Human-modified ecosystems and future evolution

Our global impact is finally receiving the scientific attention it deserves. The outcome will largely determine the future course of evolution. Human-modified ecosystems are shaped by our activities and their side effects. They share a common set of traits including simplified food webs, landscape homogenization, and high nutrient and energy inputs. Ecosystem simplification is the ecological hallmark of humanity and the reason for our evolutionary success. However, the side effects of our profligacy and poor resource practices are now so pervasive as to threaten our future no less than that of biological diversity itself. This article looks at human impact on ecosystems and the consequences for evolution. It concludes that future evolution will be shaped by our awareness of the global threats, our willingness to take action, and our ability to do so. Our ability is presently hampered by several factors, including the poor state of ecosystem and planetary knowledge, ignorance of human impact, lack of guidelines for sustainability, and a paucity of good policies, practices, and incentives for adopting those guidelines in daily life. Conservation philosophy, science, and practice must be framed against the reality of human-dominated ecosystems, rather than the separation of humanity and nature underlying the modern conservation movement. The steps scientists can take to imbed science in conservation and conservation in the societal process affecting the future of ecosystems and human well-being are discussed.

The current biodiversity extinction event: Scenarios for mitigation and recovery

The current massive degradation of habitat and extinction of species is taking place on a catastrophically short timescale, and their effects will fundamentally reset the future evolution of the planet's biota. The fossil record suggests that recovery of global ecosystems has required millions or even tens of millions of years. Thus, intervention by humans, the very agents of the current environmental crisis, is required for any possibility of short-term recovery or maintenance of the biota. Many current recovery efforts have deficiencies, including insufficient information on the diversity and distribution of species, ecological processes, and magnitude and interaction of threats to biodiversity (pollution, overharvesting, climate change, disruption of biogeochemical cycles, introduced or invasive species, habitat loss and fragmentation through land use, disruption of community structure in habitats, and others). A much greater and more urgently applied investment to address these deficiencies is obviously warranted. Conservation and restoration in human-dominated ecosystems must strengthen connections between human activities, such as agricultural or harvesting practices, and relevant research generated in the biological, earth, and atmospheric sciences. Certain threats to biodiversity require intensive international cooperation and input from the scientific community to mitigate their harmful effects, including climate change and alteration of global biogeochemical cycles. In a world already transformed by human activity, the connection between humans and the ecosystems they depend on must frame any strategy for the recovery of the biota.

Candidate Conservation Agreements to Minimize Military Conflicts with Wildlife Laws: The Gopher Tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus)

The proposed Endangered Species Act listing of the gopher tortoise has the potential to impact the military mission at installations in the southeastern United States. Candidate Conservation Agreements with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could be a tool to promote conservation and potentially preclude listing. This project identified military activities that could be affected and determined that military natural resources managers are unsure if such an agreement would prevent impacts to the military mission or impose the same restrictions as federal listing. This project found that if a gopher tortoise Candidate Conservation Agreement can be developed such that it benefits the species as well as the military, it should be used as a model for other species.

Monitoring and Prevention the Smart Cities

Nowadays, the intensive use of Technology Information (TI) provide solutions to problems of the high population density, energy conservation and cities management. This produces a newest concept of the city, Smart City. But the inclusion of TI in the city brings associated new problems, specifically the generation of electromagnetic fields from the available and new technological infrastructures installed in the city that did not exist before. This new scenario produces a negative effect on a particular group of the society, as are the group of persons with electromagnetic hypersensitivity pathology. In this work we propose a system that would allow you to detect and prevent the continuous exposure to such electromagnetic fields, without the need to include more devices or infrastructure which would only worsen these effects. Through the use of the architecture itself and Smart City services, it is possible to infer the necessary knowledge to know the situation of the EMF radiation and thus allow users to avoid the areas of greatest conflict. This knowledge, not only allows us to get EMF current map of the city, but also allows you to generate predictions and detect future risk situations.

Myth, Language, and Complex Ideologies

Ideologies use for their conservation and propagation persuasive methods of communication: rhetoric. Rhetoric is analyzed from the semiotic and logical-mathematical points of view. The following hypotheses are established: (1) language L is a self-explanatory system, mediated by a successive series of systems of cultural conventions, (2) connotative significances of an ideological advertising rhetoric must be known, and (3) the notion of ideological information is a neutral notion that does not imply the valuation of ideology or its conditions of veracity or falsification. Rhetorical figures like metonymy, metaphor, parable analogy, and allegory are defined as relations. Metaphor and parable are order relations. Operations of metonymic and metaphoric substitution are defined and several theorems derived from these operations have been deduced.

