SEARCH · Geology Reports

Results for “Animal Biodiversity and Conservation”

Search indexed USGS publications on groundwater, aquifers, geologic maps, mineral resources and earthquakes. Explore source records by subject and place.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

USGS2022

Open-source intelligence for conservation biology

Open-source intelligence (OSINT) evolved in spy agencies but now is rapidly changing many fields of study, from anthropology to zoology. Despite the fact that OSINT occasionally is used in conservation biology, there is little recognition that some tools and frameworks used by conservation professionals are drawn from this well-established field. The history and conceptual foundations of OSINT stem from the intelligence community, although OSINT tools are rapidly being applied in other fields. In conservation biology, OSINT is sometimes used to evaluate wildlife crime, human-wildlife and human-environment interactions, animal behavior, and questions of distribution and abundance. Recognizing the conceptual foundations of the field would allow expansion of conservation biology, not only in the areas noted above, but also, for example, in study of habitat use, habitat change, and animal behavior. This recognition would also provide frameworks for conceptual advancement, especially in terms of data and privacy management. Failure to recognize the underpinnings of OSINT tools in conservation biology harms the field because it limits how research is framed, thought about, and implemented. Likewise, taking an OSINT perspective to conservation problems, rather than simply thinking in terms of big data, can enrich the field, expand science, and increase knowledge and understanding of biology and biodiversity.

Conservation Biology↗

USGS2025

Module 4: Basic biology of wetland animals

An assortment of animals inhabit wetlands, with many invertebrates, amphibians and reptiles, fishes, birds, and some mammals being wetland specialists. Wetlands provide ample water, food, and cover that benefits resident animals, but periodic high floods, frequent drying, and harsh water qualities (low-oxygen, acidic, saline) can stress wetland animals. Animals that rely on wetlands have developed numerous adaptations to cope with these stresses. The animal biodiversity in wetlands is particularly valued by people, from deep historical and cultural connections, to modern ecotourists and bird watchers who observe it and hunters and anglers who appreciate the consumptive resources they provide. Animals such as alligators and beavers create or physically-modify wetland environments; this activity is called ecosystem engineering and makes these animals among the most important organisms to wetland ecology. Wetlands are high in biodiversity and support rich communities of wetland invertebrates, are primary breeding habitats for most amphibians, and nearly all migratory birds rely on wetlands during some part of their annual cycle. The interactions of animals with plants (herbivory, cutting) and each other (predation) strongly shape wetland environments and affect nutrient cycling. Human impacts on wetlands can negatively affect many animals through habitat loss and degradation, resulting in many wetland amphibians, reptiles, and birds being listed as threatened and endangered species. Thus, wetland conservation is vital to conserve many animal species.

Wetland Science & Practice↗

USGS2011

Guidelines for collecting and maintaining archives for genetic monitoring

Rapid advances in molecular genetic techniques and the statistical analysis of genetic data have revolutionized the way that populations of animals, plants and microorganisms can be monitored. Genetic monitoring is the practice of using molecular genetic markers to track changes in the abundance, diversity or distribution of populations, species or ecosystems over time, and to follow adaptive and non-adaptive genetic responses to changing external conditions. In recent years, genetic monitoring has become a valuable tool in conservation management of biological diversity and ecological analysis, helping to illuminate and define cryptic and poorly understood species and populations. Many of the detected biodiversity declines, changes in distribution and hybridization events have helped to drive changes in policy and management. Because a time series of samples is necessary to detect trends of change in genetic diversity and species composition, archiving is a critical component of genetic monitoring. Here we discuss the collection, development, maintenance, and use of archives for genetic monitoring. This includes an overview of the genetic markers that facilitate effective monitoring, describes how tissue and DNA can be stored, and provides guidelines for proper practice.

Conservation Genetics Resources↗

USGS2020

A global parasite conservation plan

Found throughout the tree of life and in every ecosystem, parasites are some of the most diverse, ecologically important animals on Earth—but in almost all cases, the least protected by wildlife or ecosystem conservation efforts. For decades, ecologists have been calling for research to understand parasites' important ecological role, and increasingly, to protect as many species from extinction as possible. However, most conservationists still work within priority systems for funding and effort that exclude or ignore parasites, or treat parasites as an obstacle to be overcome. Our working group identified 12 goals for the next decade that could advance parasite biodiversity conservation through an ambitious mix of research, advocacy, and management.

