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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Local Engagements With Urban Bushland: Moving Beyond Bounded Practice For Urban Biodiversity Management, Nicholas J. Gill, Gordon R. Waitt, Lesley M. Head Jun 2012

Local Engagements With Urban Bushland: Moving Beyond Bounded Practice For Urban Biodiversity Management, Nicholas J. Gill, Gordon R. Waitt, Lesley M. Head

Nicholas J Gill

Management of ecologically significant urban green space is likely to be increasingly governed by biodiversity policy frameworks. These frameworks tend to reproduce bounded thinking and strategies that separate green space from its context and characterise people as a disturbance. Like many green spaces these ecologically significant areas are highly valued by visitors and nearby residents. Green space is important for engagement with nature, social interaction, and for respite from daily life: it is strongly connected to surrounding areas and to the lives of people who live there. The dissonance between bounded management thinking and the role of green space in …


Local Engagements With Urban Bushland: Moving Beyond Bounded Practice For Urban Biodiversity Management, Nicholas J. Gill, Gordon R. Waitt, Lesley M. Head Aug 2011

Local Engagements With Urban Bushland: Moving Beyond Bounded Practice For Urban Biodiversity Management, Nicholas J. Gill, Gordon R. Waitt, Lesley M. Head

Lesley Head

Management of ecologically significant urban green space is likely to be increasingly governed by biodiversity policy frameworks. These frameworks tend to reproduce bounded thinking and strategies that separate green space from its context and characterise people as a disturbance. Like many green spaces these ecologically significant areas are highly valued by visitors and nearby residents. Green space is important for engagement with nature, social interaction, and for respite from daily life: it is strongly connected to surrounding areas and to the lives of people who live there. The dissonance between bounded management thinking and the role of green space in …


Indicator Groups And Faunal Richness, Jerome K. Vanclay Oct 2009

Indicator Groups And Faunal Richness, Jerome K. Vanclay

Professor Jerome K Vanclay

Species richness is a popular indicator of ecosystem vitality, but is difficult to assess. Many natural resource managers seek an efficient bioindicator, but the link between candidate indicators and the richness of other taxononic groups remains elusive. A series of faunal surveys in the Mbalmayo Forest Reserve in Cameroon suggest that it may be possible to devise faunal bioindicators. The species richness of birds, of butterflies and of termites is significantly correlated with total faunal richness across eight species groups, suggesting that these groups may have potential as bioindicators, alone or in combination. Although expensive, further research is warranted because …


In The Heat Of The Law, It's Not Just Steam: Geothermal Resources And The Impact On Thermophile Biodiversity, Donald J. Kochan, Tiffany Grant Dec 2006

In The Heat Of The Law, It's Not Just Steam: Geothermal Resources And The Impact On Thermophile Biodiversity, Donald J. Kochan, Tiffany Grant

Donald J. Kochan

Significant research has been conducted into the utilization of geothermal resources as a ‘green’ energy source. However, minimal research has been conducted into geothermal resource utilization and depletion impacts on thermophile biodiversity. Thermophiles are organisms which have adapted over millions of year to extreme temperature and chemical compositions and exist in hot springs and other geothermal resources. Their ability to withstand high temperatures makes them invaluable to scientific and medical research. Current federal and California case law classify geothermal resources as a mineral, not a water resource. Acquisition of rights to develop a geothermal resource owned or reserved by the …


A Vegetation Based Approach To Biodiversity Gap Analysis In The Agastyamalai Region, Western Ghats, India, B. R. Ramesh, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit S. Bawa Nov 1997

A Vegetation Based Approach To Biodiversity Gap Analysis In The Agastyamalai Region, Western Ghats, India, B. R. Ramesh, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit S. Bawa

Shaily Menon

Protected areas in India have historically been established on an ad hoc basis with little attention to the conservation value of an area. This study focuses on a set of protected areas in the Agastyamalai region of the Western Ghats (WG), India. We examine forest loss and land-use changes in the study area from the early 1900s to 1960 and from 1960 to 1990. We use GIS to perform a biodiversity gap analysis of the protected areas in the study site. We produce a detailed map of existing floristic types and use it to generate layers corresponding to floristic species …


Applications Of Geographic Information Systems, Remote-Sensing, And A Landscape Ecology Approach To Biodiversity Conservation In The Western Ghats, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit S. Bawa Jun 1997

Applications Of Geographic Information Systems, Remote-Sensing, And A Landscape Ecology Approach To Biodiversity Conservation In The Western Ghats, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit S. Bawa

Shaily Menon

The mountains along the west coast of peninsular India, the Western Ghats, constitute one of the unique biological regions of the world. Rapidly occurring land-cover and land-use change in the Western Ghats has serious implications for the biodiversity of the region. Both landscape changes as well as the distribution of biodiversity are phenomena with strong spatial correlates. Recent developments in remote-sensing technology and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow the use of a landscape ecology and spatial analysis approach to the problem of deforestation and biodiversity conservation in the Western Ghats. Applications of this approach include analyses of land-cover and land-use …


Using Biodiversity Data To Assess Species--Habitat Relationships In Glacier National Park, Montana, Diane M. Debinski, Peter F. Brussard Nov 1994

Using Biodiversity Data To Assess Species--Habitat Relationships In Glacier National Park, Montana, Diane M. Debinski, Peter F. Brussard

Diane M. Debinski

Biodiversity surveys are becoming increasingly popular. However, standard analysis techniques for these data have not yet been developed. This paper explores the use of multivariate ordination techniques for assessing species—habitat relationships using biodiversity data. The research was conducted in Glacier National Park, Montana, and birds and butterflies were chosen as the taxonomic groups of study. Biodiversity assessment sites were established throughout a range of habitats and monitored from 1987 through 1989. Presence/absence sampling over the total number of sampling sites was used to classify species commonness and rarity. Approximately 86% of the historically recorded butterflies and 70% of the historically …