Landscape-level naturalness of conservation easements in a mixed-use matrix

Abstract

Context With underrepresentation of habitats in publicly protected areas, attention has focused on the function of alternative land conservation mechanisms. Private conservation easements (CEs) have proliferated in the United States, yet assessing landscape-level function is confounded by varying extent, resolution, and temporal scale. Objectives We developed and tested an assessment tool to evaluate interacting spatial, social, and environmental attributes of easements relative to the degree of human modification (HM). We hypothesized that on both private and public conservation properties HM would be lower than on non-conserved parcels, and that for fine-scale features (most CEs), the level of HM would be driven by the variables used to create the coarser scale HM measure. Methods Variation in HM between private, public, and non-conserved was tested via pairwise parcel sampling. Composition was evaluated using multiple geographic bounds and edge characteristics. We assessed both environmental and social predictors using multinomial logistic regression. Results Privately conserved lands did not differ significantly from non-conserved lands. Publicly conserved lands had lower HM than both privately conserved and non-conserved lands. Edge contrast was similar between private and matched non-conserved patches. The level of HM was not driven by distance to roads, or by elevation in this mixed-use setting.

Improving inferences about private land conservation by accounting for incomplete reporting

“…Our finding that easements tended to occur in locations of higher biodiversity contrasts with results for counties on the west coast of the United States (Williamson et al 2018) and parcels in Appalachia (Fouch et al 2019). These differences may be a function of the different resolutions of the analyses (i.e., the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem [Jelinski & Wu 1996]) or may reflect the importance of accounting for variation in the probability that a location is available for an easement prior to comparing easement locations with and without easements.…”

The Naturalness of the Vistula Riverbank’s Landscape: Warsaw Inhabitants’ Perceptions

“…The majority of classifications of landscape naturalness found in the literature are related to the degree of anthropogenic transformation of the landscape (anthropogenization), and distinguish among devastated, cultural, natural, and primeval landscapes [22]. Therefore, naturalness is one of the factors that influence the value of the landscape [23] and determines the optimal natural landscape protection strategy [24][25][26]. Researchers differ in the criteria [27][28][29][30] that they use to measure naturalness (dividing it into the categories: Urban landscape, city park, commercial forest, or natural forest [31] based on certain levels of transformation [32], the share of natural, semi-natural, and synanthropic plant communities [33], an indicator of the wildness of the landscape [34], the time of human interference [31], or the cultural features that coexist in the landscape [35]).…”

Informing conservation decisions to target private lands of highest ecological value and risk of loss

“…Despite the considerable investment in conservation easements, their effectiveness in achieving biodiversity conservation objectives is often not high. Fouch et al (2019) found that privately conserved lands did not differ significantly from non‐conserved lands in the degree of human modification in North Carolina. In a region of Idaho, private land in conservation easements provided increased representation within the protected areas network for only 10% of the ecosystem types and protected potential landscape connectivity only slightly more effectively than randomly allocated areas (Graves et al, 2019).…”