Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Natural Resources and Conservation
robust.prioritizr: Robust Systematic Conservation Prioritization
Published: 2026-06-19
Subjects: Biodiversity, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Climate change poses significant threats to biodiversity. To ensure the long-term persistence of species, protected areas must be established in locations that will safeguard suitable habitats in the future. Although statistical models can predict where such habitats may occur under different future scenarios, designing protected areas that can effectively protect these habitats across a wide [...]
Advancing public pro-environmental action for global seagrass conservation
Published: 2026-06-12
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Studies, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Psychology, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences
Seagrass meadows support biodiversity, climate mitigation, and human well-being, yet remain threatened by interacting anthropogenic pressures. Public engagement is increasingly promoted in seagrass conservation, but the behaviours most relevant to reducing seagrass decline remain poorly defined. We surveyed 172 seagrass knowledge holders from 39 countries and territories, representing 1942 [...]
Modelling habitat selection using tracking data from central place foraging species: A practical guide for ecologists
Published: 2026-06-04
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Behavior and Ethology, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
The study of habitat selection has long been at the heart of ecological research and is critical to deciphering the mechanisms that govern species’ responses to global change. This is particularly important for central place foraging species, whose ability to adapt to shifting environmental conditions and anthropogenic disturbance is limited by persistent attachment to a fixed site. Recent [...]
Predicting substrate size at a watershed scale to inform conservation planning for a declining salmonid species
Published: 2026-06-02
Subjects: Biology, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Good quality spawning habitat is critical for fish embryo development, survival, and overall population productivity. Appropriate riverbed substrate size is particularly important for riverine-spawning salmonids but the availability of suitable substrate may vary across a watershed. Predicting substrate size at watershed extents may therefore be critical to inform management and conservation of [...]
Navigating Spatial Trade-offs in Restoration Planning: A Multi-Objective Optimization Framework Integrating Ecological Feasibility
Published: 2026-05-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecosystem restoration requires decision-support tools capable of balancing ecological benefits under limited resources while explicitly accounting for the long-term likelihood of restoration success. Despite its recognized importance, ecological feasibility has rarely been formulated as an optimization objective in spatial planning, typically being treated only as a constraint or biophysical [...]
Towards Nature Positive supply chains: From biodiversity commitments to organisational action
Published: 2026-05-22
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Policy, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Large organisations are critical to halting and reversing biodiversity loss, and increasingly making bold commitments for nature. However, translating commitments into action requires robust strategies to fully identify, quantify, trace, and act. This is particularly pertinent because most organisational impacts are hidden within complex supply chains. Here we present a novel, generalised, and [...]
Fishers’ local knowledge strengthens seagrass restoration planning
Published: 2026-05-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Seagrass restoration is increasingly guided by habitat suitability models, yet restoration outcomes depend on more than biophysical suitability alone. In coastal social-ecological systems, fishers and anglers hold fine-scale, time-integrated knowledge of habitat condition, human use, and local constraints that are rarely incorporated at the outset of restoration planning. Here, we tested whether [...]
A Game-Theoretic and Dynamical-Systems Framework for Anti-Poaching Resource Allocation: A Case Study of Etosha National Park
Published: 2026-05-12
Subjects: Biodiversity, Natural Resources and Conservation, Population Biology
Wildlife poaching threatens biodiversity across sub-Saharan Africa, and is especially acute for critically endangered species such as the black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis). Etosha National Park, Namibia (22,935 km²), is patrolled by approximately 295 anti-poaching rangers—fewer than 0.02 per km²—posing two interlinked operational questions: where should a limited workforce be placed to maximise [...]
The number and changing global distribution of seagrass-proximate people
Published: 2026-05-06
Subjects: Human Geography, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation
Seagrass meadows are increasingly recognised as critical natural capital, yet global seagrass conservation still lacks a basic human geography. Building on examples from forests, here, we provide the first global estimate of seagrass-proximate people, defined as people living within specified distances of known seagrass. We combined a global distribution layer of known, mapped and observed [...]
Thermodynamic heterogeneity patterns reveal higher-order soil organization in indigenous agroecosystems of the U.S. Southwest
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Dynamic Systems, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources and Conservation, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Remote Sensing, Science and Technology Studies, Soil Science, Spatial Science, Sustainability
Patterns of soil spatial heterogeneity and diversity support the stability and productivity of food systems, yet their multidimensional structure remains difficult to quantify at spatial scales relevant to agricultural resilience. A process-based framework grounded in fundamental physical principles is therefore needed to describe these spatial processes across landscapes. The aim of this study [...]
A Global Review of Wetland Biodiversity and Carbon Connections
Published: 2026-03-11
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy
As human actions have degraded global ecosystems over time, communities have often combated ecosystem function loss through restoration with a singular focus, falling on one side of the habitat and biodiversity protection or carbon sequestration dichotomy. Wetlands are no exception to this trend, and the large global push to protect and restore wetlands has widely ignored multiple-benefit [...]
Increasing land take in Europe’s land-water interface
Published: 2026-02-26
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resources and Conservation
Ecosystems at the interface between terrestrial and aquatic areas are of outstanding ecological and socio-economic importance, yet are under intense pressure due to the concentration of human settlement and agriculture. Despite this, the broader geography of the land-water interface and how it is changing remains poorly understood. Here, we develop an operationalizable definition of the [...]
A Framework for Questionable Research Practices in Ecological Modelling
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Water Resource Management
1. Questionable research practices (QRPs) bias the published literature towards apparently strong and conclusive results, resulting in low rates of replicability. Recent metaresearch reveals that ecology is not immune to the ‘reproducibility crisis’ seen in other disciplines, due to similar rates of QRPs and a lack of transparency in published research. However, metaresearch to date focuses on [...]
A new analysis of biodiversity and conservation knowledge products to support environmental assessments
Published: 2026-02-04
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sustainability
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) second global assessment of the state of biodiversity is in preparation, to be completed in 2028. To support this and other global and regional environmental assessments, we disaggregate three global knowledge products based on IUCN standards (the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, Key Biodiversity [...]
A Practitioner-Led Transdisciplinary Process for Adaptive Fire Management in Madagascar’s Protected Areas
Published: 2026-01-19
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation
ABSTRACT Fire management in protected areas is constrained by gaps between scientific knowledge, practitioner experience, and institutional frameworks. Such constraints restrict how existing expertise is mobilised, formalised, and translated into alternative fire management practice, meaning fire management plans frequently fail to reflect the diverse socio-ecological contexts in which [...]