Biodiversity, Urban Areas, and Agriculture: Locating Priority Ecoregions for Conservation

By Taylor H. Ricketts, M. Imhoff. 2003

263 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Urbanization and agriculture are two of the most important threats to biodiversity worldwide. The intensities of these land-use phenomena, however, as well as levels of biodiversity itself, differ widely among regions. Thus, there is a need to develop a quick but rigorous method of identifying where high levels of human threats and biodiversity coincide. These areas are clear priorities for biodiversity conservation. In this study, we combine distribution data for eight major plant and animal taxa (comprising over 20,000 species) with remotely sensed measures of urban and agricultural land use to assess conservation priorities among 76 terrestrial ecoregions in North America. We combine the species data into overall indices of richness and endemism. We then plot each of these indices against the percent cover of urban and agricultural land in each ecoregion, resulting in four separate comparisons. For each comparison, ecoregions that fall above the 66th quantile on both axes are identified as priorities for conservation. These analyses yield four "priority sets" of 6-16 ecoregions (8-21% of the total number) where high levels of biodiversity and human land use coincide. These ecoregions tend to be concentrated in the southeastern United States, California, and, to a lesser extent, the Atlantic coast, southern Texas, and the U.S. Midwest. Importantly, several ecoregions are members of more than one priority set and two ecoregions are members of all four sets. Across all 76 ecoregions, urban cover is positively correlated with both species richness and endemism. Conservation efforts in densely populated areas therefore may be equally important (if not more so) as preserving remote parks in relatively pristine regions.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/90e2b1d12e4e36e478a8e52187e0fb59334961ad

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Citations in the corpus

Animal Translocations: What are they and why do we do them? (2012, unknown): “…2008), but assisted colonization could be and has been used to mitigate a variety of threats, including agricultural expansion and urbanization (Ricketts & Imhoff, 2003), filling of hydroelectric reservoirs (Richard-Hansen et al., 2000) and the threats posed by (other) deliberately introduced…”
Measuring and modelling biodiversity from space (2008, background): “Frequently, what is required in conservation assessments is a quick but rigorous method to identify where humaninduced threats and high biodiversity coincide (Ricketts and Imhoff, 2003).”
Local habitat characteristics but not landscape urbanization drive pollinator visitation and native plant pollination in forest remnants (2013, background): “This region has among the highest human population density in the USA, and continued development around major cities has converted agricultural and woodland habitat to exurban, suburban, and commercial land use that threatens endemic biodiversity (Ricketts and Imhoff, 2003).”
Are all urban green spaces a favourable habitat for pollinator communities? Bees, butterflies and hoverflies in different urban green areas (2019, background): “Therefore, in the face of increasing urbanisation, intensification of agriculture, and loss and fragmentation of natural habitats, urban areas can and should also be used to protect this extremely important group of insects as well as other animal groups (Ricketts & Imhoff, 2003; Kowarik, 2011).”
Measuring and Incorporating Vulnerability into Conservation Planning (2005, unknown): “Mixed planning strategies are therefore desirable, combining the benefits of explicit analysis of available spatial data with the knowledge of experts (Pressey and Cowling 2001, Cowling and Pressey 2003 ).”