Conservation Projects (ConPro) data base from The Nature Conservancy and others about the protected areas with analyzed Conservation Action Plans (CAP) before 2009 (Appendix 1) and after 2009 (Appendix 2)

It is widely recognized that climate change poses significant challenges to the conservation of biodiversity. The need of dealing with relatively rapid and uncertain environmental change calls for the enhancement of adaptive capacity of both biodiversity and conservation management systems. Under the hypothesis that most of the conventional biodiversity conservation tools do not sufficiently stimulate a dynamic protected area management, which takes rapid environmental change into account, we evaluated almost 900 of The Nature Conservancy's site-based conservation action plans. These were elaborated before a so-called climate clinic in 2009, an intensive revision of existing plans and a climate change training of the planning teams. We also compare these results with plans elaborated after the climate clinic. Before 2009, 20% of the CAPs employed the term "climate change" in their description of the site viability, and 45% identified key ecological attributes that are related to climate. 8% of the conservation strategies were directly or indirectly related to climate change adaptation. After 2009, a significantly higher percentage of plans took climate change into account. Our data show that many planning teams face difficulties in integrating climate change in their management and planning. However, technical guidance and concrete training can facilitate management teams learning processes. Arising new tools of adaptive conservation management that explicitly incorporate options for handling future scenarios, vulnerability analyses and risk management into the management process have the potential of further making protected area management more proactive and robust against change.

Interview forms for integrating education for conservation in marine protected areas management in Colombia

Environmental Education (EE) is a key component in any marine protected area management. However, its visibility and action plans are still poorly developed and structured as a clear element in management procedures. The objective of this study is to contribute with a methodological route that integrates EE to the existing model of management planning and strategies, taking the Colombian National Natural Parks System as a case study. The creation of the route is proposed as a participatory research with different stakeholders in order to respond to the specific conservation needs and goals for the National Parks System. The EE national diagnosis has shown that its integration within the parks management structure is a first priority need, being a converging result on the two case studies on National Parks from the Pacific Coast of Colombia. The diagnosis also demonstrates that communication, participation, training and evaluation have to be reinforced, linking the community and stakeholders involved in the park management to the whole EE process. The proposed methodology route has been agreed upon by the National Parks staff and incorporates advice and recommendations from different stakeholders, in order to better include the park users. This step will help us to advance toward sustainable management in marine and coastal protected areas elsewhere, taking into account not only the biological but also the social-cultural prism. The main challenges in the management and conservation of coastal and marine ecosystems today are discussed.

Land use modelling and the role of stakeholders in natural protected areas: the case of Doñana national park, Spain

Doñana, a National Park since 1969, a UNESCO site since 1994 among other protected area designations of national and international character, is a coastal dune and marshland ecosystem of outstanding importance for biodiversity and conservation at the mouth of the Guadalaquivir River, Southwest Spain. However, the Doñana natural area is seriously threatened by global change factors such as humanly induced climate change, habitat loss, overexploitation of ecosystem services, and pollution. Not all stakeholders are convinced of the benefits of the national park, and management of Doñana, its environs and watershed are the subject of intense disagreement. This interplay between natural characteristics of great value with intense human pressure makes Doñana a fascinating workshop for the study of global human environment interactions. Here, we discuss the role of stakeholders in the application of a cellular automatabased model to Doñana and its environs and present the results of a series of exercises undertaken with stakeholders to parametrize the model, something often done by researchers without stakeholder engagement. By engaging with stakeholders early in the project, feedback generated from workshops contributes to model development. Stakeholders are therefore contributors of empirical data for the model as well as independent evaluators providing local and specialist knowledge.

Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Training Conference, [held at] Soil Conservation Service Training Center, Fort Robinson, Nebraska, January 21-25, 1957.

Mode of access: Internet.

More from your farm : a guide to soil conservation farming based on a survey of the land in the Luxapallila Creek Watershed, Alabama /

"October 1946."

Teaching conservation through outdoor education areas.

On cover: PA-837.

