bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Understanding spatial patterns of poaching pressure using ranger logbook data to optimize future patrolling strategies
Authors: Ghoddousi Arash , Van Cayzeele Corinna , Negahdar Pegah , Soofi Mahmood , Kh. Hamidi Amirhossein , Bleyhl Benjamin , Fandos Guillermo , Khorozyan Igor , Waltert Matthias , Kuemmerle Tobias 
Published: April 2022

AbstractPoaching is driving many species toward extinction, and as a result, lowering poaching pressure is a conservation priority. This requires understanding where poaching pressure is high and which factors determine these spatial patterns. However, the cryptic and illegal nature of poaching makes this difficult. Ranger patrol data, typically recorded in protected area logbooks, contain information on patrolling efforts and poaching detection and should thus provide opportunities for a better understanding of poaching pressure. However, these data are seldom analyzed and rarely used to inform adaptive management strategies. We developed a novel approach to making use of analog logbook records to map poaching pressure and to test environmental criminology and predator–prey relationship hypotheses explaining poaching patterns. We showcase this approach for Golestan National Park in Iran, where poaching has substantially depleted ungulate populations. We digitized data from >4800 ranger patrols from 2014 to 2016 and used an occupancy modeling framework to relate poaching to (1) accessibility, (2) law enforcement, and (3) prey availability factors. Based on predicted poaching pressure and patrolling intensity, we provide suggestions for future patrol allocation strategies. Our results revealed a low probability (12%) of poacher detection during patrols. Poaching distribution was best explained by prey availability, indicating that poachers target areas with high concentrations of ungulates. Poaching pressure was estimated to be high (>0.49) in 39% of our study area. To alleviate poaching pressure, we recommend ramping up patrolling intensity in 12% of the national park, which could be achievable by reducing excess patrols in about 20% of the park. However, our results suggest that for 27% of the park, it is necessary to improve patrolling quality to increase detection probability of poaching, for example, by closing temporal patrolling gaps or expanding informant networks. Our approach illustrates that analog ranger logbooks are an untapped resource for evidence‐based and adaptive planning of protected area management. Using this wealth of data can open up new avenues to better understand poaching and its determinants, to expand effectiveness assessments to the past, and, more generally, to allow for strategic conservation planning in protected areas.
Factors influencing the persistence of a fire‐sensitive Artemisia species in a fire‐dependent ecosystem
Authors: Dornbusch Megan J. , Limb Ryan F. , Bloom‐Cornelius Ilana V. , Elmore R. Dwayne , Weir John R. , Fuhlendorf Samuel D. 
Published: April 2022

AbstractFire refugia and patchiness are important to the persistence of fire‐sensitive species and may facilitate biodiversity conservation in fire‐dependent landscapes. Playing the role of ecosystem engineers, large herbivores alter vegetation structure and can reduce wildfire risk. However, herbivore effects on the spatial variability of fire and the persistence of fire‐sensitive species are not clear. To examine the hypothesis that large herbivores support the persistence of fire‐sensitive species through the creation of fire refugia in fire‐prone landscapes, we examined the response of a fire‐sensitive plant, Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis [Beetle & Young]) to fire and grazing in the fire‐dependent mixed‐grass prairie of the northern Great Plains. We carried out a controlled burn in 2010 within pre‐established exclosures that allowed differential access to wild and domestic herbivores and no record of fire in the previous 75 years due to fire suppression efforts. The experiment was set up with a split‐plot design to also examine potential changes in plots that were not burned. Canopy cover of big sagebrush was recorded before the burn in 2010 and again in 2011 with percent area burned recorded within 1‐month post‐fire in the burned plots. Percentage area burned was the greatest in ungulate exclosures (92% ± 2%) and the least in open areas (55% ± 21%), suggesting that large herbivores influenced fire behavior (e.g., reducing fire intensity and rate of spread) and are likely to increase fire patchiness through their alterations to the fuel bed. Regression analysis indicated that the proportion of sagebrush cover lost was significantly correlated with the proportion of area burned (R2 = 0.76, p = 0.05). No differences in the non‐burn plots were observed among grazing treatments or among years. Altogether, this illustrates the potential importance of large herbivores in creating biotic‐driven fire refugia for fire‐sensitive species to survive within the flammable fuel matrix of fire‐dependent grassland ecosystems such as the mixed‐grass prairie. Our findings also attest to the resiliency of the northern Great Plains to fire and herbivory and underscore the value of managing grasslands for heterogeneity with spatial and temporal variations in these historic disturbances.
Linking remote sensing data to the estimation of pollination services in agroecosystems
Authors: Ariza Daniel , Meeus Ivan , Eeraerts Maxime , Pisman Matti , Smagghe Guy 
Published: April 2022

