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BIOL3000 Rich's Lecs
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| How do you go from information to action in conservation? | natural state (ecology, biogeography); patterns of destruction (global change biology); conservation response (conservation planning); prioritisation (quantitative ecology, decision theory); the implementation gap (psychology, economics, politics etc.) |
| What is significant about the 6th mass extinction event? | we are entering/part-way through it; the ability of humans to create change extremely fast in geological time is dangerous; human capacity to impact nature around us is so much bigger than ourselves (e.g. passenger pigeon in North America) |
| How do we estimate background extinction rate? | typical lifespan for a species is between 1-10 million years (fossil record); if 10 million species on earth, would expect 1-10 extinctions each year under stable, 'natural' conditions |
| Extinction vs. ecological extinction | extinction is when the last individual of a species dies; ecolohical extinction is when a species has been so reduced, it no longer interacts significantly with other species |
| What is the problem with implementation of conservation plans? | usually places that have the greatest conservation need (e.g. Indonesia, Madagascar etc.), they have the least capacity to implement massive environmental conservation efforts |
| What are the 3 levels of biodiversity? | genetic, species, ecosystem |
| What is genetic diversity? | it underlays morphological, physiological, biochemical and behavioural complexity of all living things; increases with population size; rises through mutations and recombinations, spread of alleles |
| Why value genetic diversity? | evolutionary flexibility to adapt to new conditions; raw material for adaptation; promotes speciation |
| When is the morphological species concept used? | widely used in 'coal face' biological surveys; useful for studying insect diversity; rarely used in vertebrates or plants, because most species have been described, and many subtle cases solved |
| Example where species diversity was used in conservation: | Grey Peacock-Pheasant in SE Asia and Hi-nan island; thought to be a subspecies but found to be two distinct species; problem because birds on Hi-nan were threatened; this turned it into an all-or-nothing situation, however; nature usually isn't clear cut |
| What is ecosystem diversity? | when environmental variation leads to different ecosystems; could focus conservation by capturing lots of ecosystem types; easier than describing every single species |
| What does the principle of complementarity do? | ensures that areas chosen for inclusion in a reserve network complement those already selected; we are not grabbing all the same ecosystems or all the same species to conserve but rather a range |
| Why do levels of biodiversity change depending on the ecosystem type? | mainly due to availability of resources and the ability of the animals to fit into a specific ecological niche |
| Features of tropical forests | high endemism; has 50% of global species; huge past clearance; poor reservation |
| Features of coral reefs | high productivity; topographic complexity; low endemism due to high connectivity between spaces; many threats |
| Features of Mediterranean biomes | extreme endemism; high threat; very easy to convert these spaces in urbanisation |
| Features of deserts | extreme specialisation of species; endemism but low richness; low threat |
| Features of polar regions | 'cold deserts'; extreme specialisation of species; endemism but low richness |
| Why are we doing badly at conserving the most diverse places? | there is a bias on ecosystem type due to the potential for infrastructure or the ecosystems timber (e.g. tropical rainforests); e.g. in India, flooded grasslands most protected but aren't really most threatened |
| What is total species richness? | tells us little about where threats are and the big-scale patterns in nature that we need to be concerned about |
| How can threatened species richness and endemic species richness help? | can both help concentrate conservation efforts; threatened species richness is used by the IUCN red list and has big impacts on where we can do conservation |
| Why do we not always do conservation in the most biodiverse places? | the cost of doing conservation is much more important in determining where to do conservation rather than the biodiversity present; conservation is not simply a biological process; need to also think about social/political barriers |
| Why are the types of approaches we use in mapping important in conservation? | the scale at which we look at distributions is important; emu's have a larger distribution but small abundance whereas rainbow lorikeet's have small distribution but large abundance; need to carefully think about what approach to use |
| Why do we never truly know the distribution of a species? | it is every-changing; also because no one has accurately mapped it (most likely) |
| How does extinction occur? | result of two things: a species becomes spatially rare (smaller and smaller distribution) or individuals are lost from populations (lower abundance) |
| What is the extent of occurrence? | tells you how widespread the species is; the more spread out, more chance of escaping effect from a disaster; not trying to estimate distribution, just trying to estimate risk of the group |
| What is the area of occupancy? | asks how much area the species is occupying by using grid cells; going to be smaller than extent of occurrence |
| What are the levels of EoO and AoO for a Critically Endangered species? | EoO: <100 km^2 AoO <10 km^2 |
| What are the levels of EoO and AoO for an Endangered species? | EoO <5,000 km^2 AoO <500 km^2 |
| What are the levels of EoO and AoO for a Vulnerable species? | EoO <20,000 km^2 AoO <2,000 km^2 |
| What are the five methods to map species' distributions? | plot marginal occurrences; plot suitable habitat; plot range-wide occurrences; statistical (quantitative) modelling; process-based modelling |
| What is plotting marginal occurrences? | searching where species were and then plotting potential species distributions; concentrate of searching for records of species near the 'range margin'; tries to clarify where edge of distribution is |
| What is plotting suitable habitat? | relates habitat to species records then mapping where it can occur across an area |
| What is plotting range-wide occurrences? | gathering together as many records as possible everywhere across landscapes |
| How to use statistical modelling in mapping species' distributions? | use current records to model how occurrence is related to a number of environmental variables; use these relationships to build a species model; extension of habitat modelling; helps fix the problem that no one has looked for species |