Biological Conservation↗

USGS2015

A hidden view of wildlife conservation: How camera traps aid science, research and management

Florida panthers are among the world’s most endangered — and elusive — animals. For approximately four decades, scientists have been researching this small population of panthers that inhabit the dense forests and swamps of south Florida. Because of their wide habitat range along with an absence of clear visual features, these animals are difficult to detect and identify. In 2013, however, researchers released a study that used camera trap images collected between 2005 and 2007 to generate the first statistically reliable density estimates for the remaining population of this subspecies. Camera traps — remotely activated cameras with infrared sensors — first gained measurable popularity in wildlife conservation in the early 1990s. Today, they’re used for a variety of activities, from species-specific research to broad-scale inventory or monitoring programs that, in some cases, attempt to detect biodiversity across vast landscapes. As this modern tool continues to evolve, it’s worth examining its uses and benefits for wildlife management and conservation.

The Wildlife Professional↗

USGS2021

Using grazing to manage herbaceous structure for a heterogeneity-dependent bird

Grazing management recommendations often sacrifice the intrinsic heterogeneity of grasslands by prescribing uniform grazing distributions through smaller pastures, increased stocking densities, and reduced grazing periods. The lack of patch-burn grazing in semi-arid landscapes of the western Great Plains in North America requires alternative grazing management strategies to create and maintain heterogeneity of habitat structure (e.g., animal unit distribution, pasture configuration), but knowledge of their effects on grassland fauna is limited. The lesser prairie-chicken ( Tympanuchus pallidicinctus ), an imperiled, grassland-obligate, native to the southern Great Plains, is an excellent candidate for investigating effects of heterogeneity-based grazing management strategies because it requires diverse microhabitats among life-history stages in a semi-arid landscape. We evaluated influences of heterogeneity-based grazing management strategies on vegetation structure, habitat selection, and nest and adult survival of lesser prairie-chickens in western Kansas, USA. We captured and monitored 116 female lesser prairie-chickens marked with very high frequency (VHF) or global positioning system (GPS) transmitters and collected landscape-scale vegetation and grazing data during 2013–2015. Vegetation structure heterogeneity increased at stocking densities ≤0.26 animal units/ha, where use by nonbreeding female lesser prairie-chickens also increased. Probability of use for nonbreeding lesser prairie-chickens peaked at values of cattle forage use values near 37% and steadily decreased with use ≥40%. Probability of use was positively affected by increasing pasture area. A quadratic relationship existed between growing season deferment and probability of use. We found that 70% of nests were located in grazing units in which grazing pressure was <0.8 animal unit months/ha. Daily nest survival was negatively correlated with grazing pressure. We found no relationship between adult survival and grazing management strategies. Conservation in grasslands expressing flora community composition appropriate for lesser prairie-chickens can maintain appropriate habitat structure heterogeneity through the use of low to moderate stocking densities (<0.26 animal units/ha), greater pasture areas, and site-appropriate deferment periods. Alternative grazing management strategies (e.g., rest-rotation, season-long rest) may be appropriate in grasslands requiring greater heterogeneity or during intensive drought. Grazing management favoring habitat heterogeneity instead of uniform grazing distributions will likely be more conducive for preserving lesser prairie-chicken populations and grassland biodiversity.

Kansas↗

USGS2018

Carnivore hotspots in Peninsular Malaysia and their landscape attributes

Mammalian carnivores play a vital role in ecosystem functioning. However, they are prone to extinction because of low population densities and growth rates, and high levels of persecution or exploitation. In tropical biodiversity hotspots such as Peninsular Malaysia, rapid conversion of natural habitats threatens the persistence of this vulnerable group of animals. Here, we carried out the first comprehensive literature review on 31 carnivore species reported to occur in Peninsular Malaysia and updated their probable distribution. We georeferenced 375 observations of 28 species of carnivore from 89 unique geographic locations using records spanning 1948 to 2014. Using the Getis-Ord Gi*statistic and weighted survey records by IUCN Red List status, we identified hotspots of species that were of conservation concern and built regression models to identify environmental and anthropogenic landscape factors associated with Getis-Ord Gi* z scores. Our analyses identified two carnivore hotspots that were spatially concordant with two of the peninsula’s largest and most contiguous forest complexes, associated with Taman Negara National Park and Royal Belum State Park. A cold spot overlapped with the southwestern region of the Peninsula, reflecting the disappearance of carnivores with higher conservation rankings from increasingly fragmented natural habitats. Getis-Ord Gi* z scores were negatively associated with elevation, and positively associated with the proportion of natural land cover and distance from the capital city. Malaysia contains some of the world’s most diverse carnivore assemblages, but recent rates of forest loss are some of the highest in the world. Reducing poaching and maintaining large, contiguous tracts of lowland forests will be crucial, not only for the persistence of threatened carnivores, but for many mammalian species in general.

