Thomas L. Crisman

Future directions in conservation and development: Incorporating the reality of climate change

Abstract Biodiversity conservation benefits from involvement of local stakeholders to link conservation and development in site-specific, synergistic frameworks. The reality of climate change and continuing widespread development of land for settlement, agriculture, and resource extraction underline the urgent need to accelerate conservation efforts, while also necessitating review of whether current management strategies remain appropriate to reach their objectives. Since biota have been documented to respond to climatic changes via individualistic adjustment of phenology, phenotypic plasticity and range shifts, novel ecological communities without present analogs are projected to emerge. Some protected species may be displaced outside the boundaries of current conserved lands. Expansion of existing and establishment of new protected areas in anticipation of such scenarios is rarely feasible. Climate change impacts on stakeholders may further compromise conservation objectives if agricultural and resource extraction practices change. This paper reviews impacts of climate change relevant to biodiversity conservation, highlighting the interdependence of ecology, socioeconomics and policy across temporal and spatial scales. A regionally coordinated management framework with local stakeholder involvement is proposed and illustrated using the case example of REDD to achieve traditional conservation objectives and adaptation to climate change simultaneously by alleviating stresses, maximizing functional redundancy, and increasing both connectivity and local genetic diversity of conservation areas. Development objectives are addressed by integration with existing or proposed policy instruments for transfer of ‘green’ technologies and payments for carbon sequestration based on the principles of additionality or avoided deleterious land conversion.

Use of MODIS satellite images for detailed lake morphometry: Application to basins with large water level fluctuations

Abstract Lake morphometry is essential for managing water resources and limnetic ecosystems. For reservoirs that receive high sediment loads, frequent morphometric mapping is necessary to define both the effective life of the reservoir and its water storage capacity for irrigation, power generation, flood control and domestic water supply. The current study presents a methodology for updating the digital depth model (DDM) of lakes and reservoirs with wide intra and interannual fluctuations of water levels using satellite remote sensing. A time series of Terra MODIS satellite images was used to map shorelines formed during the annual water level change cycle, and were validated with concurrent Landsat ETM+ satellite images. The shorelines were connected with in-situ observation of water levels and were treated as elevation contours to produce the DDM using spatial interpolation. The accuracy of the digitized shorelines is within the mapping accuracy of the satellite images, while the resulting DDM is validated using in-situ elevation measurements. Two versions of the DDM were produced to assess the influence of seasonal water fluctuation. Finally, the methodology was applied to Lake Kerkini (Greece) to produce an updated DDM, which was compared with the last available bathymetric survey (1991) and revealed changes in sediment distribution within the lake.