AbstractWild bees are key providers of pollination services in agroecosystems. The abundance of these pollinators and the ecosystem services they provide rely on supporting resources in the landscape. Spatially explicit models that quantify wild bee abundance and pollination services in food crops are built on the foundations of foraging and nesting resources. This dependence limits model implementation as land‐cover maps and pollination experts capable of evaluating habitat resource quality are scarce. This study presents a novel approach to assessing crop pollination services using remote sensing data (RSD) as an alternative to the more conventional use of land‐cover data and local expertise on spatially explicit models. We used landscape characteristics derived from remote sensors to qualify nesting resources in the landscape and to evaluate the delivery of pollination services by mining bees (Andrena spp.) in 30 fruit orchards located in the Flemish region of Belgium. For this study, we selected mining bees for their importance as local pollinators and underground nesting behavior. We compared the estimated pollination services derived from RSD with those derived from the conventional qualification of nesting resources. We did not observe significant differences (p = 0.68) in the variation in mining bee activity predicted by the two spatial models. Estimated pollination services derived from RSD and conventional characterizations explained 69% and 72% of the total variation, respectively. These results confirmed that RSD can deliver nesting suitability characterizations sufficient for estimating pollination services. This research also illustrates the importance of nesting resources and landscape characteristics when estimating pollination services delivered by insects like mining bees. Our results support the development of holistic agroenvironmental policies that rely on modern tools like remote sensors and promote pollinators by considering nesting resources.
Short‐ and long‐term wildfire threat when adapting infrastructure for wildlife conservation in the boreal forest
Authors: Dawe Denyse A. , Parisien Marc‐André , Boulanger Yan , Boucher Jonathan , Beauchemin Alexandre , Arseneault Dominique 
Published: April 2022

AbstractManagers designing infrastructure in fire‐prone wildland areas require assessments of wildfire threat to quantify uncertainty due to future vegetation and climatic conditions. In this study, we combine wildfire simulation and forest landscape composition modeling to identify areas that would be highly susceptible to wildfire around a proposed conservation corridor in Québec, Canada. In this measure, managers have proposed raising the conductors of a new 735‐kV hydroelectric powerline above the forest canopy within a wildlife connectivity corridor to mitigate the impacts to threatened boreal woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus). Retention of coniferous vegetation, however, can increase the likelihood of an intense wildfire damaging powerline infrastructure. To assess the likelihood of high‐intensity wildfires for the next 100 years, we evaluated three time periods (2020, 2070, 2120), three climate scenarios (observed, RCP 4.5, RCP 8.5), and four vegetation projections (static, no harvest, extensive harvesting, harvesting excluded in protected areas). Under present‐day conditions, we found a lower probability of high‐intensity wildfire within the corridor than in other parts of the study area, due to the protective influence of a nearby, poorly regenerated burned area. Wildfire probability will increase into the future, with strong, weather‐induced inflation in the number of annual ignitions and wildfire spread potential. However, a conversion to less‐flammable vegetation triggered by interactions between climate change and disturbance may attenuate this trend. By addressing the range of uncertainty of future conditions, we present a robust strategy to assist in decision‐making about long‐term risk management for both the proposed conservation measure and the powerline.
The causes and consequences of pest population variability in agricultural landscapes
Authors: Paredes Daniel , Rosenheim Jay A. , Karp Daniel S. 
Published: April 2022

