We many times like to think that protected areas (PAs) are of fixed nature: once an area is protected, it remains so until the end of times, safeguarding the elements of nature in it. The real world, of course, is much more complex. In their recently published article in Conservation Letters Mascia and Pailler (2011) successfully point out that Protected Area Downgrading (=decrease in legal protection), Downsizing (=decrease in area) and Degazettement (=loss of entire PA) – or PADDD as they call it – has taken place around the world at least since the beginning of 20th century and is an ongoing phenomena. Mascia and Pailler raise an issue that probably has been familiar to many of us in one way or the other, but the magnitude and importance of which we have not, and still do not understand. Continue reading
Category Archives: Journal club
Bird et al. (2011): Integrating spatially explicit habitat projections into extinction risk assessments: a reassessment of Amazonia avifauna incorporating projected deforestation
We discussed this paper in our journal club in late September 2011. In short, the paper looks at potential deforestation scenarios projected for the Amazon basin, evaluates how the projected deforestation rates drive future population declines of birds and then re-estimates the threat categories of species based on IUCN Red List criteria. Species richness of the “soon to be threatened” species are then put on map and compared with the projected spatial patterns of deforestation and current reserve networks. This way the authors identify i) currently important areas that have high number of species that are going to become threatened by future forest loss, ii) “crisis areas”, i.e. areas that are going to be deforested and have high richness of future threatened species, iii) “refugia”, i.e. areas with high species richness that will remain intact also in the future, and iv) irreplaceable sites of future threatened species. The authors then report gaps in the current reserve network and point out recommendations for future conservation actions.
Getting the first step right in modelling future species distributions
Owing to our recent interest in different approaches to modelling extinction risk, and because climate change impacts on biodiversity and conservation is always one of our key interests, we discussed a paper by Barbet-Massin et al. (2010). The authors state that considering the full range of a species is essential for modelling future climatic suitability within a region of interest. For evidence, they provide a comparison of using species occurrence data only within Europe versus considering the full Western Palearctic region. The loss of climatic suitability is decreased when the input data for modelling consists of a larger area. The authors show that extending the geographical space also tends to extend the environmental space which is suitable for the species according to the input data, which makes it more likely for a species to maintain suitable climate space in the course of climate change. Continue reading