Sustaining Ecosystems: Strategies for Conservation

1. CHAPTER 38Conservation Biology Modules 38.9 – 38.12

2. MANAGING AND SUSTAINING ECOSYSTEMS 38.9 Sustaining ecosystems and landscapes is a conservation priority • Conservation efforts are increasingly aimed at learning how to sustain whole ecosystems and landscapes • Landscape ecology employs ecological principles to study land-use patterns • It aims to make species conservation a functional part of those patterns

3. Researchers often use gap analysis to study the distribution of organisms relative to landscape features and habitat types • Gap analysis employs computerized maps along with information on the distribution of organisms

4. Map ofvegetationpatterns andriver course Distributionof rare,endemicspecies Distributionof protectedareas Finaloverlay map Figure 38.9A

5. Gap analysis can highlight areas with the greatest concentrations of rare and endangered species outside of protected areas • It can lead to sustaining the biodiversity of the whole area Figure 38.9B

6. 38.10 Edges and corridors can strongly influence landscape biodiversity • Boundaries between ecosystems have their own set of features and assemblages of species • Human activities can create edges that are more abrupt than those found naturally Figure 38.10A

7. Populations of the brown-headed cowbird, an edge-adapted species, are currently expanding • Populations of songbird species are declining • The increased frequency and abruptness of edges can increase the loss of species Figure 38.10B

8. They may be helpful or harmful to fragmented populations • Corridors can promote dispersal and reduce inbreeding in declining populations • Movement corridors are strips or clumps of quality habitat that connect otherwise isolated habitat patches Figure 38.10C

9. 38.11 Restoring degraded habitats is a developing science • Restoration ecology uses ecological principles to develop ways to return degraded ecosystems to conditions as similar as possible to their natural, predegraded state • There are two strategies in restoration ecology • Bioremediation • Augmentation

10. Bioremediation is the use of living organisms to detoxify polluted ecosystems • These organisms are usually prokaryotes, fungi, or plants • These lichens are concentrating mining wastes Figure 38.11A

11. Augmentation of ecosystem processes involves resupplying an area with key factors that have been removed • Encouraging the growth of plants that thrive on nutrient-poor soils can hasten the rate of recovery of some tropical areas • In Puerto Rico, the legume Albizia helped set the stage for recolonization by native species Figure 38.11B

12. 38.12 Sustainable development is an ultimate goal • In numbers, geographic range, and capacity to alter the biosphere, our species is clearly one of the most successful ones ever to inhabit planet Earth • Human attitudes and environmental awareness are of utmost importance in the search for solutions to the biodiversity crisis

13. Habitat destruction and the killing of animals as pests has reduced the population 75% in the past 25 years • Further decrease could endanger this species and hurt its ecological role in maintaining forest diversity by pollination and seed dispersal • The gray-headed flying fox symbolizes the biodiversity crisis Figure 38.12

14. Understanding the biosphere's limits and vulnerability and our own linkages to the natural world may help us make decisions that lead to a sustainable future