PLoS ONE↗

USGS2021

Prioritizing restoration areas to conserve multiple sagebrush-associated wildlife species

Strategic restoration of altered habitat is one method for addressing worldwide biodiversity declines. Within the sagebrush steppe of western North America, habitat degradation has been linked to declines in many species, making restoration a priority for managers; however, limited funding, spatiotemporal variation in restoration success, and the need to manage for diverse wildlife species make decision-making regarding restoration actions challenging. To address the challenge of spatial conservation prioritization, we developed the Prioritizing Restoration of Sagebrush Ecosystems Tool (PReSET). This decision support tool utilizes the prioritizr package in program R and an integer linear programming algorithm to select parcels representing both high biodiversity value and high probability of restoration success. We tested PReSET on a sagebrush steppe system within southwestern Wyoming using distributional data for six species with diverse life histories and a spatial layer of predicted sagebrush recovery times to identify restoration targets at both broad and local scales. While the broad-scale portion of our tool outputs can inform policy, the local-scale results can be applied directly to on-the-ground restoration. We identified restoration priority areas with greater precision than existing spatial prioritizations and incorporated range differences among species. We noted tradeoffs, including that restoring for habitat connectivity may require restoration actions in areas with lower probability of success. Future applications of PReSET will draw from emerging datasets, including spatially-varying economic costs of restoration, animal movement data, and additional species, to further improve our ability to target effective sagebrush restoration.

Wyoming↗

USGS2007

Second chance for the plains bison

Before European settlement the plains bison ( Bison bison bison ) numbered in the tens of millions across most of the temperate region of North America. Within the span of a few decades during the mid- to late-1800s its numbers were reduced by hunting and other factors to a few hundred. The plight of the plains bison led to one of the first major movements in North America to save an endangered species. A few individuals and the American Bison Society rescued the remaining animals. Attempts to hybridize cattle and bison when bison numbers were low resulted in extensive cattle gene introgression in bison. Today, though approximately 500,000 plains bison exist in North America, few are free of cattle gene introgression, 96% are subject to anthropogenic selection for commodity production, and only 4% are in herds managed primarily for conservation purposes. Small herd size, artificial selection, cattle-gene introgression, and other factors threaten the diversity and integrity of the bison genome. In addition, the bison is for all practical purposes ecologically extinct across its former range, with multiple consequences for grassland biodiversity. Urgent measures are needed to conserve the wild bison genome and to restore the ecological role of bison in grassland ecosystems. Socioeconomic trends in the Great Plains, combined with new information about bison conservation needs and new conservation initiatives by both the public and public sectors, have set the stage for significant progress in bison conservation over the next few years.

Biological Conservation↗

USGS2015

Non-native and native organisms moving into high elevation and high latitude ecosystems in an era of climate change: new challenges for ecology and conservation

Cold environments at high elevation and high latitude are often viewed as resistant to biological invasions. However, climate warming, land use change and associated increased connectivity all increase the risk of biological invasions in these environments. Here we present a summary of the key discussions of the workshop ‘Biosecurity in Mountains and Northern Ecosystems: Current Status and Future Challenges’ (Flen, Sweden, 1–3 June 2015). The aims of the workshop were to (1) increase awareness about the growing importance of species expansion—both non-native and native—at high elevation and high latitude with climate change, (2) review existing knowledge about invasion risks in these areas, and (3) encourage more research on how species will move and interact in cold environments, the consequences for biodiversity, and animal and human health and wellbeing. The diversity of potential and actual invaders reported at the workshop and the likely interactions between them create major challenges for managers of cold environments. However, since these cold environments have experienced fewer invasions when compared with many warmer, more populated environments, prevention has a real chance of success, especially if it is coupled with prioritisation schemes for targeting invaders likely to have greatest impact. Communication and co-operation between cold environment regions will facilitate rapid response, and maximise the use of limited research and management resources.

Biological Invasions↗

USGS2021

Mapping out a future for ungulate migrations

Migration of ungulates (hooved mammals) is a fundamental ecological process that promotes abundant herds, whose effects cascade up and down terrestrial food webs. Migratory ungulates provide the prey base that maintains large carnivore and scavenger populations and underpins terrestrial biodiversity (fig. S1). When ungulates move in large aggregations, their hooves, feces, and urine create conditions that facilitate distinct biotic communities. The migrations of ungulates have sustained humans for thousands of years, forming tight cultural links among Indigenous people and local communities. Yet ungulate migrations are disappearing at an alarming rate ( 1 ). Efforts by wildlife managers and conservationists are thwarted by a singular challenge: Most ungulate migrations have never been mapped in sufficient detail to guide effective conservation. Without a strategic and collaborative effort, many of the world's great migrations will continue to be truncated, severed, or lost in the coming decades. Fortunately, a combination of animal tracking datasets, historical records, and local and Indigenous knowledge can form the basis for a global atlas of migrations, designed to support conservation action and policy at local, national, and international levels.

