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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
A Super-Ensemble Approach To Map Land Cover Types With High Resolution Over Data-Sparse African Savanna Landscapes, Lei Song, Anna Bond Estes, Lyndon Despard Estes
A Super-Ensemble Approach To Map Land Cover Types With High Resolution Over Data-Sparse African Savanna Landscapes, Lei Song, Anna Bond Estes, Lyndon Despard Estes
Geography
Accurate and timely land cover products are critical inputs for landscape planning, and provide key information for biodiversity conservation and food security. However, poor mapping quality and low resolution are considerable issues in existing land cover maps over the African savanna, where land use is complex and changing rapidly, and necessary ground-truth data are sparse and hard to obtain. To overcome this problem, to make optimal use of existing maps, and to minimize manual training data collection, we developed a three-stage ensemble method to make land cover maps. In the first stage, we extracted the consensus of multiple existing land …
Natural Climate Solutions For Canada, C. Ronnie Drever, Susan C. Cook-Patton, Fardausi Akhter, Pascal H. Badiou, Gail L. Chmura, Scott J. Davidson, Raymond L. Desjardins, Andrew Dyk, Joseph E. Fargione, Max Fellows, Ben Filewod, Margot Hessing-Lewis, Susantha Jayasundara, William S. Keeton, Timm Kroeger, Tyler J. Lark, Edward Le, Sara M. Leavitt, Marie Eve Leclerc, Tony C. Lemprière, Juha Metsaranta, Brian Mcconkey, Eric Neilson, Guillaume Peterson St-Laurent, Danijela Puric-Mladenovic, Sebastien Rodrigue, Raju Y. Soolanayakanahally, Seth A. Spawn, Maria Strack, Carolyn Smyth, Naresh Thevathasan, Mihai Voicu, Christopher A. Williams
Natural Climate Solutions For Canada, C. Ronnie Drever, Susan C. Cook-Patton, Fardausi Akhter, Pascal H. Badiou, Gail L. Chmura, Scott J. Davidson, Raymond L. Desjardins, Andrew Dyk, Joseph E. Fargione, Max Fellows, Ben Filewod, Margot Hessing-Lewis, Susantha Jayasundara, William S. Keeton, Timm Kroeger, Tyler J. Lark, Edward Le, Sara M. Leavitt, Marie Eve Leclerc, Tony C. Lemprière, Juha Metsaranta, Brian Mcconkey, Eric Neilson, Guillaume Peterson St-Laurent, Danijela Puric-Mladenovic, Sebastien Rodrigue, Raju Y. Soolanayakanahally, Seth A. Spawn, Maria Strack, Carolyn Smyth, Naresh Thevathasan, Mihai Voicu, Christopher A. Williams
Geography
Alongside the steep reductions needed in fossil fuel emissions, natural climate solutions (NCS) represent readily deployable options that can contribute to Canada's goals for emission reductions. We estimate the mitigation potential of 24 NCS related to the protection, management, and restoration of natural systems that can also deliver numerous co-benefits, such as enhanced soil productivity, clean air and water, and biodiversity conservation. NCS can provide up to 78.2 (41.0 to 115.1) Tg CO2e/year (95% CI) of mitigation annually in 2030 and 394.4 (173.2 to 612.4) Tg CO2e cumulatively between 2021 and 2030, with 34% available at ≤CAD 50/Mg CO2e. Avoided …
Evaluating Wildlife Vulnerability To Mercury Pollution From Artisanal And Small-Scale Gold Mining In Madre De Dios, Peru, K. E. Markham, Florencia Sangermano
Evaluating Wildlife Vulnerability To Mercury Pollution From Artisanal And Small-Scale Gold Mining In Madre De Dios, Peru, K. E. Markham, Florencia Sangermano
Geography
Illegal, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) often occurs in remote highly biodiverse areas, such as the Madre de Dios region of Peru. Mercury used in gold mining bioaccumulates in the environment and poses developmental, hormonal, and neurological threats to wildlife. The impact of ASGM on biodiversity remains largely unknown. We used geographic information science to create a spatial model of pollution risk from mining sites, in order to predict locations and species assemblages at risk. Multicriteria evaluation was used to determine how flow accumulation, distance from mining areas, total suspended sediment load, and soil porosity influenced the vulnerability of …
Reconciling Agriculture, Carbon And Biodiversity In A Savannah Transformation Frontier, Lyndon Estes, T. Searchinger, M. Spiegel, D. Tian, S. Sichinga, M. Mwale, L. Kehoe, T. Kuemmerle, A. Berven, N. Chaney, J. Sheffield, E. F. Wood, K. K. Caylor
Reconciling Agriculture, Carbon And Biodiversity In A Savannah Transformation Frontier, Lyndon Estes, T. Searchinger, M. Spiegel, D. Tian, S. Sichinga, M. Mwale, L. Kehoe, T. Kuemmerle, A. Berven, N. Chaney, J. Sheffield, E. F. Wood, K. K. Caylor
Geography
Rapidly rising populations and likely increases in incomes in sub-Saharan Africa make tens of millions of hectares of cropland expansion nearly inevitable, even with large increases in crop yields. Much of that expansion is likely to occur in higher rainfall savannas, with substantial costs to biodiversity and carbon storage. Zambia presents an acute example of this challenge, with an expected tripling of population by 2050, good potential to expand maize and soya bean production, and large areas of relatively undisturbed miombo woodland and associated habitat types of high biodiversity value. Here, we present a new model designed to explore the …
