Viliani Leonardo, Sutheimer Colleen M, Nielsen Scott E
Applied Conservation Ecology Lab, Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB Canada.
Landsc Ecol. 2024;39(10):178. doi: 10.1007/s10980-024-01972-3. Epub 2024 Sep 30.
Anthropogenic habitat loss and fragmentation are major threats to ecosystems and a focus in conservation. However, conservation is often limited to considerations of site-level processes neglecting the effect of the surrounding landscape that might limit the effectiveness of restoration efforts.
Using seismic lines in Alberta's oil sands as a case study, we demonstrate an approach that integrates spatial configuration of anthropogenic footprints to prioritize habitat defragmentation.
We quantified the effects of seismic line density and configuration on functional footprints for caribou, butterfly diversity, and vascular plant diversity, to predict whether edge effects are more pronounced under different line densities and configurations. We then estimated the portion of the original functional footprint that would persist in the landscape due to the co-occurrence with other anthropogenic activities.
We found that functional footprint for caribou grows rapidly as habitat loss increases. In contrast, butterflies and plants exhibited a more gradual and linear growth in functional footprints at more local scales. This effect varies based on configuration of lines, either suppressing or facilitating the effect of habitat loss on functional habitats. Finally, restoration of all seismic lines without considering other footprints would reduce the original functional footprint by only 57% for caribou.
Restoration efforts for habitat defragmentation rarely consider the spatial configuration of linear features, particularly as it relates to the co-occurrence of other footprints that are not being restored. Our functional approach to defragmentation of habitat encompasses different spatial concepts related to anthropogenic forest fragmentation and allows up to a 25-fold gain in cost-effectiveness for seismic lines restoration.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-024-01972-3.
人为造成的栖息地丧失和破碎化是对生态系统的主要威胁，也是保护工作的重点。然而，保护措施往往局限于对场地层面过程的考虑，而忽视了周围景观的影响，这可能会限制恢复工作的成效。
以艾伯塔省油砂区的地震勘探线为例，我们展示了一种整合人为足迹空间配置的方法，以确定栖息地破碎化治理的优先顺序。
我们量化了地震勘探线密度和配置对北美驯鹿功能足迹、蝴蝶多样性和维管植物多样性的影响，以预测在不同的线密度和配置下边缘效应是否更显著。然后，我们估计了由于与其他人为活动同时存在，原始功能足迹在景观中持续存在的比例。
我们发现，随着栖息地丧失的增加，北美驯鹿的功能足迹迅速增长。相比之下，蝴蝶和植物在更局部尺度上的功能足迹呈现出更渐进和线性的增长。这种效应因勘探线的配置而异，既可能抑制也可能促进栖息地丧失对功能栖息地的影响。最后，在不考虑其他足迹的情况下恢复所有地震勘探线，北美驯鹿的原始功能足迹仅会减少57%。
栖息地破碎化治理的恢复工作很少考虑线性特征的空间配置，特别是当它与未恢复的其他足迹同时出现时。我们的栖息地破碎化功能方法涵盖了与人为森林破碎化相关的不同空间概念，并使地震勘探线恢复的成本效益提高了25倍。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/s10980-024-01972-3获取的补充材料。
