New insights into the size and migratory origins of the British wintering population of the Hen Harrier Circus cyaneus

View this paper online

Population size and breeding success of Icelandic Whooper Swans Cygnus cygnus: results of the 2010 international census

Spatial covariation between freshwater and terrestrial ecosystem services

To inform the design and implementation of land-use policies that consider the variety of goods and services people derive from ecosystems, it is essential to understand spatial patterns of individual services, how multiple services relate to each other, and how these relationships vary across spatial scales and localities. Despite the importance of freshwater as a determinant of regional economic and human demographic patterns, there are surprisingly few studies that map the provision of a range of services associated with the quality of the aquatic environment. Here we examine relationships between indicators of riverine water and associated habitat quality, freshwater biodiversity, three terrestrial ecosystem services, and terrestrial biodiversity across England and Wales. The results indicate strong associations between our indicators of freshwater services. However, a comparison of these indicators of freshwater services with other ecosystem services (carbon storage, agricultural production, recreation) and biodiversity of species of conservation concern in the surrounding terrestrial landscape shows no clear relationships. While there are potential policy "win-wins" for the protection of multiple services shown by associations between indicators of freshwater services and carbon storage in upland areas of Britain, the other ecosystem services showed either negative or no relationships with the indicators of freshwater services. We also consider the influence that spatial scale has on these relationships using River Basin Districts. Our results indicate that relationships between indicators of services can change dramatically depending on the societal pressures and other regional conditions. Thus, the delivery of multiple ecosystem services requires the development of regional strategies, or of national strategies that take account of regional variation.

Balancing alternative land uses in conservation prioritization

Pressure on ecosystems to provide various different and often conflicting services is immense and likely to increase. The impacts and success of conservation prioritization will be enhanced if the needs of competing land uses are recognized at the planning stage. We develop such methods and illustrate them with data about competing land uses in Great Britain, with the aim of developing a conservation priority ranking that balances between needs of biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, agricultural value, and urban development potential. While both carbon stocks and biodiversity are desirable features from the point of view of conservation, they compete with the needs of agriculture and urban development. In Britain the greatest conflicts exist between biodiversity and urban areas, while the largest carbon stocks occur mostly in Scotland in areas with low agricultural or urban pressure. In our application, we were able successfully to balance the spatial allocation of alternative land uses so that conflicts between them were much smaller than had they been developed separately. The proposed methods and software, Zonation, are applicable to structurally similar prioritization problems globally.

Changes in the abundance and distribution of upland breeding birds at an operational wind farm