Science↗

USGS2024

New approaches to wildlife health

Recent environmental change and biodiversity loss have modified ecosystems, altering disease dynamics. For wildlife health, this trend has translated into increased potential for disease transmission and reduced capacity to overcome significant population-level impacts, which may place species at risk of extinction. Thus, current approaches to wildlife health focus not on the absence of disease but rather on the concept of health promotion. That is, wildlife populations will be more resilient to disease if they have the basic requirements for survival, as well as functioning ecosystems, within an enabling socio-economic environment. In this context, animal health programmes must adapt to design and implement wildlife health programmes that bridge knowledge gaps and fully integrate conservation goals. This article proposes new pathways and additions to the animal health management toolbox, including new approaches to surveillance and information management, partnerships and new wildlife health management practices. Solely because of risks to domesticated animals and human health, the traditional approach to disease surveillance in wild animals has now been replaced by a drive to recognise the intrinsic value of wildlife and the extended benefits of actively pursuing ecosystem health and associated life-sustaining ecosystem services. In this context, it is paramount to transition to holistic health programmes that embrace One Health as a pathway to set the health of all on equal footing.

Scientific and Technical Review↗

USGS2001

Coastal sage scrub case study

In ecological applications of large-scale spatial data to management decisions concerning land planning and conservation, errors and biases may creep into the analysis and decision making at several steps (see Chaps. 1, 2, and 3), including: • Uncertainty in positions of spatial locations of relevant ecological and physiographic features of the landscape. • Uncertainty of the type and attributes of land cover at a particular location. • Uncertainty in how different land covers at a position in space and the geometric arrangement of land covers nearby might influence an animal species occurrence or distribution, or the magnitude of some ecological process. • Uncertainty about the relative importance of each spatial location to the overall success or persistence of a population or ecological process. • Uncertainty about how to weight each species or ecological process in determining the overall biodiversity and functioning of ecosystems, local and national resource priorities, and consistency with legislative mandates. We would like to be able to quantify the errors at each step, identify biases, and pass these along to the next analysis step so that our degree of uncertainty regarding potential outcomes is evident at each level (e.g., Stoms et al. 1992).

Book chapter↗

USGS2008

Importance of sampling design and analysis in animal population studies: a comment on Sergio et al

1. The use of predators as indicators and umbrellas in conservation has been criticized. In the Trentino region, Sergio et al. (2006; hereafter SEA) counted almost twice as many bird species in quadrats located in raptor territories than in controls. However, SEA detected astonishingly few species. We used contemporary Swiss Breeding Bird Survey data from an adjacent region and a novel statistical model that corrects for overlooked species to estimate the expected number of bird species per quadrat in that region. 2. There are two anomalies in SEA which render their results ambiguous. First, SEA detected on average only 6.8 species, whereas a value of 32 might be expected. Hence, they probably overlooked almost 80% of all species. Secondly, the precision of their mean species counts was greater in two-thirds of cases than in the unlikely case that all quadrats harboured exactly the same number of equally detectable species. This suggests that they detected consistently only a biased, unrepresentative subset of species. 3. Conceptually, expected species counts are the product of true species number and species detectability p. Plenty of factors may affect p, including date, hour, observer, previous knowledge of a site and mobbing behaviour of passerines in the presence of predators. Such differences in p between raptor and control quadrats could have easily created the observed effects. Without a method that corrects for such biases, or without quantitative evidence that species detectability was indeed similar between raptor and control quadrats, the meaning of SEA's counts is hard to evaluate. Therefore, the evidence presented by SEA in favour of raptors as indicator species for enhanced levels of biodiversity remains inconclusive. 4. Synthesis and application. Ecologists should pay greater attention to sampling design and analysis in animal population estimation. Species richness estimation means sampling a community. Samples should be representative for the community studied and the sampling fraction among communities compared should be the same on average, otherwise formal estimation approaches must be applied to avoid misleading inference.

