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1. Designing agricultural landscapes for arthropod-based ecosystem services in North America

   https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aecr.2021.01.003  

   Haan, Nathan L.; Iuliano, Benjamin G.; Gratton, Claudio; Landis, Douglas A. (March 2021, Advances in ecological research)

   null (Ed.)

   Agricultural landscapes in North America have developed through complex interactions of biophysical, socioeconomic and technological forces. While they can be highly productive, these landscapes are increasingly simplified, causing biodiversity loss. As a result, ecosystem services associated with biodiversity are being dismantled. Agricultural landscape structure arises from collective decisions of farmers over long time periods, which are usually not intentionally coordinated beyond the farm scale. Regaining ecosystem services will require active efforts to intentionally redesign landscapes, in part based on ecological evidence about relationships between landscape structure and ecosystem services. Here we focus on services provided by arthropods and how to foster them at landscape scales. We first provide a brief history of how agricultural landscape structure in temperate North America developed and review the landscape-scale ecological drivers underpinning arthropod-based ecosystem services. We then propose ecological and social principles for designing agricultural landscapes, based on the ecological evidence we reviewed and on previous efforts in agricultural landscape design. Finally, we look ahead to discern prospects for putting agricultural landscape design into practice, including ecological, technological and policy opportunities. To reap benefits from arthropod-based services, future agricultural landscapes will need to increase in structural heterogeneity and diversity across multiple dimensions including crop, farmer and consumer diversity. A number of knowledge gaps persist, including how to design landscapes at spatial scales that are relevant to service providers, identifying areas of overlap or conflict between design for ecosystem services and for biodiversity conservation more broadly and navigating the social and political processes needed to implement landscape design. 

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2. A trait-based conceptual framework to examine urban biodiversity, socio-ecological filters, and ecosystem services linkages

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-022-00077-7  

   Grilo, Filipa; McPhearson, Timon; Santos-Reis, Margarida; Branquinho, Cristina (December 2022, npj Urban Sustainability)

   Abstract Maximizing the functional performance of urban green infrastructure is important to deliver critical ecosystem services that support human well-being. However, urban ecosystems are impacted by social and ecological filters that affect biodiversity, shaping how species’ traits are functionally expressed, thus affecting ecosystem services supply. Our Social–Ecological Traits Framework addresses the impacts of socio-ecological systems on the phenotypic expression of traits and ecosystem services delivery. This functional approach to examining the supply of ecosystem services can improve the incorporation of biodiversity knowledge in urban planning decisions for maximizing the effectiveness of ecosystem services as nature-based solutions under multiple types of social and environmental change. 

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3. Optimization Model and Solution Algorithm for the Design of Connected and Compact Nature Reserves

   Ravishankar, S; Mitra, A; Sefair, JA (May 2023, ProQuest)

   Babski-Reeves, K; Eksioglu, B; Hampton, D (Ed.)

   Ecosystem conservation is fundamental to guarantee the survival of endangered species and to preserve other ecological functions important for human systems (e.g., water). Planning land conservation increasingly requires a landscape approach to mitigate the negative impacts of spatial threats such as urbanization, agricultural development, and climate change. In this context, landscape connectivity and compactness are vital characteristics for the effective functionality of conservation areas. Connectivity allows species to travel across landscapes, facilitating the flow of genes across populations from different protected areas. Compactness measures the spatial dispersion of protected sites, which can be used to mitigate risk factors associated with species leaving and reentering the reserve. This research describes an optimization model for the design of conservation areas, while inducing connectivity and compactness. We use the Reocks index, a metric of compactness that maximizes the ratio of area of the selected patches to the area of their smallest circumscribing circle. Our model includes budget and minimum protected area constraints to reflect realistic financial and ecological requirements. The initial nonlinear model is reformulated into a mixed-integer linear program, which is solved using an adaptation of the Newtons method for problems with integer variables. We characterize an optimal solution and derive cuts to improve the model performance. We illustrate our results using real life landscapes with irregular patches. 

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4. Mapping and modeling the impact of climate change on recreational ecosystem services using machine learning and big data

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac65a3  

   Manley, Kyle; Egoh, Benis N (April 2022, Environmental Research Letters)

   Abstract The use of recreational ecosystem services is highly dependent on the surrounding environmental and climate conditions. Due to this dependency, future recreational opportunities provided by nature are at risk from climate change. To understand how climate change will impact recreation we need to understand current recreational patterns, but traditional data is limited and low resolution. Fortunately, social media data presents an opportunity to overcome those data limitations and machine learning offers a tool to effectively use that big data. We use data from the social media site Flickr as a proxy for recreational visitation and random forest to model the relationships between social, environmental, and climate factors and recreation for the peak season (summer) in California. We then use the model to project how non-urban recreation will change as the climate changes. Our model shows that current patterns are exacerbated in the future under climate change, with currently popular summer recreation areas becoming more suitable and unpopular summer recreation areas becoming less suitable for recreation. Our model results have land management implications as recreation regions that see high visitation consequently experience impacts to surrounding ecosystems, ecosystem services, and infrastructure. This information can be used to include climate change impacts into land management plans to more effectively provide sustainable nature recreation opportunities for current and future generations. Furthermore, our study demonstrates that crowdsourced data and machine learning offer opportunities to better integrate socio-ecological systems into climate impacts research and more holistically understand climate change impacts to human well-being. 

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5. Neighborhood ethnicity is related to mammal occupancy and activity across a desert metropolitan area

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.4902  

   Cocroft, Alexandreana; Lewis, Jesse_S; Clark, Jeffrey; Haight, Jeffrey; Lerman, Susannah_B; Snyder, Zachary; Hall, Sharon_J (June 2024, Ecosphere)

   Abstract Cities support abundant human and wildlife populations that are shaped indirectly and directly by human decisions, often resulting in unequal access to environmental services and accessible open spaces. Urban land cover drives biodiversity patterns across metropolitan areas, but at smaller scales that matter to local residents, neighborhood socio‐cultural factors can influence the presence and abundance of wildlife. Neighborhood income is associated with plant and animal diversity in some cities, but the influence of other social variables is less well understood, especially across desert ecosystems. We explored wildlife distribution across gradients of neighborhood ethnicity in addition to income and landscape characteristics within residential areas of metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Utilizing data from 38 wildlife cameras deployed in public parks and undeveloped open spaces within or near suburban neighborhoods, we estimated occupancy and activity patterns of common mammal species, including species native to the Sonoran Desert (coyote [Canis latrans] and desert cottontail rabbit [Sylvilagus audubonii]), and non‐native domestic cat (Felis catus). Neighborhood ethnicity (percentage of Latino residents) appeared to exhibit a negative relationship with occupancy for coyotes and cottontail rabbits. Additionally, daily activity patterns of coyotes occurred later in the evenings and mornings in neighborhoods with higher proportions of Latino residents, but activity was unaffected by differences in neighborhood income. This study is one of the first to show that social‐ecological mechanisms associated with patterns of neighborhood ethnicity as well as income may help to shape wildlife distribution in cities. These findings have implications for equitable management and provisioning of ecosystem services for urban residents and highlight the importance of considering a range of social covariates to better understand biodiversity outcomes in urban and urbanizing areas. 

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