Jonathan P. Sadler

Volcanoes as agents of past environmental change

Sadler, J. Grattan, J. Volcanoes as agents of past environmental change. Global and Planetary Change. 1999. 21 pp 181-196

Ecological connectivity research in urban areas

Summary The successful movement of individuals is fundamental to life. Facilitating these movements by promoting ecological connectivity has become a central theme in ecology and conservation. Urban areas contain more than half of the worlds human population, and their potential to support biodiversity and to connect their citizens to nature is increasingly recognized. Promoting ecological connectivity within these areas is essential to reaching this potential. However, our current understanding of ecological connectivity within urban areas appears limited. We reviewed the published scientific literature to assess the state-of-the-art of ecological connectivity research in urban areas, summarized trends in study attributes and highlighted knowledge gaps. We found 174 papers that investigated ecological connectivity within urban areas. These papers addressed either structural (48) or functional connectivity (111), and some addressed both (15), but contained substantial geographic and taxonomic biases. These papers rarely defined the aspect of connectivity they were investigating and objective descriptions of the local urban context were uncommon. Formulated hypotheses or a priori predictions were typically unstated and many papers used suboptimal study designs and methods. We suggest future studies explicitly consider and quantify the landscape within their analyses and make greater use of available and rapidly developing tools and methods for measuring functional connectivity (e.g. biotelemetry or landscape genetics). We also highlight the need for studies to clearly define how the terms ‘urban’ and ‘connectivity’ have been applied. Knowledge gaps in ecological connectivity in urban areas remain, partly because the field is still in its infancy and partly because we must better capitalize on the state-of-the-art technological and analytical techniques that are increasingly available. Well-designed studies that employed high-resolution data and powerful analytical techniques highlight our abilities to quantify ecological connectivity in urban areas. These studies are exemplary, setting the standards for future research to facilitate data-driven and evidence-based biodiversity-friendly infrastructure planning in urban areas.

10,000 years of change: the Holocene Entomofauna of the British Isles

The fossil insect evidence for large scale and dramatic changes in the British landscape over the last 10,000 years is reviewed. Five main phases in the development of the British entomofauna are considered in detail: (i) Early Holocene warming and environments, (ii) afforestation, (iii) the maximum ‘Urwald’, (iv) deforestation and (v) the creation of the ‘culture-steppe’. These changes are discussed in terms of the interplay between ecological, climatic and human-induced changes to the environment. The fossil record indicates that during this process at least 44 species of invertebrates found in mature woodland, wetland and species rich grassland are no longer recorded in the UK. Increased habitat fragmentation as a result activity, perhaps against the backdrop of subtle climate change, is seen as the main cause of these losses.

Avian community responses to variability in river hydrology.

River flow is a major driver of morphological structure and community dynamics in riverine-floodplain ecosystems. Flow influences in-stream communities through changes in water velocity, depth, temperature, turbidity and nutrient fluxes, and perturbations in the organisation of lower trophic levels are cascaded through the food web, resulting in shifts in food availability for consumer species. River birds are sensitive to spatial and phenological mismatches with aquatic prey following flow disturbances; however, the role of flow as a determinant of riparian ecological structure remains poorly known. This knowledge is crucial to help to predict if, and how, riparian communities will be influenced by climate-induced changes in river flow characterised by more extreme high (i.e. flood) and/or low (i.e. drought) flow events. Here, we combine national-scale datasets of river bird surveys and river flow archives to understand how hydrological disturbance has affected the distribution of riparian species at higher trophic levels. Data were analysed for 71 river locations using a Generalized Additive Model framework and a model averaging procedure. Species had complex but biologically interpretable associations with hydrological indices, with species’ responses consistent with their ecology, indicating that hydrological-disturbance has implications for higher trophic levels in riparian food webs. Our quantitative analysis of river flow-bird relationships demonstrates the potential vulnerability of riparian species to the impacts of changing flow variability and represents an important contribution in helping to understand how bird communities might respond to a climate change-induced increase in the intensity of floods and droughts. Moreover, the success in relating parameters of river flow variability to species’ distributions highlights the need to include river flow data in climate change impact models of species’ distributions.

Dataset of the livability performance of the City of Birmingham, UK, as measured by its citizen wellbeing, resource security, resource efficiency and carbon emissions

This data article presents the UK City LIFE1 data set for the city of Birmingham, UK. UK City LIFE1 is a new, comprehensive and holistic method for measuring the livable sustainability performance of UK cities. The Birmingham data set comprises 346 indicators structured simultaneously (1) within a four-tier, outcome-based framework in order to aid in their interpretation (e.g., promote healthy living and healthy long lives, minimize energy use, uncouple economic vitality from CO2 emissions) and (2) thematically in order to complement government and disciplinary siloes (e.g., health, energy, economy, climate change). Birmingham data for the indicators are presented within an Excel spreadsheet with their type, units, geographic area, year, source, link to secondary data files, data collection method, data availability and any relevant calculations and notes. This paper provides a detailed description of UK city LIFE1 in order to enable comparable data sets to be produced for other UK cities. The Birmingham data set is made publically available at http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/3040/ to facilitate this and to enable further analyses. The UK City LIFE1 Birmingham data set has been used to understand what is known and what is not known about the livable sustainability performance of the city and to inform how Birmingham City Council can take action now to improve its understanding and its performance into the future (see “Improving city-scale measures of livable sustainability: A study of urban measurement and assessment through application to the city of Birmingham, UK” Leach et al. [2]).

