John E. Quinn

Global Perspectives on Birds in Agricultural Landscapes

Earth is home for about 10,000 bird species. They inhabit all continents and interface with agroecosystems worldwide. Bird migrations across continents and nations make birds a truly global phenomenon of broad but complex conservation appeal. Global agricultural expansion during the past 200 years and intensification in the last 50 have been key drivers in global habitat loss and in declines of about 60% of the birds listed on the IUCN red list. Agricultural intensification is a continued concern as is expansion in tropical areas such as Latin America. Maintaining field-edge and set-aside habitats and using lower-intensity practices in production areas are important options for sustaining bird populations globally. Many key threats to birds in agroecosystems are global but specific impacts and management options may differ among geographical areas. Global climate change creates uncertainties for agriculture and birds, including impacts on bird migration and nesting, and concerns about synchrony between birds, habitats, and food resources. Climate change adds to other existing challenges of habitat loss and fragmentation, urbanization, migration barriers, and uncertain food resources. The push for biofuels has resulted in production intensification and habitat losses, especially removal of set-aside lands. Wildlife-friendly farming approaches can facilitate bird movement in fragmented agroecosystems and can provide important habitat for agricultural species and migratory birds. Wildlife-friendly and land sparing approaches are currently being debated toward the goal of sustaining biodiversity and food production. Global influences from social and political systems affect agroecosystems, people, and birds.

Identifying opportunities for conservation embedded in cropland anthromes

Anthromes characterize terrestrial ecological patterns in terms of human populations and how these populations use the land. However, data are needed to assess the conservation value of habitats embedded in anthromes, particularly when possible conservation opportunities do not reflect the traditional focus of conservation in a region. One such region is the central Great Plains of North America where the grassland biome has been replaced by a cropland anthrome with a landscape mosaic dominated by arable crops with small patches of grass and woody cover embedded within. Grassland birds have been the primary focus of avian conservation research and practice, a reflection of the biome classification. Yet conservation of other bird species may be a missed conservation opportunity better identified via anthromes. In this project we evaluated the variation in abundance of shrubland and open forest birds in response to heterogeneity and availability of woody and grass cover at local (100xa0m) and landscape (5,000xa0m) scales. We found that local heterogeneity, a trait of croplands not grasslands, was the best predictor of abundance, with five species of conservation concern more abundant in heterogeneous sites. There was limited response to woody cover and a mixed response across scale to grassland cover with local response positive and landscape negative. These data suggest that increasing heterogeneity in the Great Plains cropland anthrome may provide a unique conservation opportunity. In particular, farm systems have the capacity to complement regional species conservation efforts by increasing heterogeneity. Importantly these conservation efforts may not come at the expense of grassland bird conservation or crop production. The limited response to extensive grassland cover at the larger scale suggests that in Great Plains agroecosystems, a diverse mix of crops, pasture, and linear habitats would allow farmers to continue to produce food while contributing to the conservation of species of concern.

Sharing a vision for biodiversity conservation and agriculture

Conservation biology and agriculture share a common landscape and a future that demands novel research and practice. Inevitably, limited resources create conflict in the absence of a shared vision forward. Therefore, given the similarities in proximate and even ultimate goals, we must envision a joint path toward renewable and resilient agroecosystems. In this commentary, I highlight the root of past conflicts and share a vision of progress forward that encompasses mutually beneficial outcomes. I include six areas of anticipatory research and inquiry at the intersection of conservation biology and agriculture to better identify shared goals and facilitate more frequent communication among disciplines.

Digging Deeper: A Case Study of Farmer Conceptualization of Ecosystem Services in the American South

AbstractThe interest in improved environmental sustainability of agriculture via biodiversity provides an opportunity for placed-based research on the conceptualization and articulation of ecosystem services. Yet, few studies have explored how farmers conceptualize the relationship between their farm and nature and by extension ecosystem services. Examining how farmers in the Southern Piedmont of South Carolina discuss and explain the role of nature on their farm, we create a detail-rich picture of how they perceive ecosystem services and their contributions to the agroeconomy. Using 34 semi-structured interviews, we developed a detail-rich qualitative portrait of these farmers’ conceptualizations of ecosystem services. Farmers’ conceptualization of four ecosystem services: provisioning, supporting, regulating, and cultural are discussed, as well as articulation of disservices. Results of interviews show that most interviewees expressed a basic understanding of the relationship between nature and agriculture and many articulated benefits provided by nature to their farm. Farmers referred indirectly to most services, though they did not attribute services to biodiversity or ecological function. While farmers have a general understanding and appreciation of nature, they lack knowledge on specific ways biodiversity benefits their farm. This lack of knowledge may ultimately limit farmer decision-making and land management to utilize ecosystem services for environmental and economic benefits. These results suggest that additional communication with farmers about ecosystem services is needed as our understanding of these benefits increases. This change may require collaboration between conservation biology professionals and extension and agriculture professionals to extended successful biomass provisioning services to other ecosystem services.n

