Determining conservation priority areas for Palearctic passerine migrant birds in sub-Saharan Africa

Walther, Bruno; Pirsig, Lionel H.

doi:10.5751/ace-00934-120102

Cited by 10 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 62 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The first challenge that must be addressed to improve conservation plans for migratory species is to acquire and use robust information on population dynamics and movement. Spatial conservation plans for migratory species typically consider only one stage of the annual life cycle (Lisson et al 2017, Walther andPirsig 2017) or treat seasons as static entities (Dias et al 2017); although one study has incorporated monthly distributions (Runge et al 2016). Others have developed population models that considered the explicit movement of migratory individuals among different "sites" or "regions" (Klaassen et al 2008, Sheehy et al 2011, Iwamura et al 2013, Aharon-Rotman et al 2016, Dhanjal-Adams et al 2017, Oberhauser et al 2017, Weeks 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Comparing abundance distributions and range maps in spatial conservation planning for migratory species

Johnston

Auer

Fink

et al. 2020

Ecological Applications

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Most spatial conservation planning for wide‐ranging or migratory species is constrained by poor knowledge of species’ spatiotemporal dynamics and is only based on static species’ ranges. However, species have substantial variation in abundance across their range and migratory species have important spatiotemporal population dynamics. With growing ecological data and advancing analytics, both of these can be estimated and incorporated into spatial conservation planning. However, there is limited information on the degree to which including this information affects conservation planning. We compared the performance of systematic conservation prioritizations for different scenarios based on varying the input species’ distributions by ecological metric (abundance distributions versus range maps) and temporal sampling resolution (weekly, monthly, or quarterly). We used the example of a community of 41 species of migratory shorebirds that breed in North America, and we used eBird data to produce weekly estimates of species’ abundances and ranges. Abundance distributions at a monthly or weekly resolution led to prioritizations that most efficiently protected species throughout the full annual cycle. Conversely, spatial prioritizations based on species’ ranges required more sites and left most species insufficiently protected for at least part of their annual cycle. Prioritizations with only quarterly species ranges were very inefficient as they needed to target 40% of species’ ranges to include 10% of populations. We highlight the high value of abundance information for spatial conservation planning, which leads to more efficient and effective spatial prioritization for conservation. Overall, we provide evidence that spatial conservation planning for wide‐ranging migratory species is most robust and efficient when informed by species’ abundance information from the full annual cycle.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Spatial conservation plans for migratory species typically consider only one stage of the annual life cycle (Lisson et al. , Walther and Pirsig ) or treat seasons as static entities (Dias et al. ); although one study has incorporated monthly distributions (Runge et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing abundance distributions and range maps in spatial conservation planning for migratory species

Johnston

Auer

Fink

et al. 2020

Ecological Applications

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For this reason, a comprehensive database on the geographical distribution of migratory passerine bird species in sub-Saharan Africa was assembled which is more detailed and reliable than any other available database (Walther et al, 2010, contra Vickery et al, 2014. This database containing~250,000 georeferenced data points is well accepted by now and has already been used in a series of biogeographical and conservation studies (Walther et al, 2004(Walther et al, , 2007(Walther et al, , 2010(Walther et al, , 2011, including the possible effects of future climate change on the African distributions of migrant passerines (Barbet-Massin et al, 2009) and the determination of conservation priority areas for these species (Walther and Pirsig, 2017). Arguably, the establishment of such a comprehensive database represents valuable progress for helping to investigate environmental questions on this migratory flyway.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This Africa-wide multi-species database of migratory birds in combination with various publicly available environmental data layers thus offers a 'Big Data' cube and a unique chance to datamine, model-predict, and quantify each species' ecological niche using the latest multivariate statistical techniques (Cushman and Huettmann, 2010;Drew et al, 2011). These techniques can effectively describe the environmental hyperspace within which a species is predicted to exist, but also highlight areas where they decline and where they should be protected (Walther and Pirsig, 2017;Walther et al, 2010;Walther et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Palearctic passerine migrant declines in African wintering grounds in the Anthropocene (1970–1990 and near future): A conservation assessment using publicly available GIS predictors and machine learning

