂永刚】.

Objective: We compared first-year cumulative grade point average and a composite score on part I of the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners (NBCE) exam for first-year alternative admission track program (AATP) students who did and did not take three specific undergraduate courses: general chemistry, organic chemistry, and anatomy and physiology. Methods: All AATP students in 2015 (n = 50) were evaluated for the course history of general chemistry and anatomy and physiology compared to their first-year cumulative grade point average and NBCE part 1 scores using independent t-tests. Results: Students in the AATP who took general chemistry tended to score higher overall on the NBCE exams (p = .038, r = .229). Organic chemistry and anatomy and physiology had no statistical effect on improving board scores. First-year cumulative grade point average seemed to be unaffected by any of the undergraduate courses evaluated. Conclusion: There was a statistically significant difference in composite NBCE part 1 score between AATP students who had and had not taken general chemistry 1 before admission. There were no differences in first-year GPA between AATP students who had and had not taken undergraduate chemistry and A&P courses.