Two watershed projects of the Soil Conservation Service : hearing before the Subcommittee on Water Resources of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, United States Senate, Ninety-eighth Congress, second session, on Turkey Creek Watershed, Oklahoma and Indian Creek-Van Buren Watershed, Iowa, September 25, 1984.

Mode of access: Internet.

Protected Areas' Impacts on Brazilian Amazon Deforestation: Examining Conservation-Development Interactions to Inform Planning.

Protected areas are the leading forest conservation policy for species and ecoservices goals and they may feature in climate policy if countries with tropical forest rely on familiar tools. For Brazil's Legal Amazon, we estimate the average impact of protection upon deforestation and show how protected areas' forest impacts vary significantly with development pressure. We use matching, i.e., comparisons that are apples-to-apples in observed land characteristics, to address the fact that protected areas (PAs) tend to be located on lands facing less pressure. Correcting for that location bias lowers our estimates of PAs' forest impacts by roughly half. Further, it reveals significant variation in PA impacts along development-related dimensions: for example, the PAs that are closer to roads and the PAs closer to cities have higher impact. Planners have multiple conservation and development goals, and are constrained by cost, yet still conservation planning should reflect what our results imply about future impacts of PAs.

Allocating reforestation areas for sediment flow minimization: an integer programming formulation and a heuristic solution method

Policy and decision makers dealing with environmental conservation and land use planning often require identifying potential sites for contributing to minimize sediment flow reaching riverbeds. This is the case of reforestation initiatives, which can have sediment flow minimization among their objectives. This paper proposes an Integer Programming (IP) formulation and a Heuristic solution method for selecting a predefined number of locations to be reforested in order to minimize sediment load at a given outlet in a watershed. Although the core structure of both methods can be applied for different sorts of flow, the formulations are targeted to minimization of sediment delivery. The proposed approaches make use of a Single Flow Direction (SFD) raster map covering the watershed in order to construct a tree structure so that the outlet cell corresponds to the root node in the tree. The results obtained with both approaches are in agreement with expert assessments of erosion levels, slopes and distances to the riverbeds, which in turn allows concluding that this approach is suitable for minimizing sediment flow. Since the results obtained with the IP formulation are the same as the ones obtained with the Heuristic approach, an optimality proof is included in the present work. Taking into consideration that the heuristic requires much less computation time, this solution method is more suitable to be applied in large sized problems.

Toward adaptive management of coastal MPAs: The influence of different conservation targets and costs on the design of no-take areas

There is still much discussion on the most appropriate location, size and shape of marine protected areas (MPAs). These three factors were analyzed for a small coastal MPA, the Luiz Saldanha Marine Park (LSMP), for which a very limited amount of local ecological information was available when implemented in 1998. Marxan was used to provide a number of near-optimal solutions considering different levels of protection for the various conservation features and different costs. These solutions were compared with the existing no-take area of the LSMP. Information on 11 habitat types and distribution models for 3 of the most important species for the local artisanal fisheries was considered. The human activities with the highest economic and ecological impact in the study area (commercial and recreational fishing and scuba diving) were used as costs. The results show that the existing no-take area is actually located in the best area. However, the no-take area offers limited protection to vagile fish and covers a very small proportion of some of the available habitats. An increase in the conservation targets led to an increase in the number of no-take areas. The comparative framework used in this study can be applied elsewhere, providing relevant information to local stakeholders and managers in order to proceed with adaptive management. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Determining conservation priority areas for Palearctic passerine migrant birds in sub-Saharan Africa

Migratory bird species breeding in the Palearctic and overwintering in sub-Saharan Africa face multiple conservation challenges. As a result, many of these species have declined in recent decades, some dramatically. We therefore used the best available database for the distribution of 68 passerine migrants in sub-Saharan Africa to determine priority regions for their conservation. After modeling each species’ distribution using BIOMOD software, we entered the resulting species distributions at a 1° × 1° grid resolution into MARXAN software. We then used several different selection procedures that varied the boundary length modifier, species penalty factor, and the inclusion of grid cells with high human footprint and with protected areas. While results differed between selection procedures, four main regions were regularly selected: (1) one centered on southern Mali; (2) one including Eritrea, central Sudan, and northern Ethiopia; (3) one encompassing southwestern Kenya and much of Tanzania and Uganda; and (4) one including much of Zimbabwe and southwestern Zambia. We recommend that these four regions become priority regions for research and conservation efforts for the bird species considered in this study.