AbstractVariability in population densities is key to the ecology of natural systems but also has great implications for agriculture. Farmers' decisions are heavily influenced by their risk aversion to pest outbreaks that result in major yield losses. However, the need for long‐term pest population data across many farms has prevented researchers from exploring the drivers and implications of pest population variability (PV). Here, we demonstrate the critical importance of PV for sustainable farming by analyzing 13 years of pest densities across >1300 Spanish olive groves and vineyards. Variable populations were more likely to cause major yield losses, but also occasionally created temporal windows when densities fell below insecticide spray thresholds. Importantly, environmental factors regulating pest variability were very distinct from factors regulating mean density, suggesting variability needs to be uniquely managed. Finally, we found diversifying landscapes may be a win–win situation for conservation and farmers, as diversified landscapes promote less abundant and less variable pest populations. Therefore, we encourage agricultural stakeholders to increase the complexity of the landscapes surrounding their farms through conserving/restoring natural habitat and/or diversifying crops.
Coastal squeeze on temperate reefs: Long‐term shifts in salinity, water quality, and oyster‐associated communities
Authors: Tice‐Lewis Maxwell , Zhang Y. Stacy , Redding S. Gray , Lindquist Niels L. , Rodriguez Antonio B. , Fieseler Clare M. , Walker Quentin A. , Fodrie F. Joel 
Published: April 2022

AbstractFoundation species, such as mangroves, saltmarshes, kelps, seagrasses, and oysters, thrive within suitable environmental envelopes as narrow ribbons along the land–sea margin. Therefore, these habitat‐forming species and resident fauna are sensitive to modified environmental gradients. For oysters, many estuaries impacted by sea‐level rise, channelization, and municipal infrastructure are experiencing saltwater intrusion and water‐quality degradation that may alter reef distributions, functions, and services. To explore decadal‐scale oyster–reef community patterns across a temperate estuary in response to environmental change, we resampled reefs in the Newport River Estuary (NRE) during 2013–2015 that had previously been studied during 1955–1956. We also coalesced historical NRE reef distribution (1880s–2015), salinity (1913–2015), and water‐quality‐driven shellfish closure boundary (1970s–2015) data to document environmental trends that could influence reef ecology and service delivery. Over the last 60–120 years, the entire NRE has shifted toward higher salinities. Consequently, oyster–reef communities have become less distinct across the estuary, manifest by 20%–27% lower species turnover and decreased faunal richness among NRE reefs in the 2010s relative to the 1950s. During the 2010s, NRE oyster–reef communities tended to cluster around a euhaline, intertidal‐reef type more so than during the 1950s. This followed faunal expansions farther up estuary and biological degradation of subtidal reefs as NRE conditions became more marine and favorable for aggressive, reef‐destroying taxa. In addition to these biological shifts, the area of suitable bottom on which subtidal reefs persist (contracting due to up‐estuary intrusion of marine waters) and support human harvest (driven by water quality, eroding from up‐estuary) has decreased by >75% since the natural history of NRE reefs was first explored. This “coastal squeeze” on harvestable subtidal oysters (reduced from a 4.5‐km to a 0.75‐km envelope along the NRE's main axis) will likely have consequences regarding the economic incentives for future oyster conservation, as well as the suite of services delivered by remaining shellfish reefs (e.g., biodiversity maintenance, seafood supply). More broadly, these findings exemplify how “squeeze” may be a pervasive concern for biogenic habitats along terrestrial or marine ecotones during an era of intense global change.
Dynamic prediction of global monthly burned area with hybrid deep neural networks
Authors: Zhang Guoli , Wang Ming , Liu Kai 
Published: April 2022

