Eric Lonsdorf

Modeling multiple ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, commodity production, and tradeoffs at landscape scales

Nature provides a wide range of benefits to people. There is increasing consensus about the importance of incorporating these “ecosystem services” into resource management decisions, but quantifying the levels and values of these services has proven difficult. We use a spatially explicit modeling tool, Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), to predict changes in ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, and commodity production levels. We apply InVEST to stakeholder-defined scenarios of land-use/land-cover change in the Willamette Basin, Oregon. We found that scenarios that received high scores for a variety of ecosystem services also had high scores for biodiversity, suggesting there is little tradeoff between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. Scenarios involving more development had higher commodity production values, but lower levels of biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. However, including payments for carbon sequestration alleviates this tradeoff. Quantifying ecosystem services in a spatially explicit manner, and analyzing tradeoffs between them, can help to make natural resource decisions more effective, efficient, and defensible.

Efficiency of incentives to jointly increase carbon sequestration and species conservation on a landscape

We develop an integrated model to predict private land-use decisions in response to policy incentives designed to increase the provision of carbon sequestration and species conservation across heterogeneous landscapes. Using data from the Willamette Basin, Oregon, we compare the provision of carbon sequestration and species conservation under five simple policies that offer payments for conservation. We evaluate policy performance compared with the maximum feasible combinations of carbon sequestration and species conservation on the landscape for various conservation budgets. None of the conservation payment policies produce increases in carbon sequestration and species conservation that approach the maximum potential gains on the landscape. Our results show that policies aimed at increasing the provision of carbon sequestration do not necessarily increase species conservation and that highly targeted policies do not necessarily do as well as more general policies.

Modelling pollination services across agricultural landscapes

BACKGROUND AND AIMSnCrop pollination by bees and other animals is an essential ecosystem service. Ensuring the maintenance of the service requires a full understanding of the contributions of landscape elements to pollinator populations and crop pollination. Here, the first quantitative model that predicts pollinator abundance on a landscape is described and tested.nnnMETHODSnUsing information on pollinator nesting resources, floral resources and foraging distances, the model predicts the relative abundance of pollinators within nesting habitats. From these nesting areas, it then predicts relative abundances of pollinators on the farms requiring pollination services. Model outputs are compared with data from coffee in Costa Rica, watermelon and sunflower in California and watermelon in New Jersey-Pennsylvania (NJPA).nnnKEY RESULTSnResults from Costa Rica and California, comparing field estimates of pollinator abundance, richness or services with model estimates, are encouraging, explaining up to 80 % of variance among farms. However, the model did not predict observed pollinator abundances on NJPA, so continued model improvement and testing are necessary. The inability of the model to predict pollinator abundances in the NJPA landscape may be due to not accounting for fine-scale floral and nesting resources within the landscapes surrounding farms, rather than the logic of our model.nnnCONCLUSIONSnThe importance of fine-scale resources for pollinator service delivery was supported by sensitivity analyses indicating that the models predictions depend largely on estimates of nesting and floral resources within crops. Despite the need for more research at the finer-scale, the approach fills an important gap by providing quantitative and mechanistic model from which to evaluate policy decisions and develop land-use plans that promote pollination conservation and service delivery.

Economic-based projections of future land use in the conterminous United States under alternative policy scenarios

Land-use change significantly contributes to biodiversity loss, invasive species spread, changes in biogeochemical cycles, and the loss of ecosystem services. Planning for a sustainable future requires a thorough understanding of expected land use at the fine spatial scales relevant for modeling many ecological processes and at dimensions appropriate for regional or national-level policy making. Our goal was to construct and parameterize an econometric model of land-use change to project future land use to the year 2051 at a fine spatial scale across the conterminous United States under several alternative land-use policy scenarios. We parameterized the econometric model of land-use change with the National Resource Inventory (NRI) 1992 and 1997 land-use data for 844 000 sample points. Land-use transitions were estimated for five land-use classes (cropland, pasture, range, forest, and urban). We predicted land-use change under four scenarios: business-as-usual, afforestation, removal of agricultural subsidies, and increased urban rents. Our results for the business-as-usual scenario showed widespread changes in land use, affecting 36% of the land area of the conterminous United States, with large increases in urban land (79%) and forest (7%), and declines in cropland (-16%) and pasture (-13%). Areas with particularly high rates of land-use change included the larger Chicago area, parts of the Pacific Northwest, and the Central Valley of California. However, while land-use change was substantial, differences in results among the four scenarios were relatively minor. The only scenario that was markedly different was the afforestation scenario, which resulted in an increase of forest area that was twice as high as the business-as-usual scenario. Land-use policies can affect trends, but only so much. The basic economic and demographic factors shaping land-use changes in the United States are powerful, and even fairly dramatic policy changes, showed only moderate deviations from the business-as-usual scenario. Given the magnitude of predicted land-use change, any attempts to identify a sustainable future or to predict the effects of climate change will have to take likely land-use changes into account. Econometric models that can simulate land-use change for broad areas with fine resolution are necessary to predict trends in ecosystem service provision and biodiversity persistence.