Walther

Huettmann

2021

Science of The Total Environment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Anthropocene causes many massive and novel impacts, e.g., on migratory birds and their habitats. Many species of migratory birds have been declining on the Palearctic-African flyway in recent decades. To investigate possible impacts on a continental scale, we used 18 predictors extracted from 16 publicly available GIS layers in combination with machine learning methods on the sub-Saharan distributions of 64 passerine migrant species. These bird species were categorized as having experienced a 'Large Decline' (n = 12), a 'Moderate Decline' (n = 6) or 'No Decline' (n = 46) based on European census data from 1970 to 1990. Therefore, we present the first study for these species which uses publically available Open Access GIS-data and a multivariate (n = 18) and multi-species (n = 64) machine learning approach to deduce possible past impacts. We furthermore modelled likely future human population change and climate change impacts. We identified three predictor themes related to the distributions and declines of these migratory birds: (I) locations, represented by African ecosystems, countries, and soil types; (II) human population pressures and land-use intensities, the latter represented by land-use categories, habitat area, and cropland proportion; and (III) climatic predictors. This is the first study to relate migratory bird declines to human population pressures and land-use intensities using this type of analysis. We also identified areas of conservation concern, such as the Sahel region. Our models also predict that the declining trends of migratory birds will continue into the foreseeable future across much of Africa. We then briefly discuss some wider conservation implications in the light of the increasing drivers of biodiversity change associated with the Anthropocene as well as some possible solutions. We argue that only comprehensive systemic change can mitigate the impacts on the migratory birds and their habitats.

show abstract

“…Others studies have considered a wide range of models to predict species distributions and used only the best model identified in terms of predictive performance (e.g. (Leach et al, 2013;Passoni et al, 2017;Walther and Pirsig, 2017)). This risks the possibility that a conservation solution based on one particular model might not meet the required target identified under a different good model (Zhang et al, 2015).…”

Section: -Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are trade-offs between flexibility and efficiency in systematic conservation planning avoidable ?

Drira

Lasram

Hattab

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Species distribution models (SDMs) have been proposed as a way to provide robust inference about species-specific sites suitabilities, and have been increasingly used in systematic conservation planning (SCP) applications. However, despite the fact that the use of SDMs in SCP may raise some potential issues, conservation studies have overlooked to assess the implications of SDMs uncertainties. The integration of these uncertainties in conservation solutions requires the development of a reserve-selection approach based on a suitable optimization algorithm. A large body of research has shown that exact optimization algorithms give very precise control over the gap to optimality of conservation solutions. However, their major shortcoming is that they generate a single binary and indivisible solution. Therefore, they provide no flexibility in the implementation of conservation solutions by stakeholders. On the other hand, heuristic decision-support systems provide large amounts of sub-optimal solutions, and therefore more flexibility. This flexibility arises from the availability of many alternative and sub-optimal conservation solutions. The two principles of efficiency and flexibility are implicitly linked in conservation applications, with the most mathematically efficient solutions being inflexible and the flexible solutions provided by heuristics suffering sub-optimality. In order to avoid the trade-offs between flexibility and efficiency in systematic conservation planning, we propose in this paper a new reserve-selection framework based on mathematical programming optimization combined with a post-selection of SDM outputs.This approach leads to a reserve-selection framework that might provide flexibility while simultaneously addressing efficiency and representativeness of conservation solutions and the adequacy of conservation targets. To exemplify the approach we a nalyzed an experimental design

show abstract

Determining conservation priority areas for Palearctic passerine migrant birds in sub-Saharan Africa

Cited by 10 publications

References 62 publications

Comparing abundance distributions and range maps in spatial conservation planning for migratory species

Comparing abundance distributions and range maps in spatial conservation planning for migratory species

Palearctic passerine migrant declines in African wintering grounds in the Anthropocene (1970–1990 and near future): A conservation assessment using publicly available GIS predictors and machine learning

Are trade-offs between flexibility and efficiency in systematic conservation planning avoidable ?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About