AbstractWildfires not only severely damage the natural environment and global ecological balance but also cause substantial losses to global forest resources and human lives and property. Unprecedented fire events such as Australia's bushfires have alerted us to the fact that wildfire prediction is a critical scientific problem for fire management. Therefore, robust, long‐lead models and dynamic predictions of wildfire are valuable for global fire prevention. However, despite decades of effort, the dynamic, effective, and accurate prediction of wildfire remains problematic. There is great uncertainty in predicting the future based on historical and existing spatiotemporal sequence data, but with advances in deep learning algorithms, solutions to prediction problems are being developed. Here, we present a dynamic prediction model of global burned area of wildfire employing a deep neural network (DNN) approach that produces effective wildfire forecasts based on historical time series predictors and satellite‐based burned area products. A hybrid DNN that combines long short‐term memory and a two‐dimensional convolutional neural network (CNN2D‐LSTM) was proposed, and CNN2D‐LSTM model candidates with four different architectures were designed and compared to construct the optimal architecture for fire prediction. The proposed model was also shown to outperform convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and the fully connected long short‐term memory (FcLSTM) approach using the refined index of agreement and evaluation metrics. We produced monthly global burned area spatiotemporal prediction maps and adequately reflected the seasonal peak in fire activity and highly fire‐prone areas. Our combined CNN2D‐LSTM approach can effectively predict the global burned area of wildfires 1 month in advance and can be generalized to provide seasonal estimates of global fire risk.
Disturbance and management effects on forest soil organic carbon stocks in the Pacific Northwest
Authors: Nave Lucas E. , DeLyser Kendall , Domke Grant M. , Holub Scott M. , Janowiak Maria K. , Kittler Brian , Ontl Todd A. , Sprague Eric , Sucre Eric B. , Walters Brian F. , Swanston Christopher W. 
Published: April 2022

AbstractCarbon (C)‐informed forest management requires understanding how disturbance and management influence soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks at scales relevant to landowners and forest policy and management professionals. The continued growth of data sets and publications allows powerful synthesis approaches to be applied to such questions at increasingly fine scales. Here, we report results from a synthesis that used meta‐analysis of published studies and two large observational databases to quantify disturbance and management impacts on SOC stocks. We conducted this, the third in a series of ecoregional SOC assessments, for the Pacific Northwest, which comprises ~8% of the land area but ~12% of the U.S. forest sector C sink. At the ecoregional level, our analysis indicated that fundamental patterns of vegetation, climate, and topography are far more important controls on SOC stocks than land use history, disturbance, or management. However, the same patterns suggested that increased warming, drying, wildland fire, and forest regeneration failure pose significant risks to SOC stocks across the region. Detailed meta‐analysis results indicated that wildfires diminished SOC stocks throughout the soil profile, while prescribed fire only influenced surface organic materials and harvesting had no significant overall impact on SOC. Independent observational data corroborated the negative influence of fire on SOC derived from meta‐analysis, suggested that harvest impacts may vary subregionally with climate or vegetation, and revealed that forests with agricultural uses (e.g., grazing) or legacies (e.g., cultivation) had smaller SOC stocks. We also quantified effects of a range of common forest management practices having either positive (organic amendments, nitrogen [N]‐fixing vegetation establishment, inorganic N fertilization) or no overall effects on SOC (other inorganic fertilizers, urea fertilization, competition suppression through herbicides). In order to maximize the management applications of our results, we qualified them with ratings of confidence based on degree of support across approaches. Last, similar to earlier published assessments from other ecoregions, we supplemented our quantitative synthesis results with a literature review to arrive at a concise set of tactics for adapting management operations to site‐specific criteria.
A newly invasive species may promote dissimilarity of pest populations between organic and conventional farming systems
Authors: Bloom Elias H. , Constancio Natalie , Hauri Kayleigh C. , Szendrei Zsofia 
Published: April 2022

