Jolanta Slowik Importance of large natural landscapes for Importance of large scale, natural landscape for protection of biodiversity and conservationspecies of nature conservationof biodiversity. concern.
Georg-August-University, Institute for Zoology & Anthropology Department of Conservation Biology, Workgroup on Endangered Species
Jolanta Slowik
Altai Mountains Contents
• Landscape versus Ecosystem • Natural landscape and cultural landscape • Global condition of landscape • Landscape fragmentation and its consequences Photo: Dr. Kamini Barua • Ecological value of large scale natural landscape patches Pantanal, Brazil Austria, Salzburgerland
Landscape should be recognized as visible, spatially and temporally well-defined ecological systems of closely connected natural and cultural entities. Landscape ecology Landscape ecology is interdisciplinary science with key research questions focused on understanding of the interaction between spatial patterns and processes. Research is cantered on analysis of effects of land-use, land-cover changes, landscape fragmentation and connectivity on ecosystem processes.
Chile: landscape close to Talca Landscape ecology
Landscape ecologists have recognized worth of the computer modeling to predict ecological processes. It was the result of increased access to large data sets, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing technology, new statistic models and dramatic increases in computer power. Mongolia Natural landscape Natural landscape is the original landscape that exists before it is changed by and human culture and activities. The rest of natural landscape are mostly located in protected areas.
Mongólia Khenty Mountains Valley of Yeroo river Natural landscape
The term natural landscape is sometimes used as a synonym for wilderness, but for geographers natural landscape is a scientific term which refers to the biological, geological, climatological not cultural aspects.
(Russia, Ussurian landscape) After many conservationists in `the 21st century landscapes that are totally untouched by human activity no longer exist and therefore the degrees of naturalness within a landscape are taken into consideration.
Peru, Maynas province Amazon Basin Naturalness of the landscape
Landscape ecology are telling about degree of naturalness within the landscape. It means the degree to which an area is pristine and characterized by native species (i.e. absence of perturbation by human activities and absence of introduced or cultured species).
Gobi Altai Kashmiri goats Large scale natural landscape is refuge for many species of nature conservation concern and gives the chance for the long-term survival of endangered species.. Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal, the one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) Natural versus Cultural Landscape
In his extensive travels in South America, Alexander von Humboldt became the first to conceptualize a natural landscape and separate it from the cultural landscape. He was the Pioneer of Environmentalism and he had the idea of nature describing as an interconnected living web. Cultural landscape of Europe is created for centuries by local land use systems
Adelebsen, Lower Saxony The European landscape convention, also known as the Florence Convention, - promotes the protection, management and planning of European landscapes and organizes European co-operation on landscape issues. The convention was adopted on 20 October 2000 in Florence (Italy) and came into force on 1 March 2004 (Council of Europe Treaty Series no. 176) Landscape Convention was carried on in Strasbourg from 6-7 May 2019 and to date, 39 Council of Europe Member States have ratified the Convention but unfortunately not Germany.
Landscape of North Germany The rests of natural forest and old growth forest in Europe is located in East Carpathian Mountains. The great carnivores like wolf, lynx and the greatest population of 7630 brown bears are living there. It is endangered due to the growing demands on wood, amongst other, for bioenergy, packaging industry, charcoal production.
Poland: Bieszczady: East CarpathianCharcoal Mountains production Landscape versusLandscape ecosystem versus ecosystem
Ecosystems: can be defined as functional interacting systems, characterized for the flow of energy, matter and information between organisms and their abiotic environment. As functional systems they are intangible with vaguely defined borders. Landscape: landscapes should be recognized as tangible, spatially and temporally well defined ecological systems of closely interlink natural and cultural entities
Zew Naveh Journal of landscape ecology, 2012 Ecosystem research “Biodiversity and biomass of above ground insects in the forest- steppe zone of northern Mongolia; impact of naturalness and human utilisation.”
Topical questions for bio geographers, ecologists and conservationists are how many species are really necessary to keep an ecosystem functioning? Does diversity has an influence on the stability of an ecosystem?
Dr. Jolanta Slowik, University Goettingen, Centre for Nature Conservation, Germany Prof. Jerzy Karg, Institute for Agricultural and Forest Environment, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poznan, Poland So called naturalness must not be obligatory connected with high biodiversity and average number of families and density was higher in agricultural landscape of Europe as in Mongolia. The big herbivorous insects like Grasshoppers (Orthoptera) are playing a very important ecological role in Mongolian ecosystems and have a big influence on biomass of above ground insects. The significant differences in the diversity, density and biomass were related to the level of stress in the ecosystems under study and obtained results have supported the Intermediate The scarce large blue, Phengaris teleius endangered Disturbance Hypothesis myrmecophylous butterfly Landscape Homogenisation and Fragmentation
The dominant processes worldwide can be described as homogenisation and fragmentation (Jongman, 2002).
Homogenization means that landscapes are becoming more or less the same everywhere, without much variation. Some parts of the land are accessible for wildlife, but most is not.
Fragmentation means that the land is divided by barriers and increasingly difficult to go through.
In the last 50 years new landscape types became dominant such as (sub) urban landscapes, motorways landscapes, recreation landscapes and industrial landscapes. They replace forest landscapes, small scale agriculture landscape with hedgerows, natural rivers and wetlands.