A farm-scale biodiversity and ecosystem services assessment tool: The healthy farm index

Farm management focused on maximizing biomass production results in biological simplification and ultimately a degraded production potential for the future. Despite the large and growing body of evidence pointing to the need to restore biodiversity to farm systems, incorporation of biodiversity and ecosystem services into local agricultural land-use decision-making remains limited. The lack of planned and associated biodiversity may reduce resiliency of local managed ecosystems and add management costs; however, the tradeoff for individual landowners of greater diversity is increased management complexity and uncertainty. To assist farmers in managing biodiversity and to encourage ecological thinking, we developed the Healthy Farm Index, a farm-scale tool that complements existing farm assessment tools by integrating multiple metrics and outputs suitable for applied decision-making and annual evaluation. In this article, we describe the impetus for the index development and the structure of the index and through a case study apply the index and discuss its varied outputs and applications.

Application of a coupled human natural system framework to organize and frame challenges and opportunities for biodiversity conservation on private lands.

Conservation science addresses the complementary goals of preventing future biodiversity loss while sustaining critical human foundations. In this paper we use two case studies focused on land management to discuss how private lands conservation can be more effective by considering how planning and decision making reflects a coupled human and natural system (CHANS). The first case study focuses on conservation easements in the temperate forests of eastern United States; the second focuses on conservation opportunities in Midwestern agroecosystems, in particular the value of agroforestry. For each case study we discuss the natural and human subsystems, how elements and interactions within and between subsystems (as organized by elements of CHANS) create challenges and opportunities for conservation, and the importance of considering relevant scales of subsystems. Review of these case studies demonstrates that additional insight gained by using a CHANS perspective, particularly given how the subsystems interact at different scales, improves identification of important points of social and ecological overlap, ultimately enhancing conservation research, planning, and practice.

Building Resilience: Modeling Resilience Concepts Using Legos

Resiliency is the ability or capacity of an object, individual, or system to recover from pressure, change, a challenge, or disturbance. This concept is especially important for human and natural systems experiencing extensive disturbances due to human activities. Resilience is a key concept in environmental and sustainability studies that provides a model to understand changes to human and natural systems and for redesigning current, and creating new, institutions and ecosystems. Importantly, resilience is applied across disciplines and thus serves as a unifying concept in the study of human–environment relationships and their sustainability. The goal of the learning activity described in this chapter is to engage students in creating physical models of resilience concepts to aid them in creating personal mental models of what resilience concepts are and how they relate to other topics. After completing this activity, students should be able to (1) define “resilience” and provide examples related to individuals and social–ecological systems, (2) explain key concepts of resilience, (3) apply resilience concepts to build a model using toy building blocks that they can explain and defend, and (4) compare and contrast building-block resilience models with individual, social, and ecological examples.

Reproductive and developmental effects of tributyltin, bisphenol A, and 17 β-estradiol in pale anemones (Aiptasia pallida)

The effects of exposure to estrogenic endocrine-disrupting chemicals in most clades of marine invertebrates are unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine if exposure to 3 such chemicals modulates asexual reproduction and development in pale anemones (Aiptasia pallida). Anemones (n = 18 in each group) were exposed for 21 days to one of 8 treatments: seawater alone, seawater containing vehicle, or seawater containing a low (environmentally relevant) or high dose of tributyltin (TBT), bisphenol A (BPA), or 17 β-estradiol (E2) dissolved in vehicle. The number of asexually generated pedal lacerates produced by each anemone and the number of days required for each lacerate to develop a stomodeum and tentacles were recorded. At the end of the study, parent anemones were homogenized, and total protein content (as a proxy for body size) was quantified by Bradford assay. The roles of chemical treatment and parent anemone size in determining lacerate production were evaluated with binomial-Poisson hurdle models, and their roles in determining development rate were evaluated with generalized linear models. Application of model selection criteria suggested that exposure to E2 (at 45 ng/L) but not to TBT or BPA was associated with increased pedal lacerate production. Neither low nor high doses of any chemical tested affected the number of days required for lacerates to develop into juveniles. Although cnidarians are not thought to express genes homologous to vertebrate estrogen receptors, evidence from this and other studies suggests that estrogens, at least at high doses, are bioactive in these basal metazoans.