Anca Sarbu

Managing protected areas under climate change: challenges and priorities.

The implementation of adaptation actions in local conservation management is a new and complex task with multiple facets, influenced by factors differing from site to site. A transdisciplinary perspective is therefore required to identify and implement effective solutions. To address this, the International Conference on Managing Protected Areas under Climate Change brought together international scientists, conservation managers, and decision-makers to discuss current experiences with local adaptation of conservation management. This paper summarizes the main issues for implementing adaptation that emerged from the conference. These include a series of conclusions and recommendations on monitoring, sensitivity assessment, current and future management practices, and legal and policy aspects. A range of spatial and temporal scales must be considered in the implementation of climate-adapted management. The adaptation process must be area-specific and consider the ecosystem and the social and economic conditions within and beyond protected area boundaries. However, a strategic overview is also needed: management at each site should be informed by conservation priorities and likely impacts of climate change at regional or even wider scales. Acting across these levels will be a long and continuous process, requiring coordination with actors outside the “traditional” conservation sector. To achieve this, a range of research, communication, and policy/legal actions is required. We identify a series of important actions that need to be taken at different scales to enable managers of protected sites to adapt successfully to a changing climate.

Symphyotrichum ciliatum an invasive species in the romanian flora: Contributions to the knowledge of the vegetative organs structure

Abstract Symphyotrichum ciliatum (Ledeb.) G.L. Nesom is an adventive plant first reported in Romania in 1967, which has spread rapidly over the last few decades in Moldova, Muntenia and, more recently, in Transylvania. Although the species has been known for a while in Europe and Romania, there is no information about the anatomy of the vegetative organs of this invasive taxon. This paper presents a series of structural aspects of the vegetative body, of Symphyotrichum ciliatum collected from a sandy and salty substrate (Sacalin Island - Danube Delta). These demonstrate the ability of this plant to adapt to the environment and its capacity to achieve a wide spread. As such, although this plant is an annual species, the root and stem achieve secondary growth in their width, which offers robustness to the corm; the palisade tissue has an ecvifacial disposition which enhances efficiency in capturing light, especially on sandy soil that reflects light; there are aeriferous and aquiferous formations that ensure efficiency in adapting to a wet and relatively salty environment. These results are documented by original photographs of optical microscopy and a distribution map of the taxon in Romania as at 2011.