Habitat loss and fragmentation arguably pose the greatest threats to biological diversity. Agriculture is a dominant land use that, along with urban sprawl and residential development, can reduce the amount and connectedness of natural areas required by many native species. Unfortunately, progress has been slow in integrating nature and biodiversity protection into community planning in intensively farmed regions, especially in America's heartland. Seldom do issues related to species conservation receive consideration during local planning activities. Lack of progress stems partly from scientific inadequacies in understanding the dynamics of complex landscapes, and from a lack of engagement of non-scientific stakeholders by scientists and modelers. The result of these shortcomings is a critical disconnect of conservation issues from the planning infrastructure. This book provides a blueprint for advancing conceptual understanding of conservation in agricultural regions. It accomplishes this with a two-pronged approach: first, by developing spatially structured models that acknowledge the link between socio-economic drivers of land-use change and the dynamics of species occupying agricultural landscapes with abrupt changes in land cover (i.e., sharp edges); and second, by providing guidelines and examples to enable scientists to effectively engage stakeholders in participatory learning and planning activities that integrate biodiversity with other, more traditional, considerations. The structure of the book is truly interdisciplinary, linking the efforts of ecologists, economists, statisticians, mathematicians, and land-use specialists.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Section I: Modeling Framework
Chapter One: Modeling interactions of private ownership and biological diversity: an architecture for landscapes with sharp edges, by Robert K. Swihart and Norman A. Slade
Section II: Model Infrastructure
Chapter Two: Conceptual parallels in spatial modeling of economics and ecology, by Kathleen P. Bell and Norman A. Slade
Chapter Three: Human drivers of land-use change: a review of spatial models incorporating socioeconomic influences, by Kathleen P. Bell, Shorna R. Broussard, and Weidong Gu
Chapter Four: Conservation thresholds derived from metapopulation models, by Zhilan Feng and Yssa DeWoody
Chapter Five: Patch-occupancy models for estimating the risk of extinction induced by habitat destruction, by Weidong Gu and Jana VerboomChapter Six: Using ecologically scaled landscape indices to assess biodiversity consequences of land-use decisions, by Robert K. Swihart and Jana Verboom
Chapter Seven: Ecologically scaled recognition of patches within a GIS environment, by Michael S. Miller and Robert K. Swihart
Chapter Eight: Species-specific responses to landscape heterogeneity: improving estimates of connectivity, by Michael S. Miller and Robin E. Russell
Chapter Nine: Developing an integrated model of land-use/land-cover change, by Bruce A. Craig, Weidong Gu, and Zhilan Feng
Section III: Practical Considerations
Chapter Ten: Modeling land-use change: social and economic data considerations, by Shorna R. Broussard, Kathleen P. Bell, and William L. Hoover
Chapter Eleven: Empirical considerations for modeling animal movements in human-dominated landscapes, by Jeffrey E. Moore and Robin E. Russell
Chapter Twelve: Selecting surrogate species for ecological assessments in land-use planning: a case study in the upper Wabash River basin, by Robin E. Russell, Jeffrey E. Moore, Michael S. Miller, Trent M. Sutton, and Shannon M. Knapp
Chapter Thirteen: Historical and human dimensions of nature-based planning: is time on our side?, by Brian K. Miller, Kenli Schaaf, Robert K. Swihart, and Chester L. Arnold, Jr.
Chapter Fourteen: Putting models into practice, by Brian K. Miller, Kenli Schaaf, Natalie J. Carroll, and Chester L. Arnold, Jr.
Chapter Fifteen: Interactive planning as a way to sustainable land use: a case study from the Netherlands, by M. J. M. van Mansfeld
Literature Cited
List of Contributors
Index