Adaptive management in the U.S. National Wildlife Refuge System: Science-management partnerships for conservation delivery

Adaptive management is an approach to recurrent decision making in which uncertainty about the decision is reduced over time through comparison of outcomes predicted by competing models against observed values of those outcomes. The National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is a large land management program charged with making natural resource management decisions, which often are made under considerable uncertainty, severe operational constraints, and conditions that limit ability to precisely carry out actions as intended. The NWRS presents outstanding opportunities for the application of adaptive management, but also difficult challenges. We describe two cooperative programs between the Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey to implement adaptive management at scales ranging from small, single refuge applications to large, multi-refuge, multi-region projects. Our experience to date suggests three important attributes common to successful implementation: a vigorous multi-partner collaboration, practical and informative decision framework components, and a sustained commitment to the process. Administrators in both agencies should consider these attributes when developing programs to promote the use and acceptance of adaptive management in the NWRS.

Mapping the margin: comparing marginal values of tropical forest remnants for pollination services.

Natural ecosystems benefit human communities by providing ecosystem services such as water purification and crop pollination. Mapping ecosystem service values has become popular, but most are static snapshots of average value. Estimating instead the economic impacts of specific ecosystem changes can better inform typical resource decisions. Here we develop an approach to mapping marginal values, those resulting from the next unit of ecosystem change, across landscapes. We demonstrate the approach with a recent model of crop pollination services in Costa Rica, simulating deforestation events to predict resulting marginal changes in pollination services to coffee farms. We find that marginal losses from deforestation vary from zero to US

A Retrospective Analysis of Factors Correlated to Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) Respiratory Health at Gombe National Park, Tanzania

700/ha across the landscape. Financial risks for farmers from these losses and marginal benefits of forest restoration show similar spatial variation. Marginal values are concentrated in relatively few forest parcels not identified using average value. These parcels lack substitutes: nearby forest parcels that can supply services in the event of loss. Indeed, the marginal value of forest parcels declines exponentially with the density of surrounding forest cover. The approach we develop is applicable to any ecosystem service. Combined with information on costs, it can help target conservation or restoration efforts to optimize benefits to people and biodiversity.

Survival, abundance, and capture rate of eastern cottontail rabbits in an urban park

Infectious disease and other health hazards have been hypothesized to pose serious threats to the persistence of wild ape populations. Respiratory disease outbreaks have been shown to be of particular concern for several wild chimpanzee study sites, leading managers, and researchers to hypothesize that diseases originating from and/or spread by humans pose a substantial risk to the long-term survival of chimpanzee populations. The total chimpanzee population in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, has declined from 120–150 in the 1960s to about 100 by the end of 2007, with death associated with observable signs of disease as the leading cause of mortality. We used a historical data set collected from 1979 to 1987 to investigate the baseline rates of respiratory illness in chimpanzees at Gombe National Park, Tanzania, and to analyze the impact of human-related factors (e.g., banana feeding, visits to staff quarters) and non-human-related factors (e.g., sociality, season) on chimpanzee respiratory illness rates. We found that season and banana feeding were the most significant predictors of respiratory health clinical signs during this time period. We discuss these results in the context of management options for the reduction of disease risk and the importance of long-term observational data for conservation.

Differential response of nest predators to the presence of a decoy parent in artificial nests

Eastern cottontail rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus) are common, conspicuous denizens of urban environments. They are associated with human-wildlife conflict due to vegetation damage. Prior to this study, population dynamics of this species in urban environments remained largely uncharacterized. For three consecutive winters, we used classic field ecology methods (mark-recapture and mark–resight surveys) to estimate demographic parameters of rabbits in a city park in Chicago, Illinois. Rabbits occurred in densities as high as 16.3 rabbits/ha, which is comparatively high for the Midwestern United States. An annual survivorship of 30.4u2009±u200912.9xa0% SE was similar to that observed in natural environments in similar climates. This result refuted our hypothesis that urban rabbits would have higher annual survival rates than rabbits in natural settings due to food subsidies supplied by landscaping in parks. Mean distance between trap locations for rabbits trapped three or more times was 43.14u2009±u200930.01xa0m SD, suggesting that rabbits in the urban study area had smaller home ranges than rabbits in non-human-dominated habitats. This study contributes to our understanding of population dynamics of a human-wildlife conflict species in urban environments and provides useful information for managers dealing with damage caused by rabbits. The mark-resight method employed here could be used by managers to estimate pre- and post-management population sizes of other conflict species, for example Canada geese (Branta Canadensis), in parks and green spaces, provided that the species is trappable, visible, and individuals have relatively small home ranges.

Null models for population variation in morph frequencies in polymorphic damselflies

Capsule Mammalian and avian predators respond differently to decoys. Aims To investigate if parental attendance, which is often not accounted for in artificial nest studies, could alter predator guilds and predation rates. Methods To analyze the effects of simulated parental attendance on nest predation trends we implemented decoys of mounted American Robin Turdus migratorius specimens. We set up 22 nest-sites in an Illinois (USA) forest with control (no decoy) and experimental (with decoy) nests, the latter of which simulated parental attendance. Motion-sensitive cameras and bite-mark impressions on plasticine eggs and quail eggs identified predators. Results We found that simulated parental attendance significantly reduced nest predation rates: 61% of the 22 paired treatments were totally depredated, and more control nests (77.3%) were depredated in comparison with nests with decoys (9.1%). Mammalian predators predominantly attacked nests with decoys and avian predators predominantly attacked control nests. Conclusions Using taxidermic decoys in artificial nest experiments may improve the emulation of predation trends of natural nests, while revealing that parental attendance differentially affects predators.