1. Despite wide recognition of the need for catchment‐scale management to ensure the integrity of river ecosystems, the science and policy basis for joint management of land and water remains poorly understood. An interdisciplinary case study of a river basin in south‐eastern Michigan is presented. 2. The River Raisin drains an area of 2776 km2, of which some 70% is agricultural land. The upper basin consists of till and outwash, and both topography and land use/cover are diverse. The lower basin consists of fine textured lake deposits, is of low relief, and land use is primarily agricultural. 3. The River Raisin basin historically was a region of oak‐savannah and wetlands. It was deforested, drained and converted to farmland during the mid‐nineteenth century. Human population reached a plateau at about 1880, and then underwent a second period of growth after 1950, mainly in small urban areas. More recently, the amount of agricultural land has declined and forested land has increased, in accord with a general decline in farming activity. 4. It could be suggested that the influence of land use on stream integrity is scale‐dependent. Instream habitat structure and organic matter inputs are determined primarily by local conditions such as vegetative cover at a site, whereas nutrient supply, sediment delivery, hydrology and channel characteristics are influenced by regional conditions, including landscape features and land use/cover at some distance upstream and lateral to stream sites. 5. Sediment concentrations measured during low flows were higher in areas of greater agriculture. In a comparison of two subcatchments, sediment yields were up to ten times greater in the more agricultural location, in response to similar storm events. A distributed parameter model linked to a geographical information system predicted that an increase in forested land cover would result in dramatic declines in runoff and sediment and nutrient yields. 6. Habitat quality and biotic integrity varied widely among individual stream sites in accord with patterns in land use/cover. Extent of agricultural land at the subcatchment scale was the best single predictor of local stream conditions. Local riparian vegetation was uncorrelated with overall land use and was a weak secondary predictor of habitat quality and biotic integrity. 7. Investigation of the regulatory agencies involved in land and water management in the basin revealed a complex web of overlapping political jurisdictions. Most land‐use decision‐making occurs at the local level of township, city or village. Unfortunately, local decision‐making bodies typically lack the information and jurisdictional authority to influence up‐ and downstream events.

Managing ecosystem services is critical to human survival, yet we do not know how large natural areas must be to support these services. We investigated how crop pollination services provided by native, unmanaged, bee communities varied on organic and conventional farms situated along a gradient of isolation from natural habitat. Pollination services from native bees were significantly, positively related to the proportion of upland natural habitat in the vicinity of farm sites, but not to any other factor studied, including farm type, insecticide usage, field size and honeybee abundance. The scale of this relationship matched bee foraging ranges. Stability and predictability of pollination services also increased with increasing natural habitat area. This strong relationship between natural habitat area and pollination services was robust over space and time, allowing prediction of the area needed to produce a given level of pollination services by wild bees within this landscape.

Limitations imposed on species ranges by the climatic, ecological, and physiological effects of elevation are important determinants of extinction risk. We modeled the effects of elevational limits on the extinction risk of landbirds, 87% of all bird species. Elevational limitation of range size explained 97% of the variation in the probability of being in a World Conservation Union category of extinction risk. Our model that combined elevational ranges, four Millennium Assessment habitat-loss scenarios, and an intermediate estimate of surface warming of 2.8 degrees C, projected a best guess of 400-550 landbird extinctions, and that approximately 2150 additional species would be at risk of extinction by 2100. For Western Hemisphere landbirds, intermediate extinction estimates based on climate-induced changes in actual distributions ranged from 1.3% (1.1 degrees C warming) to 30.0% (6.4 degrees C warming) of these species. Worldwide, every degree of warming projected a nonlinear increase in bird extinctions of about 100-500 species. Only 21% of the species predicted to become extinct in our scenarios are currently considered threatened with extinction. Different habitat-loss and surface-warming scenarios predicted substantially different futures for landbird species. To improve the precision of climate-induced extinction estimates, there is an urgent need for high-resolution measurements of shifts in the elevational ranges of species. Given the accelerating influence of climate change on species distributions and conservation, using elevational limits in a tested, standardized, and robust manner can improve conservation assessments of terrestrial species and will help identify species that are most vulnerable to global climate change. Our climate-induced extinction estimates are broadly similar to those of bird species at risk from other factors, but these estimates largely involve different sets of species.

Studies of fragmented landscapes, especially in the tropics, have traditionally focused on the native fragments themselves, ignoring species distributions in surrounding agricultural or other human-dominated areas. We sampled moth species richness within a 227-ha forest fragment and in four surrounding agricultural habitats (coffee, shade coffee, pasture, and mixed farms) in southern Costa Rica. We found no significant difference in moth species richness or abundance among agricultural habitats, but agricultural sites within 1 km of the forest fragment had significantly higher richness and abundance than sites farther than 3.5 km from the fragment. In addition, species composition differed significantly between distance classes (but not among agricultural habitats), with near sites more similar to forest than far sites. These results suggest that (1) different agricultural production regimes in this region may offer similar habitat elements and thus may not differ substantially in their capacities to support native moth populations and (2) that the majority of moths may utilize both native and agricultural habitats and move frequently between them, forming "halos" of relatively high species richness and abundance around forest fragments. Correlations between species richness and the amount of nearby forest cover, measured over circles of various radii around the sites, suggest that halos extend approximately 1.0-1.4 km from the forest edge. The extent of these halos likely differs among taxa and may influence their ability to survive in fragmented landscapes. Biogeografía Rural de Polillas en un Paisaje Fragmentado: Biodiversidad en Hábitats Nativos y AgrícolasRicketts et al. Countryside Biogeography of Moths 379circundante, medida en círculos de diferente radio alrededor de los sitios de estudio, sugiere que los halos se extienden aproximadamente 1.0-1.4 km del borde del bosque. La extension de estos halos posiblemente difiere entre taxones y puede influenciar sus habilidades para sobrevivir en paisajes fragmentados.

We present a global conservation analysis for an entire "flagship" taxon, land mammals. A combination of rarity, anthropogenic impacts, and political endemism has put about a quarter of terrestrial mammal species, and a larger fraction of their populations, at risk of extinction. A new global database and complementarity analysis for selecting priority areas for conservation shows that approximately 11% of Earth's land surface should be managed for conservation to preserve at least 10% of terrestrial mammal geographic ranges. Different approaches, from protection (or establishment) of reserves to countryside biogeographic enhancement of human-dominated landscapes, will be required to approach this minimal goal.