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1997

Biodiversity

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

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 …

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Cloning And Conservation Of Biological Diversity: Paradox, Panacea, Or Pandora's Box?, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit Bawa, Leah Gorman Jul 1997

Cloning And Conservation Of Biological Diversity: Paradox, Panacea, Or Pandora's Box?, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit Bawa, Leah Gorman

Shaily Menon

The success of a Scottish team in cloning a mammal from an adult tissue cell has generated considerable speculation in the popular press about potential applications to conservation biology. Possibilities that have been mentioned include cloning endangered species and creating gene banks for the germplasm of rare species. Sensational or inaccurate reports might encourage the mistaken notion that cloning technology is more advanced or reliable than it actually is. More important, such reports might foster the myth that there is no longer an urgency to conserve endangered species or their habitats as long as we have frozen germplasm and cloning …

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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 …

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Damming The West: Development Of Western Water Resources, Gilbert F. White Jun 1997

Damming The West: Development Of Western Water Resources, Gilbert F. White

Dams: Water and Power in the New West (Summer Conference, June 2-4)

8 pages.

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Alternative Futures For The Region Of Camp Pendleton California U.S.A. Oak Grove Valley, Richard E. Toth Jan 1997

Alternative Futures For The Region Of Camp Pendleton California U.S.A. Oak Grove Valley, Richard E. Toth

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

The U.5. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA Science Advisory Board, in its report Reducing Risk: Priorities and Strategies for Environmental Protection (U.S. EPA, 1990), identified the highest priority environmental risks to the United States, based primarily on geographic extent and irreversibility of effects. Habitat modification and loss of species diversity were ranked at the highest level of ecological risk. Habitat and species diversity are tightly coupled; species diversity at a regional level cannot be maintained without maintaining quality habitat. The Science Advisory Board expressed the view shared by many ecologists that natural habitats and their associated assemblages of plants and animals …

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Effectiveness Of The Protected Area Network In Biodiversity Conservation: A Case-Study Of Meghalaya State, M. Latif Khan, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit Bawa Dec 1996

Effectiveness Of The Protected Area Network In Biodiversity Conservation: A Case-Study Of Meghalaya State, M. Latif Khan, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit Bawa

Shaily Menon

The North-Eastern region of India is significant for biodiversity conservation because of its floristic richness and high levels of endemism. Deforestation levels are high in the region due to anthropogenic pressures. We accessed various literature sources to create a database for Meghalaya state containing information on plant species, habit, altitudinal distribution, endemism, and endangered status. Information on the existing protected area network (type, extent, and altitudinal representation) was added to the database. The database was used to assess the effectiveness of the existing protected area network in conserving the floristic biodiversity of the state. Of a total of 3331 plant …

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Biodiversity Monitoring: The Missing Ingredient, Kamaljit Bawa, Shaily Menon Dec 1996

Biodiversity Monitoring: The Missing Ingredient, Kamaljit Bawa, Shaily Menon

Shaily Menon

With mounting losses in biological diversity, inventorying and monitoring of biodiversity to assess the magnitude and rate of losses are emerging as dominant themes in conservation biology. Inventorying has been defined as the surveying, sorting, cataloging, quantifying and mapping of entities ranging from genes to landscapes1 and monitoring has been defined as the surveillance of the compliance with or deviation from a predetermined standard2. Renner and Ricklefs3 argued that rushed inventories will compromise scientific rigor and have little influence on decision making. More recently, Stork et al.4 argued that losses in biological diversity are so severe that inventorying and monitoring …

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