PERSPECTIVES ON NATURE CONSERVATION – PATTERNS, PRESSURES AND PROSPECTS Edited by John Tiefenbacher Perspectives on Nature Conservation – Patterns, Pressures and Prospects Edited by John Tiefenbacher Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2012 InTech All chapters are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. 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Publishing Process Manager Romana Vukelic Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer InTech Design Team First published February, 2012 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from [email protected] Perspectives on Nature Conservation – Patterns, Pressures and Prospects, Edited by John Tiefenbacher p. cm. ISBN 978-953-51-0033-1 Contents Preface IX Part 1 The Place of Nature Conservation in Modern Society 1 Chapter 1 Modelling Nature in Ecologically Oriented Urban Context 3 Krzysztof M. Rostański Part 2 Understanding Patterns, Change and Nature Conservation Needs 31 Chapter 2 Deciphering Early Angiosperm Landscape Ecology Using a Clustering Method on Cretaceous Plant Assemblages 33 Clément Coiffard, Bernard Gomez and Véronique Daviero-Gomez Chapter 3 Diversity and Genetic Erosion of Ancient Crops and Wild Relatives of Agricultural Cultivars for Food: Implications for Nature Conservation in Georgia (Caucasus) 51 Maia Akhalkatsi, Jana Ekhvaia and Zezva Asanidze Chapter 4 Metallophytes and Metallicolous Vegetation: Evolutionary Aspects, Taxonomic Changes and Conservational Status in Central Europe 93 Henryk Baumbach Part 3 Landscape Metrics and Nature Conservation 119 Chapter 5 The Application of Landscape Indices in Landscape Ecology 121 Péter Csorba and Szilárd Szabó Chapter 6 Impacts of Woodland Fragmentation on Species’ Occurrences – The Combination of a Habitat Model with Landscape Metrics 141 Britta Eggers and Raul Köhler VI Contents Chapter 7 The Role of Landscape in Contact Zones of Sister Species of Lizards 161 Gabriela Cardozo, Sergio Naretto, Marcelo Zak and Margarita Chiaraviglio Part 4 Conservation of Nature and Regional Development 177 Chapter 8 Landscape Approach to Bio-Cultural Diversity Conservation in Rural Lebanon 179 Jala Makhzoumi, Salma Talhouk, Rami Zurayk and Riad Sadek Chapter 9 The Nature Conservation of Baikal Region: Special Natural Protected Areas System in Three Environmental Models 199 Tatyana P. Kalikhman Chapter 10 Trail Impact Management Related to Vegetation Response in Termessos National Park, in Turkish Mediterranean 223 Meryem Atik, Selçuk Sayan, Osman Karagüzel and Emrah Yıldırım Part 5 International Challenges to Contemporary Conservation 241 Chapter 11 Applied Landscape Ecology, Future Socioeconomics and Policy-Making in the Neotropics 243 Arturo Restrepo-Aristizábal, Valentina Heggestad and Ian Sajid Acuña-Rodríguez Preface Perspectives on Nature Conservation is a collection of chapters that demonstrate the diversity of information and viewpoints that are critical for appreciating the developing gaps and weaknesses in local, regional and hemispheric ecologies, and also for understanding the limitations and barriers to accomplishing critical conservation projects. The organization of this book is intended to emphasize, through these reports of original research by an array of international scholars, the linkages between the geographic foci of conservation projects (i.e. they are focused in specific locations or in certain types of places, and often require management of spatial behaviors and processes) and the biological substances (flows biotic and abiotic materials, chemicals and energy through time) that we conceptualize as “nature”. I have organized the chapters into five sections that take the reader through perspectives of diminishing spatial scales (that is to say, from smaller to larger landscapes, covering increasingly larger portions of the surface of the Earth). First, a chapter by Krzysztof Rostański provides a conceptual perspective for understanding the place of nature (not only the biological forms, but the geometric forms and dimensions that nature forms) in our society, the inseparable thread that it is in all modern societies (indeed, there can be no culture without nature and, dialectically, to define nature defines the definer of it) and its conservation. Rostański emphasizes that even “incomplete” natural landscapes (or disturbed ecosystems) can serve the nature needs of society, and that logic is demonstrated in the long-practiced approaches to the “greening” of cities and the tenets of landscape architecture. Nature conservation is founded on the notions of loss and change. Substantiation of the species that represent nature and natural conditions requires the expertise and discipline of biologists who catalogue and track the composition of the resident communities of the present and the past. Several chapters in the second section (“Understanding Patterns, Change, and Conservation Needs”) exemplify the methods of those who study the evolution of species and communities vis-à-vis changing environments, in order to predicate conservation on rational expectations of success. Coiffard, Gomez and Daviero-Gomez discuss their examination of the speed and timing of the emergence of landscape ecology of angiosperms (during the Cretaceous) and their eventual domination of terrestrial environments. The analytical methodology of clustering is one commonly used by others, defining the assemblages of species that cohabitate. X Preface Genetics is fundamental to the evolutionary process, and the scientific capacity to discriminate and track genetic changes itself is rapidly evolving. Akhalkatsi, Ekhvaia and Asanidze detail the extraordinary hearth of diversity in the Caucasus Mountains of central Asia that provided the seeds of modern agricultural cultivars. Their study of the remnant wild relatives of cereals, legumes, grapevines and other crops in Georgia demonstrates that development and economic preferences has reduced the fortitude and diversity of the genetic pool in their original source region. The authors discuss the implications of the trend for conservation efforts in the region. The third chapter, by Baumbach, examines the distribution and conservation status of a set of plant species that either tolerate or prefer soils that are high in metal compounds. The plants themselves may not attract a large following of devotees (or detractors for that matter); the environments within which they flourish are not normally desirable. Heavy metal contamination from industrial emissions and mining in Germany (where this study is conducted) are usually related to undesirable, “brown” or derelict sites, which usually attract remediation that suggests elimination of the environments in which they thrive. This would seem to make conservation of these assemblages more challenging. The third section of this book features landscape metrics and their use in conservation. The first chapter in this group is a review of the use of measures of the characteristics of landscapes and ecosystems in nature conservation studies. Geographical concepts are applied to ecological circumstances and examined for their role in the perpetuation or devolution of ecosystems. Csorba and Szabó discuss the patterning of landscapes and the roles of fragmentation, patch development, size and connectedness on habitats, and the application of these concepts and relationships to practical projects in conservation. Eggers and Köhler present an example of such an application. Their study of the fragmentation of woodland throughout Germany on avian and mammalian habitats demonstrates that landscape metrics can be employed to evaluate the impact of fragmentation on habitat suitability for fragmentation-sensitive species. The incorporation of analyses of fragmentation of potential habitat at different scales (scales appropriate to the species in question) can illuminate needs for landscape patch connectivity to facilitate conservation and land use management. Cardozo, Naretto, Zak and Chiaraviglio face the conservation of species from a very different angle. While the metrics of landscape are used to evaluate the suitability of habitat, the authors seek to better understand the role of landscape in both the presence and absence of “sister” species