Homogenization and fragmentation of the landscape contributes significantly to the decline and loss of wildlife populations and increase the number of endangered species of plants and animals. Landscape Fragmentation Landscape fragmentation is the breaking up of larger areas of natural land cover into smaller, more isolated patches, independent of a change in the total area of natural land cover.
Kenia Tsavo National Park is fragmented by the highway and divided into 2 national Parks Tsavo East and Tsavo West Landscape fragmentation caused by the roads has important ecological effects like direct habitat loss, traffic mortality, barrier for migration and dispersal and cutting populations into subpopulations
Tsavo National Park, Kenia Changes in ecological processes in fragments landscape are complex and poorly understood
Brasil Amazon: recent deforestation
The loss of species or a change in its abundance can have a marked effect on ecological processes like pollination, predation,competition, parasitism, mutualism throughout fragmented landscape. The Global Assessment Report 2019 produced by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
Based on the systematic review of about 15,000 scientific and government sources, and also incorporated indigenous and local knowledge.
The Report shows that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades. Main reasons of biodiversity loss What is global condition of
What is globalnatural condition of natural and andcultural cultural landscapes For biodiversity and landscapes?Wildlife?
Decline of natural ecosystems almost 50 % Decline in global biomass of wild mammals 82% * Decline in abundance of naturally present land species 23% * Plant and animal species threatened with extinction 25% In Germany 80% of insects biomass disappeared even in protected areas.
Columbia gold mining
* since prehistory The assessment measured 24 ecosystem services concluding that only four have shown improvement over the last 50 years, fifteen are in serious decline, and five are in a stable state overall, but under threat in some parts of the world. Brazil Pantanal The Ussurian broadleaf and mixed forests
Current WWF Living Forest Report inform that human impacts have already led to the loss of around 40% of the world’s forests. Every year, 8,8 million of forest is destroyed, According to analysis of satellite data, tropical forests are being logged at a rate of at least 8 million hectares or 31,000 square miles a year.
Brazil, Amazonian Tropical forest Tropical rainforests are areas of extremely high biodiversity compared to other ecosystems. Biologists estimate that tropical rainforests contain about 50% of the world's terrestrial plant and animal species, yet they cover only about 6% of the world's land area.
The spectral tarsier, Tarsius tarsier Sulawesi Indonesia
Peru River national Reserve Tambopata
West Papua Timica
The eastern lowland gorilla Gorilla gorilla graueri, East Kongo
Forest elephant, Loxodonta cyclotis Ivory Coast Opisthocomus hoazin Peru Combine harvesters crop soybeans in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Large-scale land investments may worsen rather than reduce rural poverty and are neither environmentally nor socially sustainable. Land grabbing is disastrous for the nature and is causing habitat loss for many species. Reduction in the size of the natural habitat by 90% is causing a halving of the number of species which it will contain (MacArthur and Wilson 1967). Global condition of natural landscape.
forest clearance in Indonesia.Photograph Ulet Ifansasti Greenpeace
Monoculture plantations of oil palm replace biodiverse tropical forest. Habitat loss and habitat quality deterioration remains, next to persecution, the greatest thread to many wildlife species especially those that are endangered and dependent upon large natural landscapes, so called wide ranging species
Russia Kunashir the brown bear Ursus arctos Ecological Values of large natural landscape
Water quality protection for aquifer (aquifer : an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock) and lake.
Connectivity of a low-order stream network. First and second order stream make up 70% to 80% of the channel length of river networks
Habitat to sustain populations of patch interior species.
Core habitat and escape cover for large home range vertebrates.
Natural disturbance regimes are necessary for many species. Many unique and threatened species have lost already the greater areas of their habitat and are protected on only a tiny percent of their original range.
Species vulnerable to fragmentation
Large –patch and interior species
birds-including army ant followers, solitary species, members of mixed-species flocks avoid forest edges.
Top carnivores White-plumed Antbird Species vulnerable Pithys albifrons to human exploitation or persecution Jaguar Panthera onca, Non vagile species
Species with pure survive dispersal abilities. Many insects of old- growth forest are flightless and are Dung beetle poor dispersers like carrion and dung’s beetles in Amazonian Oxystemon festivum forest Ecosystem research is essential to understand ecological functions and processes but in case of endangered species we need other approaches.
An important questions for bio-geographers, ecologists and conservationists are:
How many species are really necessary to keep an ecosystem functioning?
Does diversity has an influence on the stability of an ecosystem?
Does research on ecosystem functions and services covers study on species of nature conservation concern? Though species and landscape ecological modelling and satellite animal observation system become currently promising tool in conservation of endangered species but without long term, sound field data on species biology, distribution, and habitat use, habitat modelling and satellite animal observation system is insufficient
Vicugna, Vicugna vicugna, Peru, Reserva National de Salinas The Centre for Large Landscape Conservation Importance of large natural landscapes for conservation of biodiversity.
Global biodiversity and many species of nature conservation concern can be only saved when the large wild, undisturbed by human activities, landscapes will be preserved.
An international initiative the Centre for Large Landscape Conservation, with the seat in USA is supporting many projects worldwide connected with protection of large scale natural landscapes.
Jolanta Slowik
Mongolia wild horses Equs ferus Przewalski in Hustei National Park Thank you for your attention I wish you much power, endurance and persistence to care about your breath-taking beautiful natural Patagonian landscape to keep it for the next generation in its grace and healthy ecological condition.