AbstractInsect taxa vary in their phenology across space creating dissimilar patterns of species abundance over time. The role of human disturbances and invasive species in these patterns of temporal dissimilarity (phenological differences) across space, however, remain largely unexplored. To dissect these patterns, we evaluated four common pests and one newly invasive species (Contarinia nasturtii; Swede midge) at 220 time points across 2 years on organic and conventional farms. We first summarized across time and evaluated differences in pest abundance between farm management (organic and conventional). We then used generalized additive models to describe temporal patterns of abundance, disentangling phenological differences across management systems. Last, we conducted a temporal beta diversity analysis to identify which species and management practices contribute most to dissimilarity. We found that aggregating pest abundance across time and species masked differences in pest phenology across management systems and concealed variation in pest abundance that was strongly driven by an invasive species, respectively. Overall, our results suggest that organic and conventional farms may be only superficially similar in pest abundance. Rather, by accounting for time, we demonstrate a more nuanced understanding of pest communities moving beyond abundance that may be particularly important for management of newly invasive species.
Evaluating the predictive validity of purging disorder by comparison to bulimia nervosa at long‐term follow‐up
Authors: Forney Katherine Jean , Brown Tiffany A. , Crosby Ross D. , Klein Kelly M. , Keel Pamela K. 
Published: April 2022

AbstractObjectiveThe current study sought to examine the predictive validity of the purging disorder diagnosis at long‐term follow‐up by comparing naturalistic outcomes with bulimia nervosa.MethodWomen with purging disorder (N = 84) or bulimia nervosa (N = 133) who had completed comprehensive baseline assessments as part of one of three studies between 2000 and 2012 were sought for follow‐up assessment. Nearly all (94.5%) responded to recruitment materials and 150 (69% of sought sample; 83.3% non‐Hispanic white; 33.40 [7.63] years old) participated at an average of 10.59 (3.71) years follow‐up. Participants completed the Eating Disorder Examination, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM‐IV, and a questionnaire battery. Diagnostic groups were compared on eating disorder (illness status, recovery status, and eating pathology) and related outcomes. Group differences in predictors of outcome were explored.ResultsThere were no significant differences in eating disorder presence (p = .70), recovery status (p = .87), and level of eating pathology (p = .17) between diagnostic groups at follow‐up. Post hoc equivalence tests indicated group differences were smaller than a medium effect size (p's ≤ .005). Groups differed in diagnosis at follow‐up (p = .002); diagnostic stability was more likely than cross‐over to bulimia nervosa for women with baseline purging disorder (p = .004).DiscussionAlthough purging disorder and bulimia nervosa do not differ in long‐term outcomes, the relative stability in clinical presentation suggests baseline group differences in clinical presentation may be useful in augmenting treatments for purging disorder.Public Significance StatementWhile purging disorder is classified as an “other specified” eating disorder, individuals who experience this disorder have comparable negative long‐term outcomes as those with bulimia nervosa. This highlights the importance of screening for and treating purging disorder as a full‐threshold eating disorder.
Sympatry leads to reduced body condition in chickadees that occasionally hybridize
Authors: Grabenstein Kathryn C. , Otter Ken A. , Burg Theresa M. , Taylor Scott A. 
Published: April 2022

AbstractBoth abiotic and biotic drivers influence species distributions. Abiotic drivers such as climate have received considerable attention, even though biotic drivers such as hybridization often interact with abiotic drivers. We sought to explore the (1) costs of co‐occurrence for ecologically similar species that hybridize and (2) associations between ecological factors and condition to understand how abiotic and biotic factors influence species distributions. For two closely related and ecologically similar songbirds, black‐capped and mountain chickadees, we characterized body condition, as a proxy for fitness, using a 1358‐individual range‐wide dataset. We compared body condition in sympatry and allopatry with several abiotic and biotic factors using species‐specific generalized linear mixed models. We generated genomic data for a subset of 217 individuals to determine the extent of hybridization‐driven admixture in our dataset. Within this data subset, we found that ~11% of the chickadees had hybrid ancestry, and all hybrid individuals had typical black‐capped chickadee plumage. In the full dataset, we found that birds of both species, independent of demographic and abiotic factors, had significantly lower body condition when occurring in sympatry than birds in allopatry. This could be driven by either the inclusion of cryptic, likely poor condition, hybrids in our full dataset, competitive interactions in sympatry, or range edge effects. We are currently unable to discriminate between these mechanisms. Our findings have implications for mountain chickadees in particular, which will encounter more black‐capped chickadees as black‐capped chickadee ranges shift upslope and could lead to local declines in mountain chickadee populations.