Suchergebnisse

Tropical ecosystem conversion to agriculture has caused widespread habitat loss and created fragmented landscapes composed of remnant forest patches embedded in a matrix of agricultural land uses. Non- traditional agricultural export (NTAE) crops such as pineapple are rapidly replacing multiuse landscapes characterized by a diverse matrix of pasture and smallholder crops with intensive, large-scale, monoculture plantations. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we conduct a case study to examine the coupled social and ecological implications of LUCC and agricultural intensification in this region, with larger application to regions experiencing similar patterns. Guided by frameworks from both political and landscape ecology, we: (1) describe the social and economic implications of pineapple expansion, specifically the concentration of land, labor and financial resources, (2) quantify pineapple cultivation's spatial characteristics, and (3) assess the effects of pineapple expansion on surrounding forest ecosystems, on the agricultural matrix and on biodiversity conservation. Our results indicate that pineapple production concentrates land, labor, and financial resources, which has a homogenizing effect on the agricultural economy in the study region. This constrains farm-based livelihoods, with larger implications for food security and agricultural diversity. Landscape ecology analyses further reveal how pineapple production simplifies and homogenizes the agricultural matrix between forest patches, which is likely to have a negative effect on biodiversity. To offset the effects of pineapple expansion on social and environmental systems, we recommend developing landscape level land use planning capacity. Furthermore, agricultural and conservation policy reform is needed to promote landscape heterogeneity and economic diversity within the agricultural sector. Our interdisciplinary research provides a detailed examination of the social and ecological impacts of agricultural intensification in a tropical landscape, and offers recommendations for improvement relevant not only to our study region but to the many other tropical landscapes currently undergoing non-traditional agricultural export driven agricultural intensification.

Conversion of tropical ecosystems to agriculture over the past century has created patchwork landscapes of agriculture and remnant forest where stakeholders struggle to balance production and conservation. Recently, agricultural intensification in these landscapes has been replacing heterogeneous mixtures of smallholder crops with intensive, large-scale monoculture plantations of export crops such as oil palm, soybeans, and pineapple. We develop an interdisciplinary approach to examine the coupled social and ecological implications of this process in an agricultural landscape in Costa Rica, with broader application to regions experiencing similar patterns of intensification. We hypothesize that the spread of intensive monoculture pineapple plantations is driving demographic and economic change in local communities, affecting the structure and function of remnant forest, and contributing to the decoupling of social and ecological resilience. To test these hypotheses, we develop a conceptual model linking social and ecological systems, and identify qualitative and quantitative measures to characterize the strength and resilience of these links. We employ methods from political and landscape ecology to collect empirical field data for each measure, and integrate these data to: (1) describe social and economic implications of pineapple expansion, (2) quantify the spatial characteristics of pineapple cultivation, (3) assess the effects of pineapple expansion on biodiversity conservation. Findings are presented back to stakeholders in a series of workshops to strengthen the weak but critical feedback from ecological to social systems. This research answers the urgent call to develop interdisciplinary approaches to understand the complex patterns and processes that drive coupled social and ecological systems. (Texte intégral)

The 196 parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will soon agree to a post-2020 global framework for conserving the three elements of biodiversity (genetic, species, and ecosystem diversity) while ensuring sustainable development and benefit sharing. As the most significant global conservation policy mechanism, the new CBD framework has far-reaching consequences- it will guide conservation actions and reporting for each member country until 2050. In previous CBD strategies, as well as other major conservation policy mechanisms, targets and indicators for genetic diversity (variation at the DNA level within species, which facilitates species adaptation and ecosystem function) were undeveloped and focused on species of agricultural relevance. We assert that, to meet global conservation goals, genetic diversity within all species, not just domesticated species and their wild relatives, must be conserved and monitored using appropriate metrics. Building on suggestions in a recent Letter in Science (Laikre et al., 2020) we expand argumentation for three new, pragmatic genetic indicators and modifications to two current indicators for maintaining genetic diversity and adaptive capacity of all species, and provide guidance on their practical use. The indicators are: 1) the number of populations with effective population size above versus below 500, 2) the proportion of populations maintained within species, 3) the number of species and populations in which genetic diversity is monitored using DNA-based methods. We also present and discuss Goals and Action Targets for post-2020 biodiversity conservation which are connected to these indicators and underlying data. These pragmatic indicators and goals have utility beyond the CBD; they should benefit conservation and monitoring of genetic diversity via national and global policy for decades to come. ; Supplementary material: Tables S1 and S2 and Fig. S1 compile estimates of Ne/Nc from several reviews and new data. ; The EU Framework Horizon 2020 through the ...