There is a perceived trade-off between fire risk reduction and northern spotted owl habitat protection in dry-conifer forests in southwestern Oregon. Management options for balancing this trade-off need to be sought at the landscape level. Applied landscape ecology suggests three important features to consider are (1) patch size and configuration...
There is increasing evidence that the type of land cover surrounding remnant patches of native habitats (the ‘matrix’) can modify effects of landscape change on biodiversity; thus the traditional idea of dichotomous habitat and non-habitat following island biogeography theory is insufficient in complex landscapes. Matrix type can have dramatic influences...
Global environmental change is causing local extinctions of species. When species depend on one another, as in the mutualistic relationship between plants and pollinators, loss of one interaction partner may cause cascading effects within the community – such as additional extinctions and reduced pollination services. Network theory provides a way...
Human activities have altered Earth’s ecosystems. Most biomes have experienced a 20-50% conversion to human use. Loss of habitat has obvious effects on the persistence of species. Fragmentation, however, may also negatively affect biodiversity for those species that exhibit behavioral responses to changes in habitat configuration. Such behavioral changes include...
A growing body of work reveals that animal-mediated pollination is negatively affected by anthropogenic disturbance. Landscape-scale disturbance results in two often inter-related processes: (1) habitat loss, and (2) disruptions of habitat configuration (i.e. fragmentation). Understanding the relative effects of such processes is critical in designing effective management strategies to limit...