I investigated the habitat selection of wood turtles (Glyptemys insculpta) in a landscape within active agriculture and assessed the risk of agricultural practices. I tracked 23 wood turtles and recorded their habitat use versus availability on a 3rd and 4th order scale. I found that wood turtles preferred fields over the forest and that hay fields are likely an attractant to wood turtles due to high food availability and low canopy cover. Wood turtles used the hayfields during the hay harvest season, and stayed close to field edges. I monitored the movement response of wood turtles as they were approached by agricultural machinery and found that most turtles could not successfully escape the mower. My study shows that agriculture poses a high risk to wood turtles in an agricultural landscape and management strategies are necessary to prevent populations from extirpation.
Thermal ecology studies of ectotherms, like turtles, have typically focused on a species' thermal preferences and tolerances, or on thermoregulation site selections; only recently have landscape-scale thermal ecology studies been performed. I examined the spatial and nesting ecology of wood turtles in Sudbury District of Ontario, Canada, in a thermal context. I also measured the thermal impacts of natural resource extraction on wood turtle habitat. Wood turtles (Glyptemys insculpta) cover a wide variety of terrestrial and aquatic habitats during their annual cycle, making them ideal for thermo-spatial studies. I tracked movements and thermal use of 15 radio-tagged adult turtles during the active season, comparing their selections to temperature monitoring stations spread in an array across the study area, to determine if the turtles are navigating a thermal landscape. Temperature had minimal influence on home range-scale movements, but possibly influenced movements at a smaller spatial scale. I compared the thermal landscape (using thermal imagery), soil moisture, and grain size distribution of 3 nesting beaches to determine the strongest predictor of nest-searching behaviour. Temperature range appeared to be an important cue, but females were apparently using a suite of cues to select their nest sites. I mapped the thermal landscapes of six sites: two relatively undisturbed wood turtle habitat sites, two recently-harvested forestry sites, and two active gravel pits, to find the effects of resource harvesting on wood turtle habitat. The undisturbed sites were cooler and less variable than the disturbed sites, and provided higher-quality thermal habitat. My results support the findings of previous studies: that temperature is a stronger driver of turtle behaviour at the micro-habitat scale than the home range scale, and that soil temperature co-varies with soil structural variables at the micro-habitat scale. The data from the habitat mapping provide useful information for conservation efforts when mitigating or rehabilitating wood turtle habitat.
This book provides an invaluable, comprehensive and practical introduction to conservation issues associated with current farming practice. Representing both industry and conservation as an integrated and holistic system, it explores conservation issues within every farming discipline; from arable and horticulture to grasslands, woodlands, aquatic and coastal farming and will include an assessment of the impact of global warming. The book includes relevant case studies and international, real-world examples, focusing on applied management and not just ecological facts, theories and principles. The carefully structured book begins by introducing the overall subject including some statistics on current farming activities, giving a brief outlook for the future of farming systems in relation to conservation. Each subsequent chapter will have its own introduction setting the commercial context and conservation value of an example farm, and will progress with a series of case studies that will include the following elements: site assessment; species list; soils management options; and a habitat management plan. A summary section will draw together the common themes of the chapter and develop a lead-in to subsequent chapters. It will provide students with an informed appreciation of current practice whilst raising questions about the development of conservation in farming in the future.
A guide to data collection, modeling and inference strategies for biological survey data using Bayesian and classical statistical methods. This book describes a general and flexible framework for modeling and inference in ecological systems based on hierarchical models, with a strict focus on the use of probability models and parametric inference. Hierarchical models represent a paradigm shift in the application of statistics to ecological inference problems because they combine explicit models of ecological system structure or dynamics with models of how ecological systems are observed. The principles of hierarchical modeling are developed and applied to problems in population, metapopulation, community, and metacommunity systems. The book provides the first synthetic treatment of many recent methodological advances in ecological modeling and unifies disparate methods and procedures. The authors apply principles of hierarchical modeling to ecological problems, including * occurrence or occupancy models for estimating species distribution * abundance models based on many sampling protocols, including distance sampling * capture-recapture models with individual effects * spatial capture-recapture models based on camera trapping and related methods * population and metapopulation dynamic models * models of biodiversity, community structure and dynamics Wide variety of examples involving many taxa (birds, amphibians, mammals, insects, plants) Development of classical, likelihood-based procedures for inference, as well as Bayesian methods of analysis Detailed explanations describing the implementation of hierarchical models using freely available software such as R and WinBUGS Computing support in technical appendices in an online companion web site
IUCN's Protected Areas Management Categories, which classify protected areas according to their management objectives, are today accepted as the benchmark for defining, recording, and classifying protected areas. They are recognized by international bodies such as the United Nations as well as many national governments. As a result, they are increasingly being incorporated into government legislation. These guidelines provide as much clarity as possible regarding the meaning and application of the Categories. They describe the definition of the Categories and discuss application in particular biomes and management approaches.