Journal of Applied Ecology↗

USGS2026

Annual grass invasion is transforming the sagebrush biome’s songbird communities

Novel stressors like climate change and biological invasions alter ecological communities, resulting in changes to ecosystem services and biodiversity (that is, ecological transformation). Most ecological transformation research focuses on plants, but animals are likely affected by and plausibly mediate the extent, impact, and pace of transformations. In western North America, where invasive annual grasses are transforming sagebrush-steppe ecosystems, we quantified how transformation in vegetation drives songbird community change. We hypothesized that transformation of vegetation communities via invasion alters wildlife communities by favoring generalists over specialists, albeit with extinction debts that may temporarily obscure transformations’ consequences. Although local-scale songbird diversity increased with grass invasion, we found that this shift was accompanied by ongoing reorganization of songbird communities at larger scales (across the sagebrush biome), driven by heterogeneous impacts of invasion among species and guilds. Through our biome-wide analysis, we were also able to identify high-priority regions for conservation of sensitive songbird species. Our research provides evidence that wildlife communities are transforming alongside vegetation communities and offers insight into the approaches required to quantify nascent community turnover.

western United States↗

USGS2006

Evidence for the role of infectious disease in species extinction and endangerment

Infectious disease is listed among the top five causes of global species extinctions. However, the majority of available data supporting this contention is largely anecdotal. We used the IUCN Red List of Threatened and Endangered Species and literature indexed in the ISI Web of Science to assess the role of infectious disease in global species loss. Infectious disease was listed as a contributing factor in <4% of species extinctions known to have occurred since 1500 (833 plants and animals) and as contributing to a species' status as critically endangered in <8% of cases (2852 critically endangered plants and animals). Although infectious diseases appear to play a minor role in global species loss, our findings underscore two important limitations in the available evidence: uncertainty surrounding the threats to species survival and a temporal bias in the data. Several initiatives could help overcome these obstacles, including rigorous scientific tests to determine which infectious diseases present a significant threat at the species level, recognition of the limitations associated with the lack of baseline data for the role of infectious disease in species extinctions, combining data with theory to discern the circumstances under which infectious disease is most likely to serve as an agent of extinction, and improving surveillance programs for the detection of infectious disease. An evidence-based understanding of the role of infectious disease in species extinction and endangerment will help prioritize conservation initiatives and protect global biodiversity.

Conservation Biology↗

USGS1996

Measuring and monitoring biological diversity: Standard methods for mammals

Measuring and Monitoring Biological Diversity: Standard Methods for Mammals provides a comprehensive manual for designing and implementing inventories of mammalian biodiversity anywhere in the world and for any group, from rodents to open-country grazers. The book emphasizes formal estimation approaches, which supply data that can be compared across habitats and over time. Beginning with brief natural histories of the twenty-six orders of living mammals, the book details the field techniques—observation, capture, and sign interpretation—appropriate to different species. The contributors provide guidelines for study design, discuss survey planning, describe statistical techniques, and outline methods of translating field data into electronic formats. Extensive appendixes address such issues as the ethical treatment of animals in research, human health concerns, preserving voucher specimens, and assessing age, sex, and reproductive condition in mammals. Useful in both developed and developing countries, this volume and the Biological Diversity Handbook Series as a whole establish essential standards for a key aspect of conservation biology and resource management.

Book↗

USGS2026

Restoration based on cost-benefit optimization: A grasslands pilot study

Ecological restoration is essential to meeting global biodiversity conservation goals. Given limited conservation budgets, deciding where to restore habitat is a key challenge for the coming decade. We developed a spatially explicit framework to optimize ecological restoration site selection by integrating land use history, species distributions, and economic costs. The framework includes the following steps: identify potential restoration area based on relevant environmental measures like land use; identify species of interest; calculate restoration benefits by modeling habitat and climate suitability and estimating reduced extinction risk associated with restoring a particular land parcel based on a modified species–area relationship; aggregate benefits across species; and compare to parcel-level land acquisition costs. We applied linear programming to maximize conservation benefit/restoration cost ratios to identify optimized restoration sites. We illustrate this approach using a case study for highly threatened grassland ecosystems in the Great Plains region of Kansas, USA. We selected five grassland animal species (greater prairie chickens [ Tympanuchus cupido ], lesser prairie chickens [ Tympanuchus pallidicinctus ], swift fox [ Vulpes velox ], pronghorn [ Antilocapra americana ], and regal fritillary [ Speyeria idalia ]) as indicators of restoration benefit across taxa. For the indicator species that we chose, shortgrass and mixed-grass prairies had the highest conservation benefit to cost ratio. Setting a minimum restoration threshold for each habitat type allowed us to identify high-priority tallgrass prairie sites. Despite increasing interest in ecological restoration, optimizing restoration site selection is challenging because one must consider habitat features that do not currently exist. The modeling approach described here is flexible and can be updated for different ecosystems, species, and conservation priorities. We outline potential alterations that can be made in future analyses, depending on desired restoration goals.

Kansas↗