Characterization Of Microsatellite Markers Developed From Prosopis Rubriflora And Prosopis Ruscifolia (leguminosae - Mimosoideae), Legume Species That Are Used As Models For Genetic Diversity Studies In Chaquenian Areas Under Anthropization In South America.

Prosopis rubriflora and Prosopis ruscifolia are important species in the Chaquenian regions of Brazil. Because of the restriction and frequency of their physiognomy, they are excellent models for conservation genetics studies. The use of microsatellite markers (Simple Sequence Repeats, SSRs) has become increasingly important in recent years and has proven to be a powerful tool for both ecological and molecular studies. In this study, we present the development and characterization of 10 new markers for P. rubriflora and 13 new markers for P. ruscifolia. The genotyping was performed using 40 P. rubriflora samples and 48 P. ruscifolia samples from the Chaquenian remnants in Brazil. The polymorphism information content (PIC) of the P. rubriflora markers ranged from 0.073 to 0.791, and no null alleles or deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HW) were detected. The PIC values for the P. ruscifolia markers ranged from 0.289 to 0.883, but a departure from HW and null alleles were detected for certain loci; however, this departure may have resulted from anthropic activities, such as the presence of livestock, which is very common in the remnant areas. In this study, we describe novel SSR polymorphic markers that may be helpful in future genetic studies of P. rubriflora and P. ruscifolia.

The ichthyofauna of upper rio Capivari: defining conservation strategies based on the composition and distribution of fish species

Although the rio Capivari basin is recognized as an area of great importance for the ichthyofauna, it lacks virtually every basic requirement for the definition of appropriate conservation strategies, since not even its species composition is known. The objective of this work is to determine the composition and distribution of fish species in the upper rio Capivari basin, relating them to the local physical features, and to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed conservations units, delimited based on areas of native vegetation remains, on the conservation of local ichthyofauna. During 2007, 50 different watercourses were sampled with gillnets, cast nets and kick nets. A total of 1308 individuals belonging to 41 species were captured. Degree of conservation, altitude and width were the parameters that best explained fish species richness. Considering the recently proposed boundaries for potential conservation units in the region only 15 or 20 out of 41 species would be found in the State Park and Environmental Protection Area respectively. In practice, the proposed conservation units would not be effective tools for fish conservation, since it would be located in mountainous areas of high altitude, of headwaters streams and where few species are found. In such context, the conservation of specific stretches of larger rivers is critical.

CHARACTERIZATION OF THE TREE COMPONENT IN A SEMIDECIDUOUS FOREST IN THE ESPINHACO RANGE: A SUBSIDY TO CONSERVATION

This study was conducted in the Private Reserve Mata do Jambreiro (912 ha), localized in the Iron Quadrangle, Minas Gerais, southeastern portion of the Espinhaco Range, which is predominantly covered by semideciduous seasonal montane forest. Three topographically and physiognomic similar areas located within a continuum forest fragment, distant by 1.3 to 1.5 km were sampled by the point-quadrat method. In each area, 30 points were marked. Individuals with a minimum perimeter at the breast height (PBH) of 15 cm were sampled, totaling 111 species belonging to 40 families. The most representative family was Fabaceae, with 14.29% of the total number of species. Low floristic similarity (5.3% to 34.4%) was observed between the areas, pointing out the importance of distribution of sample units in continuous fragments. Shannon diversity index (H') found was 4.22 and Pielou equability (J) 0.894. Soil analysis showed some differences in chemical composition between the three studied areas and was an important component for the interpretation of the floristic variation found. The low floristic similarity observed here for close areas justify the requirement of more detailed inventories by Brazilian Environmental Agencies for the legal authorization procedures prior to the establishment of new enterprising projects. Also, the professionals that conduct rapid inventories, mainly the Environmental Consultants, should give more attention to this kind of floristic variation and to the methods used to inventory complex forests.