Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Natural Resources and Conservation
Global metrics for terrestrial biodiversity
Published: 2024-06-06
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation
Biodiversity metrics are increasingly in demand for informing government, businesses, and civil society decisions. However, while there are many metrics available, it is not always clear to end-users how they differ or for what purpose they are best suited. This confusion undermines uptake. Here, we seek to clarify these questions by reviewing and presenting a database of 573 biodiversity-related [...]
Light Pollution at Sea: Implications and Potential Hazards of Human Activity for Offshore Bird and Bat Movements in the Greater North Sea
Published: 2024-05-25
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management, Zoology
Human activity in the North Sea is intensifying, as emerging uses, such as offshore wind farms (OWFs) and liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals, are added to fishing, freight shipping and fossil fuel production as traditional forms of resource exploitation. The volume and scale of these additional installations are projected to increase substantially in the coming decades, which amplifies the need [...]
Wildlife health perceptions and monitoring practices in globally distributed protected areas
Published: 2024-05-01
Subjects: Biodiversity, Environmental Monitoring, Epidemiology, Health Information Technology, Health Policy, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration, Sustainability, Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health
Diseases are a threat to biodiversity conservation and global health, however, wildlife health (WH) surveillance systems remain uncommon. This deficit is especially relevant in protected areas (PAs) facing anthropogenic pressures. Integration of field conservation actors patrolling PAs can drastically strengthen WH surveillance. Nevertheless, baseline information regarding current WH monitoring [...]
Reef fish functional groups show variable declines due to deforestation-driven sedimentation, while flexible harvesting mitigates this damage
Published: 2024-01-22
Subjects: Dynamic Systems, Natural Resources and Conservation, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Sedimentation is a major coral reef stressor, with effects including suppressing algae consumption by herbivorous fish. This puts pressure on reef fish populations and the fisheries that harvest them. Deforestation causes much sedimentation on reefs, and is an ongoing concern in Pacific island states. Although ecosystem processes like deforestation and fish population dynamics are usually far [...]
The role of deadwood in the carbon cycle: Implications for models, forest management, and future climates
Published: 2024-01-11
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Deadwood represents a significant carbon pool in forests and savannas. Although previous research has focused mainly on forests, we synthesise deadwood studies across all ecosystems with woody vegetation. Storage and release of carbon from deadwood is controlled by interacting decomposition drivers including biotic consumers (animals, microbes) and abiotic factors (water, fire, sunlight, [...]
Switching to bioplastics may exacerbate ingestion of lost and discarded fishing gear by marine invertebrates
Published: 2024-01-09
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Biology, Environmental Health Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sustainability
Bioplastics are argued to be more environmentally sustainable than conventional plastics. Yet, little is known about how bioplastics degrade in marine environments or their likelihood of being ingested by animals. We measured changes in the weight of biodegradable, semi-biodegradable, and non-biodegradable fishing gears (soft plastic lures, SPLs) in or out of seawater over 14 days. We then [...]
Fuentes para el Estudio de la historia de extracción, consumo y comercio de tres especies de aves venezolanas amenazadas
Published: 2023-11-22
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources and Conservation
El comercio y uso de vida silvestre es un problema complejo que se ve afectado por la dinámica temporal y geográfica de las redes de comercio y tráfico que estimulan la extracción y consumo de recursos. Para estudiar la historia de valoración, consumo y tráfico de la cotorra cabeciamarilla (Amazona barbadensis), el cardenalito (Sporagra cucullata) y el paují copete de piedra (Pauxi pauxi) [...]
Leveraging surf breaks to expand conservation of carbon-dense coastal ecosystems
Published: 2023-10-24
Subjects: Forest Management, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Surf breaks are increasingly recognized as socio-environmental phenomena that provide opportunities for biodiversity conservation and sustained benefits for local communities. Here, we examine an additional benefit from conserving surf breaks—their coincidence with carbon dense coastal ecosystems. Using global spatial datasets of irrecoverable carbon (defined as carbon stocks that, if lost today, [...]
Towards causal relationships for modelling species distribution
Published: 2023-10-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Statistical Models
1. Understanding the processes underlying the distribution of species through space and time is fundamental in several research fields spanning from ecology to spatial epidemiology. Correlative species distribution models (SDMs) involve popular statistical tools to infer species geographical distribution thanks to spatiotemporally explicit observations of species occurrences coupled with a set of [...]
HeliCat Canada’s Wildlife Observations Program: Trends and Findings 2012-2022
Published: 2023-07-01
Subjects: Natural Resources and Conservation
HeliCat Canada members operating in mountain caribou range have been collecting and reporting wildlife sightings data since 2010, resulting in more than 3,750 spatially referenced sightings of animals and tracks by the end of the 2022 operating season. Mountain caribou, mountain goats, and wolverine have been the most commonly recorded species, with caribou observations generally declining over [...]
Landscape changes in the “valli da pesca” of the Venice lagoon and possible effects on the Ecosystem Services supply
Published: 2023-06-22
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources and Conservation, Nature and Society Relations, Other Environmental Sciences, Remote Sensing, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Coastal lagoons have long been subject to continuous changes caused by mutual interactions with human activities. Monitoring such changes becomes critical, particularly when modifications in landscape and land cover classes can affect their capacity to ensure Ecosystem Services (ESs). In the Venice lagoon, some confined areas called “valli da pesca” supply provisioning ESs, namely aquaculture and [...]
Community-based conservation and restoration in coastal wetlands: A review
Published: 2023-06-19
Subjects: Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy
Research has shown that conservation and restoration efforts that engage local communities are more successful at meeting stated goals than those that are externally controlled. Such participatory management approaches have been increasingly applied in coastal wetland ecosystems, yet our collective understanding of the scope of methods applied and outcomes observed in these efforts is limited. In [...]
Emerging opportunities for wildlife with sustainable autonomous transportation
Published: 2021-09-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Autonomous vehicles (AV) are expected to play a key role in the future of transportation, and to introduce a disruptive yet potentially beneficial change for wildlife-vehicle interactions. How-ever, this assumption has not been critically examined, and reducing the number of wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVCs) may be beyond current technological capabilities. Here, we introduce a new conceptual [...]
Drivers of the live pet trade: the role of species traits, socioeconomic attributes and regulatory systems
Published: 2021-08-27
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The live pet trade is a major driver of both biodiversity loss and the introduction of invasive alien species. Building a comprehensive understanding of the pet trade would improve prediction of conservation and biosecurity threats, with the aim to prevent further negative impacts. We used South Australia’s native wildlife permit reporting system as a data-rich example of a live vertebrate pet [...]
Seasonally variable relationships between surface water temperature and inflow in the upper San Francisco Estuary
Published: 2021-06-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management
Water temperature and inflow are key environmental drivers in aquatic systems that are linked through a causal web of factors including climate, weather, water management, and their downstream linkages. However, we do not yet fully understand the relationship between inflow and water temperature, especially in complex managed systems such as estuaries. The San Francisco Estuary is the center of a [...]