The development of mobile application for conservation activity and wildlife in Indonesia

As a maritime country that consist of 17.504 islands, data collection and central monitoring have been a pressing concern in Indonesia. An efficient data collection process can help the decision maker to collect the accurate data to be processed as a decision and policy in the future. With conservation mobile used by all of the forest ranger in Indonesia, not only the biodiversity and wildlife could be managed properly but the performance of the conservation activity could be measure easily. In this paper, we develop an application for forest rangers to capture the data of biodiversity and conservation in Indonesia. This development was based on the latest law and policy in Indonesia to monitor the performance of conservation activity in Indonesia. It was developed by using Java programming language. The method we used is System Development Life Cycling (SDLC) and Unified Modelling Language (UML) 2.0 as the design model. The application was tested by using the method of the black box and the white box methodology.

Local and landscape drivers of aquatic-to-terrestrial subsidies in riparian ecosystems: a worldwide meta-analysis

Cross-boundary fluxes of organisms and matter, termed “subsidies”, are now recognized to be reciprocal and of roughly equal importance for both aquatic and terrestrial systems, even if terrestrial input to aquatic ecosystems has received most attention. The magnitude of aquatic to terrestrial subsidies is well documented, but the drivers behind these subsidies and their utilization by terrestrial consumers are characteristically local scale studies, limiting the inferences that can be drawn for broader geographic scales. We therefore built and analyzed a database of stable isotope data extracted from 21 studies worldwide, to identify both landscape and local scale variables that may affect the diet of terrestrial predators in riparian ecosystems. Our meta-analysis revealed a greater magnitude of aquatic-to-terrestrial subsidies (> 50%) than previously reported, albeit with large geographic and inter-annual variations. We demonstrated a large effect of landscape-scale factors on aquatic-to-terrestrial subsidies, particularly anthropogenic land use and tree cover. Local human population was the only relevant factor at the local scale. We also found that studies on landscape-scale and anthropogenic land use effects on aquatic-to-terrestrial subsidies are currently strongly under-represented in the ecological literature. Such studies are needed to improve our understanding of how land use and environmental change might influence future patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem function.

Avian Sensor Packages for Meteorological Measurements

AbstractThe increasing miniaturization of accurate, reliable meteorological sensors and logging systems allows the deployment of sensor packages on lightweight airborne platforms. Here, we demonstr...

The development of track record application for conservation activity and wildlife in Indonesia

Biodiversity loss is a global issue, but it is the pressing concern in mega-diverse countries, such as Indonesia. The lack of the data standardization and remote area spread on 17.504 islands made it hard to organize and to manage without the aid of any technology. In this paper, we develop an application for forest rangers to capture the data of biodiversity and conservation in Indonesia. This development was based on the latest law and policy in Indonesia to monitor the performance of conservation activity in Indonesia. It was developed by using Java programming language. The method we used is System Development Life Cycling (SDLC) and Unified Modelling Language (UML) 2.0 as the design model. The application was tested by using the method of the black box and the white box methodology.

Biological barriers to restoration: testing the biotic resistance hypothesis in an upland stream recovering from acidification

The biotic resistance hypothesis provides one of several explanations for the limited biological recovery of streams recovering chemically from acidification. The hypothesis proposes that acidification has changed the presence, abundance and interactions among species in acidified streams to the extent that acid-sensitive colonists cannot re-invade even where acidity has ameliorated. As a first step in testing for biotic resistance in streams, we conducted a field experiment to determine whether the success (growth rate) of acid-sensitive recolonists (mayfly nymphs, Baetis rhodani) is reduced by competition with abundant acid-tolerant residents (stonefly nymphs, Leuctra inermis) in a chemically recovering Welsh stream (UK). Gut contents analysis revealed a marked overlap in resource use between the two species. However, when Baetis was exposed to several (0, 0.25, 0.5 and 1 times ambient) densities of its putative competitor, Leuctra, growth rates of the colonist were not affected by the residents at any of the densities tested. These results do not support the hypothesis that resident species constrain colonist populations by affecting growth rates through competition for limited resources or interference. Further work is required to assess whether independent and/or interactive ecological effects of other common residents might affect colonists in ecosystems recovering from past stressors.