News
Harnessing ranger-collected data for adaptive management in protected area
Ranger patrols are the most common conservation measures against poaching in protected areas. We extracted, digitized and analyzed ranger-collected data from logbooks to predict poaching prevalence, its determinants and to devise future patrolling strategies.
Deforestation frontiers are widespread across tropical dry woodlands
We develop an approach to map spatial and temporal patterns of deforestation frontiers and apply it to the world’s tropical dry woodlands. We find across regions, areas under drastic loss, termed rampant frontiers, and that many frontiers are just starting to unfold.
Need for a holistic management of conflicts with rebounding large carnivores in Europe
The return of large carnivores in Europe challenges conservation because of increasing human-wildlife conflict. We here show that, along with livestock protection, preventive measures should consider predator-prey effects and resulting indirect conflict with humans, such as via crop damage.
Drought in Syria caused crop failure but not agricultural collapse before the 2011 conflict
Syrian agriculture was affected by drought in 2008 and 2009, but recovered before the conflict started in 2011. Claims of an agricultural collapse that led to large scale land abandonment in Syria before 2011 need to be re-examined.
Revealing forest disturbance agents in the Argentine Dry Chaco
Identifying causal agents of disturbances is important for understanding forest degradation patterns and for addressing their outcomes, including biodiversity loss and carbon emission. Using information derived from the Landsat archive, we attribute and map key agents of forest disturbances for the Argentine Chaco.
Ten facts about land systems for sustainability
Land systems are key to overcoming existential challenges facing humanity and achieving sustainable development. Land System Scientists from around the globe synthesized their knowledge into 10 Facts on Land Systems that together light the way toward a sustainable future.
Humans rather than a large carnivore shape ungulate browsing patterns
We compared the effects of human activities and Eurasian lynx occurrence on foraging patterns by roe deer inside a national park. Our findings highlight that recreational activities and hunting are more influential than lynx occurrence in shaping the variation in browsing intensity and diet selection by deer, thus highlighting the importance of human activities in creating ‘landscapes of fear’ for large herbivores. Read more ...
Mapping international conservation funding
We mapped conservation-related foreign aid in South America’s major deforestation frontiers between 1975-2013. The combinations of project objectives, interventions and locations reflected linkages between donating and receiving regions, as well as donor’s value and preferences.
Hunting game - the overlocked land use to advance context-specific planning in multi-functional landscapes
Using Sweden as a case, we show that hunting of different game groups is a wide-spread activity, covering more area than forestry or agricultural. We found strong spatial associations between hunting, agriculture, and forestry related to wildlife group or species, specific environmental conditions, socioeconomic and institutional factors.
Regional matters: On the usefulness of regional land-cover datasets in times of global change
The free availability of global satellite data archives, increased computational power & open-source algorithms have led to a proliferation of global Earth Observation (EO) land-cover data. Does that mean that regional EO land-cover data are no longer needed? Our Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation interdisciplinary perspective presents the pros and cons of regional & global EO-derived land-cover data, the context in which both are preferable, and the pathways for aligning regional and global data products. Read more...
Carbon stocks in the Chaco are often under-estimated
Mapping biomass stocks in tropical and subtropical forests is important to understand where and how agricultural expansion will result in carbon emissions, and where measures to protect carbon stocks should be targeted to. Using MODIS and Sentinel 1 time series, we show that the dry Chaco, a global deforestation hotspot, still contains vast amounts of carbon and that global maps typically underestimate the carbon stored in Chaco vegetation dramatically. Read more...