Model development for the assessment of terrestrial and aquatic habitat quality in conservation planning
dc.contributor.author
dc.date.accessioned
2016-11-24T09:09:52Z
dc.date.available
2016-11-24T09:09:52Z
dc.date.issued
2016-01-01
dc.identifier.issn
0048-9697
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dc.description.abstract
There is a growing pressure of human activities on natural habitats, which leads to biodiversity losses. To mitigate the impact of human activities, environmental policies are developed and implemented, but their effects are commonly not well understood because of the lack of tools to predict the effects of conservation policies on habitat quality and/or diversity. We present a straightforward model for the simultaneous assessment of terrestrial and aquatic habitat quality in river basins as a function of land use and anthropogenic threats to habitat that could be applied under different management scenarios to help understand the trade-offs of conservation actions. We modify the InVEST model for the assessment of terrestrial habitat quality and extend it to freshwater habitats. We assess the reliability of the model in a severely impaired basin by comparing modeled results to observed terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity data. Estimated habitat quality is significantly correlated with observed terrestrial vascular plant richness (R2=0.76) and diversity of aquatic macroinvertebrates (R2=0.34), as well as with ecosystem functions such as in-stream phosphorus retention (R2=0.45). After that, we analyze different scenarios to assess the suitability of the model to inform changes in habitat quality under different conservation strategies. We believe that the developed model can be useful to assess potential levels of biodiversity, and to support conservation planning given its capacity to forecast the effects of management actions in river basins
dc.description.sponsorship
This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) through the project SCARCE (Consolider-Ingenio 2010 CSD2009-00065) and through the Juan de la Cierva Programme (JC2011-09116 — to M.T.), and by a Marie Curie European Reintegration Grant within the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (PERG07-GA-2010-259219 — to V.A.). The scientific facilities of ICRA have been cofinanced by the MINECO and by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) in the frame of the Catalonia FEDER Operative Programme 2007-2013
dc.format.mimetype
application/pdf
dc.language.iso
eng
dc.publisher
Elsevier
dc.relation
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/MICINN//CSD2009-00065/ES/Evaluación y predicción de los efectos del cambio global en la cantidad y la calidad del agua en ríos ibéricos/
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Reproducció digital del document publicat a: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.03.064
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© Science of the Total Environment, 2016, vol. 540, p. 63-70
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Articles publicats (D-CCAA)
dc.rights
Tots els drets reservats
dc.subject
dc.title
Model development for the assessment of terrestrial and aquatic habitat quality in conservation planning
dc.type
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.rights.accessRights
info:eu-repo/semantics/embargoedAccess
dc.embargo.terms
Cap
dc.date.embargoEndDate
info:eu-repo/date/embargoEnd/2026-01-01
dc.relation.projectID
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/259219/EU/Global warming effects on the stream carbon balance/GWESCB
dc.type.version
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
dc.identifier.doi
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dc.relation.ProjectAcronym