| What is process-based modelling? | work out the physiological limits to a species' distribution; use the distribution of environmental variable to explain the distribution of the species |
| What is a commission error? | when a species is mistakenly thought to be present when mapping the occurrence of species |
| What is an omission error? | when a species is mistakenly thought to be absent when mapping the occurrence of the species |
| What is the interventionist ethic? | the idea of diving in to change things as soon as they can; this particularly came about in Europe during the rise of anti-harvesting and anti-hunting (especially of birds); it is the idea of intervening in current activities and changing/stopping them |
| What is the preservationist ethic? | the idea that there is an intrinsic value of nature that neeeds to be preserved and protected (e.g. wilderness areas); particularly present in America; also kind of the idea of conservation for future generations |
| What are the 3 goals of modern conservation biology? | describe the earth's biodiversity; protect what remains; restore what is degraded; all a mix between interventionist ethic and preservationist ethic |
| What is a protected area? | an area of land and/or sea especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and managed through legal and other effective means |
| What threats can protected areas stop? | land clearing; harvesting in particular areas; habitat degradation in protected areas; urbanisation in that area |
| What threats can protected areas not stop? | invasive species; diseases; climate change resulting in the shift of a species' range; edge effects |
| What are the 6 different types of protected areas? | strict nature reserve; national park (ecosystem protection, recreation); natural monument; management area (conservation through intervention; protected landscapes; managed-resource protected A (sustainable use of natural ecosystems) |
| Where is the bias in protected areas locations? | study found that the areas with the most protection had the lowest soil fertility and the highest slope on the landscape; least protection given to high fertility and flat slopes in hope of using them for agriculture |
| What are the two different types of prioritisations when considering where to place protected areas? | 'reactive' prioritisations (we should save new areas that are currently under threat; 'proactive' prioritisations (should prioritise areas that are 'most important' for biodiversity |
| Why are migratory species under more threat? | can be vulnerable to habitat loss because of the effect of migration; e.g. if a stopover site is lost, population still has to go through and so a proportion of them are lost; often occupy many different ecological niches at different stages in migration |
| What is the problem with migratory species and the Yellow Sea? | the Yellow Sea area has significant mudflats that are used by many migratory species but it is declining at an extreme rate; the more reliance a species has on the Yellow Sea, the more their populations are declining |
| What are some challenges with professionalised ecology and conservation science? | kind of a closed off world; professional scientists may lack credibility or social licence; privileged few 'own the place' leaves massive gaps (often only deal with particular questions in time and place); data hoarding/loss; slow conservation result |
| What is citizen science? | public participation and collaboration in scientific research with the aim to increase scientific knowledge |
| How do you pose a good question in conservation science? | need to relate it to decision making; it means formulating analyses as decisions, not as ecological hypotheses; conservation science is better when it is linked to real-world decisions |
| What are the five broad approaches to conservation decision-making? | scoring approaches; cost-benefit analysis; cost-effectiness analysis; systematic conservation planning; multi-criteria decision-analysis |
| What is the problem with using scoring approaches to make conservation decisions? | each criteria is usually weighed differently; no depth to ascore even if different categories and different importance; not actually thinking about the act of protecting; going to end up selecting places that are similar to each other |
| What is a cost-benefit analysis? | basically says to take action if the benefit (B) > cost (C); measure these both in the same currency by converting conservation goals to $ |
| What are some issues with a cost-benefit analysis in terms of benefits and costs? | need to think about who is paying the cost and who gets the benefits; e.g. if looking at either clearing land or putting a reserve, local people will get direct benefits by clearing but the world will get benefits by conserving |
| What are some other issues with a cost-benefit analysis? | can't really reduce conservation to an equation; can value deeper reasons for protecting biodiversity; all dependent on how many costs and how many benefits you include |
| What is a cost-effectiveness analysis? | can measure benefits in any currency as long as they are comparable across 'projects'; need to work out the benefit of actions by comparing a variable with vs. without action; includes cost, benefit, success, and weight to find PE (project effectiveness) |
| What are the benefits of a cost-effectiveness analysis? | includes success of each project considered as well as the 'weight' (how much do we really care about it); makes it easier to inform decision-makers on best course of action |
| What does a multi-criteria decision analysis entail? | looks at conservation conflict and involves the people affected by the decisions; addresses trade-offs, uncertainties, plurality of views, and incommensurate values and objectives that give rise to conservation conflicts; e.g. bird shooting in UK |
| What are the 5 steps to a multi-criteria decision analysis? | identify participants (conservationists and organisations); define criteria for evaluating management options (how to decide if something is a 'good' idea); which criteria are most important; list of agreed management options; score the options |
| What are nature's benefits/importance to people? | benefits through contact and experience; can help to reduce stress, alleviate ADHD, improve cognitive function, reduce mental fatigue etc. |
| What drives conservation concern in people? | it is mostly a social phenomenon; people are more influenced by what their friends and family think about nature rather than how much time they spent in it; some of our love for nature is even inherited |
Created by:
tkeen40
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