Using ideal distributions of the time since habitat was disturbed to build metrics for evaluating landscape condition

Ecological Applications : a Publication of the Ecological Society of America
Ayesha I T TullochHugh P Possingham

Abstract

Developing a standardized approach to measuring the state of biodiversity in landscapes undergoing disturbance is crucial for evaluating and comparing change across different systems, assessing ecosystem vulnerability and the impacts of destructive activities, and helping direct species recovery actions. Existing ecosystem metrics of condition fail to acknowledge that a particular community could be in multiple states, and the distribution of states could worsen or improve when impacted by a disturbance process, depending on how far the current landscape distribution of states diverges from pre-anthropogenic impact baseline conditions. We propose a way of rapidly assessing regional-scale condition in ecosystems where the distribution of age classes representing increasing time since last disturbance is suspected to have diverged from an ideal benchmark reference distribution. We develop two metrics that (1) compare the observed mean time since last disturbance with an expected mean and (2) quantify the summed shortfall of vegetation age-class frequencies relative to a reference age-class distribution of time since last disturbance. We demonstrate the condition metrics using two case studies: (1) fire in threatened southwestern ...Continue Reading

References

Aug 30, 2006·Ecological Applications : a Publication of the Ecological Society of America·John L StoddardRichard H Norris
Nov 9, 2010·Conservation Biology : the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology·Jon Paul RodríguezTara Zamin
Aug 31, 2011·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·David B LindenmayerSamuel C Banks
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Jan 28, 2012·Conservation Biology : the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology·Tara G MartinKerrie Mengersen
May 15, 2013·PloS One·David A KeithSergio Zambrano-Martínez
Jul 20, 2013·Ecological Applications : a Publication of the Ecological Society of America·Carl R GosperColin J Yates
Nov 16, 2013·Science·M C HansenJ R G Townshend
Jan 1, 2014·The Science of the Total Environment·Albert van DijkPep Canadell
Oct 19, 2016·Ecological Applications : a Publication of the Ecological Society of America·Ayesha I T TullochIadine Chadès

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