High Carbon And Biodiversity Costs From Converting Africa's Wet Savannahs To Cropland, Timothy D. Searchinger, Lyndon Estes, Philip K. Thornton, Tim Beringer, An Notenbaert, Daniel Rubenstein, Ralph Heimlich, Rachel Licker, Mario Herrero
High Carbon And Biodiversity Costs From Converting Africa's Wet Savannahs To Cropland, Timothy D. Searchinger, Lyndon Estes, Philip K. Thornton, Tim Beringer, An Notenbaert, Daniel Rubenstein, Ralph Heimlich, Rachel Licker, Mario Herrero
Geography
Do the wet savannahs and shrublands of Africa provide a large reserve of potential croplands to produce food staples or bioenergy with low carbon and biodiversity costs? We find that only small percentages of these lands have meaningful potential to be low-carbon sources of maize (1/42%) or soybeans (9.5-11.5%), meaning that their conversion would release at least one-third less carbon per ton of crop than released on average for the production of those crops on existing croplands. Factoring in land-use change, less than 1% is likely to produce cellulosic ethanol that would meet European standards for greenhouse gas reductions. Biodiversity …
Evaluating The Effects Of Common-Pool Resource Institutions And Market Forces On Species Richness And Forest Cover In Ecuadorian Indigenous Kichwa Communities, Johan A. Oldekop, Anthony J. Bebbington, Karl Hennermann, Julia Mcmorrow, David A. Springate, Bolier Torres, Nathan K. Truelove, Niklas Tysklind, Santiago Villamarín, Richard F. Preziosi
Evaluating The Effects Of Common-Pool Resource Institutions And Market Forces On Species Richness And Forest Cover In Ecuadorian Indigenous Kichwa Communities, Johan A. Oldekop, Anthony J. Bebbington, Karl Hennermann, Julia Mcmorrow, David A. Springate, Bolier Torres, Nathan K. Truelove, Niklas Tysklind, Santiago Villamarín, Richard F. Preziosi
Geography
We compare conservation outcomes between a protected area (PA) and four indigenous common-property regimes (CPRs) under differing degrees of market integration in the Ecuadorian Amazon. We first assess how market forces and common-pool resource institutions governing processes of forest conversion affect biodiversity and forest cover, and whether institutions mitigate the effect of market forces. We then analyze how biodiversity and forest cover differ between a PA, and communities with different market access. Finally, we link biodiversity and forest cover changes within communities to differences in land-use practices. While we show similar levels of forest cover and biodiversity between the PA …
Climate Change: Helping Nature Survive The Human Response, Will R. Turner, Bethany A. Bradley, Lyndon D. Estes, David G. Hole, Michael Oppenheimer, David S. Wilcove
Climate Change: Helping Nature Survive The Human Response, Will R. Turner, Bethany A. Bradley, Lyndon D. Estes, David G. Hole, Michael Oppenheimer, David S. Wilcove
Geography
Climate change poses profound, direct, and well-documented threats to biodiversity. A significant fraction of Earth's species is at risk of extinction due to changing precipitation and temperature regimes, rising and acidifying oceans, and other factors. There is also growing awareness of the diversity and magnitude of responses, both proactive and reactive, that people will undertake as lives and livelihoods are affected by climate change. Yet to date few studies have examined the relationship between these two powerful forces. The natural systems upon which people depend, already under direct assault from climate change, are further threatened by how we respond to …
Household Land Management And Biodiversity: Secondary Succession In A Forest-Agriculture Mosaic In Southern Mexico, Rinku Roy Chowdhury
Household Land Management And Biodiversity: Secondary Succession In A Forest-Agriculture Mosaic In Southern Mexico, Rinku Roy Chowdhury
Geography
This study evaluates anthropogenic and ecological dimensions of secondary forest succession in Mexico's southern Yucatán peninsular region, a hotspot of biodiversity and tropical deforestation. Secondary succession in particular constitutes an ecologically and economically important process, driven by and strongly influencing land management and local ecosystem structures and dynamics. As agents of local land management, smallholding farmers in communal, i.e., ejido lands affect rates of forest change, biodiversity, and sustainability within and beyond their land parcels. This research uses household survey's and land parcel mapping in two ejidos located along the buffer of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve to analyze how household …