Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Prescribed burning is a key tool in land management globally used to reduce wildfire risks and achieve ecological, cultural and resource management objectives across both natural and human systems. Despite its widespread application, research on prescribed burning is marked by significant gaps. Subsequently, we posed the following research questions: (1) What are the key research topics that define international, peer-reviewed literature on prescribed burning? (2) What are the temporal and spatial trends of these topics? (3) What are the relationships between the national income of a given country and the trends in research topics? And, (4) What are the most salient knowledge gaps in peer-reviewed prescribed burning research, and how can they be addressed? We used structural topic modelling and geoparsing to conduct a detailed text analysis of 7878 peer-reviewed articles on prescribed burning. We revealed that research on prescribed burning is dominated by studies from high-income countries, particularly the United States. This highlights a geographical bias that may skew global understanding and application of prescribed burning practices. Our topic modelling revealed the most prevalent topics to be Fire Regimes and Landscape Biodiversity Management, whilst topics such as Air Pollution & Health, and Wildfire Risk Management gained prominence in recent years. Our analysis highlighted a disconnect between forestry-related research and broader landscape management topics. This finding emphasises the need for more interdisciplinary research, and research on the use and effects of prescribed burning in diverse ecosystems and underrepresented regions, particularly in the context of climate change.

AIM: Urban expansion significantly alters fringe environments often with unde-sirable impacts on biodiversity. Consequently, there is a need to define clearconservation objectives for areas subject to urban encroachment. Urban fringe development is a highly dynamic process, both spatially and temporally, but few studies are equipped to examine its temporal effects on biota. We aimed to explore the impacts of urban encroachment on avifauna through space and time.LOCATION: The Australian Capital Territory, Australia. METHODS: We used records from an extensive 14-year monitoring programme undertaken in temperate woodland. We fitted hierarchical generalized linear models to assess individual species responses to the distance from monitoring sites to the urban boundary, and the temporal rate of change in this distance through time. We used factorial analysis on mixed data to examine trait group responses to these predictors.RESULTS: Our results indicated that the occurrence of approximately half of the study region's avifauna is strongly linked to the proximity of their habitat to the urban fringe, but that the impact of urban fringe development on the occurrence of some species changed through time. We identified several species of conservation concern that respond negatively to large annual increases in urban fringe development, irrespective of its proximity to suitable habitat. Species responses to urban proximity were linked to life history traits, with small,migratory, woodland-dependent species that rely on mid- and upper-canopy structures, clearly disadvantaged by urban environments.MAIN CONCLUSIONS: Our findings demonstrate the breadth of species responses to urban encroachment over much larger distances than is typically investigated in urban ecological studies. We identify guilds vulnerable to the impacts of urban fringe development and therefore in need of ecologically sensitive urban design. We argue that future urban expansion towards important fringe habitats will need to be planned strategically through space and time. ; This research received funding support from ConservationPlanning and Research, Environment and Sustainable Devel-opment Directorate ACT Government and the Fenner Schoolof Environment and Society. DBL, PG and KI were sup-ported by the National Environmental Research Program.ADM was supported by an ARC Future Fellowship(FT100100358).

AIM: Urban expansion significantly alters fringe environments often with unde-sirable impacts on biodiversity. Consequently, there is a need to define clearconservation objectives for areas subject to urban encroachment. Urban fringe development is a highly dynamic process, both spatially and temporally, but few studies are equipped to examine its temporal effects on biota. We aimed to explore the impacts of urban encroachment on avifauna through space and time.LOCATION: The Australian Capital Territory, Australia. METHODS: We used records from an extensive 14-year monitoring programme undertaken in temperate woodland. We fitted hierarchical generalized linear models to assess individual species responses to the distance from monitoring sites to the urban boundary, and the temporal rate of change in this distance through time. We used factorial analysis on mixed data to examine trait group responses to these predictors.RESULTS: Our results indicated that the occurrence of approximately half of the study region's avifauna is strongly linked to the proximity of their habitat to the urban fringe, but that the impact of urban fringe development on the occurrence of some species changed through time. We identified several species of conservation concern that respond negatively to large annual increases in urban fringe development, irrespective of its proximity to suitable habitat. Species responses to urban proximity were linked to life history traits, with small,migratory, woodland-dependent species that rely on mid- and upper-canopy structures, clearly disadvantaged by urban environments.MAIN CONCLUSIONS: Our findings demonstrate the breadth of species responses to urban encroachment over much larger distances than is typically investigated in urban ecological studies. We identify guilds vulnerable to the impacts of urban fringe development and therefore in need of ecologically sensitive urban design. We argue that future urban expansion towards important fringe habitats will need to be planned strategically through space and time. ; This research received funding support from Conservation Planning and Research, Environment and Sustainable Devel-opment Directorate ACT Government and the Fenner Schoolof Environment and Society. DBL, PG and KI were sup-ported by the National Environmental Research Program. ADM was supported by an ARC Future Fellowship (FT100100358).

Land-use change due to agriculture has a major influence on arthropod biodiversity, and may influence species differently depending on their traits. It is unclear how species traits vary across different land uses and their edges, with most studies focussing on single habitat types and overlooking edge effects. We examined variation in morphological traits of carabid beetles (Coleoptera:Carabidae) on both sides of edges between woodlands and four adjoining, but contrasting farmland uses in an agricultural landscape. We asked: (1) how do traits differ between woodlands and different adjoining farmland uses (crop, fallow, restoration planting, and woody debris applied over crop), and do effects depend on increasing distances from the farmland–woodland edge? (2) Does vegetation structure explain observed effects of adjoining farmland use and edge effects on these traits? We found that carabid communities varied in body size and shape, including traits associated with diet, robustness, and visual ability. Smaller sized species were associated with woodlands and larger sized species with farmlands. Farmland use further influenced these associations, where woodlands adjoining plantings supported smaller species, while fallows and crops supported larger species. Vegetation structure significantly influenced body size, flying ability, and body shape, and helped explain the effects of farmland use and distance from edges on body size. We highlight the important role of vegetation structure, farmland use, and edge effects in filtering the morphological traits of carabid assemblages across a highly modified agricultural landscape. Our findings suggest that farmland management can influence body size and dispersal-related traits in farmland and adjacent native vegetation. ; This work was supported by Central Tablelands Local Land Services (through Australian Government funding), Lake Cowal Foundation and Mount Mulga Pastoral Company. KN was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) scholarship.