Saproxylic Beetle Assemblage Selection as Determining Factor of Species Distributional Patterns: Implications for Conservation

The knowledge of the distributional patterns of saproxylic beetles is essential for conservation biology due to the relevance of this fauna in the maintenance of ecological processes and the endangerment of species. The complex community of saproxylic beetles is shaped by different assemblages that are composed of species linked by the microhabitats they use. We evaluate how different the species distribution patterns that are obtained can be, depending on the analyzed assemblage and to what extent these can affect conservation decisions. Beetles were sampled using hollow emergence and window traps in three protected areas of the Iberian Peninsula. Species richness, composition, and diversity turnover were analyzed for each sampling method and showed high variation depending on the analyzed assemblage. Beta diversity was clearly higher among forests for the assemblage captured using window traps. This method collects flying insects from different tree microhabitats and its captures are influenced by the forest structuring. Within forests, the assemblages captured by hollow emergence traps, which collect the fauna linked to tree hollows, showed the largest turnover of species, as they are influenced by the characteristics of each cavity. Moreover, the selection of the forest showing the highest species richness strongly depended on the studied assemblage. This study demonstrates that differences in the studied assemblages (group of species co-occurring in the same habitat) can also lead to significant differences in the identified patterns of species distribution and diversity turnover. This fact will be necessary to take into consideration when making decisions about conservation and management.

Development of Multisector Alliances (MSAs): Organization and Leadership. ACES Working Papers, 2012

The research team reviewed numerous several multi- sectoral entities and identified nine GGNs that became the subject of our case studies. The research team conducted semi-structured interviews with executives and staff from each of these GNNs and prepared a profile, including a description of the unique evolution of the organization, goals and objectives, organizational structure and governance arrangements for each GGN. The following list provides an overview of the nine GGNs profiled: 1. Every Woman Every Child is an unprecedented global effort that mobilizes and amplifies action by governments, multilaterals, the private sector, research centers, academia and civil society to address life-threatening health challenges facing women and children globally. 2. HERproject catalyzes global partnerships and local Networks to improve female workers’ general and reproductive health in eight emerging economies. 3. R4 Rural Resilience Initiative is a cutting-edge, strategic, large-scale partnership between the public and private sectors to innovate and develop better tools to help the world’s most vulnerable people build resilient livelihoods. 4. Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative is a coalition of governments, companies, civil society groups, investors and international organizations that aims to improve transparency and accountability in the extractives sector. 5. Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases works with international partners at the highest level of government, business and society to break down the logistical and financial barriers to delivering existing treatments for the seven most common neglected tropical diseases. 6. Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition is an alliance that supports public-private partnerships to increase access to the missing nutrients in diets necessary for people, communities and economies to be stronger and healthier. 7. Inter-Agency Network For Education in Emergencies is a global Network of individuals and representatives from NGOs, United Nations and donor agencies, governments, academic institutions, schools and affected populations working to ensure all persons have the right to a quality and safe education in emergencies and post- crisis recovery. 8. mHealth Alliance works with diverse partners to advance mobile-based or mobile-enhanced solutions that deliver health through research, advocacy, support for the development of interoperable solutions and sustainable deployment models. 9. The Rainforest Alliance is a global non-profit that focuses on environmental conservation and sustainable development and works through collaborative partnerships with various stakeholders.

Abundance estimates for landbirds and seabirds extracted and compiled from annual reports of the Skokholm bird observatory

Long-term ecological data are essential for conservation and to monitor and evaluate the effects of environmental change. Bird populations have been routinely assessed on islands off the British coast for many years and here long term data for one such island, Skokholm, is evaluated for robustness in the light of some 20 changes in observers (wardens) on the island over nearly eight decades. It was found that the dataset was robust when compared to bootstrap data with no species showing significant changes in abundance in years when wardens changed. It is concluded that the breeding bird populations on Skokholm and other British offshore islands are an important scientific resource and that protocols should be enacted to ensure the archiving of records, the continuance of data collection using standardised protocols into the future, and the recognition of such long-term data for science in terms of an appropriate conservation designation.

Coral communities exposed to differential large amplitude internal waves cooling and a severe heat stress in 2010 in the Andaman Sea

Tropical scleractinian corals are particularly vulnerable to global warming as elevated sea surface temperatures (SST) disrupt the delicate balance between the coral host and their algal endosymbionts, leading to symbiont expulsion, mass bleaching and mortality. While satellite sensing of SST has proven a good predictor of coral bleaching at the regional scale, there are large deviations in bleaching severity and mortality on the local scale, which are only poorly understood. Here, we show that internal waves play a major role in explaining local coral bleaching and mortality patterns in the Andaman Sea. In spite of a severe region-wide SST anomaly in May 2010, frequent upslope intrusions of cold sub-pycnocline waters due to breaking large amplitude internal waves (LAIW) alleviated heating and mitigated coral bleaching and mortality in shallow LAIW-exposed waters. In LAIW-sheltered waters, by contrast, bleaching susceptible species suffered severe bleaching and total mortality. These findings suggest that LAIW, which are ubiquitous in tropical stratified waters, benefit coral reefs during thermal stress and provide local refugia for bleaching susceptible corals. The swash zones of LAIW may thus be important, so far overlooked, conservation areas for the maintainance of coral diversity in a warming climate. The consideration of LAIW can significantly improve coral bleaching predictions and can provide a valuable tool for coral reef conservation and management.

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