Hasil untuk "Human ecology. Anthropogeography"

Liba Pejchar, H. Mooney

C. Kremen

Manuel Jung, Sophia Knopf, Michael Mögele

Abstract For city planners, public experimentation has become an attractive tool to “look into the future”, increasingly including novel technologies: Actors test novel mobility options, such as autonomous driving on urban roads to receive real-world feedback on their prototypes; and digital technologies are used to create virtual spaces of experimentation to explore interventions in urban space before implementation. Paying explicit attention to the performative character of experiments and the mechanisms by which they make envisioned futures more plausible than others, we build on the concept of “techniques of futuring” (ToF) to better understand the role of experiments in urban transformations. We ask: How do urban experiments perform mobility futures and how does the performance make these futures plausible? We provide empirical insights on two cases of experimental environments in Munich: a living lab for autonomous driving and an urban digital twin for novel bicycle infrastructure design. We identify three core performative mechanisms by which urban experimentation contributes to making certain futures plausible: picturing the vision, preparing the city, and persuading the public. These mechanisms show how experiments involving novel technologies can become powerful in underpinning the presented visions of future mobility. At the same time, they call for caution when the allure of these mechanisms outplays alternative ways of deliberating and creating mobility futures.

H. Birks

ABSTRACT Quaternary (last 2.6 million years) botany involves studying plant megafossils (e.g. tree stumps), macrofossils (e.g. seeds, leaves), and microfossils (e.g. pollen, spores) preserved in peat bogs and lake sediments. Although megafossils and macrofossils have been studied since the late eighteenth century, Quaternary botany today is largely dominated by pollen analysis. Quaternary pollen analysis is just over 100 years old. It started primarily as a geological tool for correlation, relative dating, and climate reconstruction. In 1950 a major advance occurred with the publication by Knut Fægri and Johs Iversen of their Text-book of Modern Pollen Analysis which provided the foundations for pollen analysis as a botanical and ecological tool for studying past dynamics of biota and biotic systems. The development of radiocarbon dating in the 1950s freed pollen analysis from being a tool for relative dating. As a result of these developments, pollen analysis became a valuable implement in long-term ecology and biogeography. Selected contributions that Quaternary botany has made to ecology and biogeography since 1950 are reviewed. They fall into four general parts: (1) ecological aspects of interglacial and glacial stages such as location and nature of glacial-stage tree refugia and long-term soil development in glaciated and unglaciated areas; (2) biotic responses to Quaternary environmental change (spreading, extinction, persistence, adaptation); (3) ecological topics such as potential niches, the nature of vegetation, and tree and forest dynamics; and (4) its application to ecological topics such as human impact in tropical systems, conservation in a changing world, island palaeoecology, plant–animal interactions, and biodiversity patterns in time. The future of Quaternary botany is briefly discussed and 10 suggestions are presented to help strengthen it and its links with ecology and biogeography. Quaternary botany has much to contribute to ecology and biogeography when used in conjunction with new approaches such as ancient-DNA, molecular biomarkers, and multi-proxy palaeoecology.

Dagmara Helena Brzeziecka, Bartosz Piziak, Karolina Thel

The aim of the article is to analyse the activities of Urban Living Labs (ULL) in Poland from the perspective of supporting the realization of sustainable development goals at the local level. The article is based on an analysis of Internet materials (1,907 research units from social media and websites) of Polish Urban Labs on various types of activities they perform. The analysis of the materials helped to assess the way in which Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) concepts are implemented as part of the urban innovations developed at Urban Labs. It helped to identify the most important directions of SDG implementation, as well as to propose a typology of urban labs in this regard. The main conclusions of the research concern the different strategies for concentrating ULL activities around the SDGs, as well as the emergence of three speeds of ULL in terms of their involvement in SDG implementation. The “great absentee,” i.e. the undervaluing of sustainable energy topics in ULL activities in Poland, was also revealed.

M. Chitwood, C. Baruzzi, M. Lashley

Abstract Because ungulates are important contributors to ecosystem function, understanding the “ecology of fear” could be important to the conservation of ecosystems. Although studying ungulate ecology of fear is common, knowledge from ungulate systems is highly contested among ecologists. Here, we review the available literature on the ecology of fear in ungulates to generalize our current knowledge and how we can leverage it for conservation. Four general focus areas emerged from the 275 papers included in our literature search (and some papers were included in multiple categories): behavioral responses to predation risk (79%), physiological responses to predation risk (15%), trophic cascades resulting from ungulate responses to predation risk (20%), and manipulation of predation risk (1%). Of papers focused on behavior, 75% were about movement and habitat selection. Studies were biased toward North America (53%), tended to be focused on elk (Cervus canadensis; 29%), and were dominated by gray wolves (40%) or humans (39%) as predators of interest. Emerging literature suggests that we can utilize predation risk for conservation with top‐down (i.e., increasing predation risk) and bottom‐up (i.e., manipulating landscape characteristics to increase risk or risk perception) approaches. It is less clear whether fear‐related changes in physiology have population‐level fitness consequences or cascading effects, which could be fruitful avenues for future research. Conflicting evidence of trait‐mediated trophic cascades might be improved with better replication across systems and accounting for confounding effects of ungulate density. Improving our understanding of mechanisms modulating the nature of trophic cascades likely is most important to ensure desirable conservation outcomes. We recommend future work embrace the complexity of natural systems by attempting to link together the focal areas of study identified herein.

William Andrés Galvis Sarria, Martha Lucia Ordoñez Serna, Olga Lucia Sanabria Diago

Abstract The present work has the objective of documenting the diversity of species and crops and how these are managed and interchanged among different ecological floors through the traditional orchard in the context of the indigenous community of Totoro based on the conceptual-methodological elements of ethnobiology, as the scientific framework that studies the relations plants-humans and the different ways of handling plant resources in traditional agricultural systems (HERNANDEZ X., 1985) and the analysis of social media (JANSSEN et al., 2006). For this purpose, a design of qualitative analysis methods with ethnographic and ethnobotanical tools is performed. Following results stand out the description of the handling and complementary interchange among ecological floors of 68 plant species in traditional orchards; which allowed to identify which traditional orchards are key for the articulation of the networks for the interchange of knowledge, practices and vegetal material through the principles of reciprocity, redistribution and family relationships.

Flavia Tromboni, Jianguo Liu, Emanuele Ziaco et al.

A early as 1942, ecosystems were depicted as multiple compartments coupled by directional fluxes of energy (Lindeman 1942). The concept of ecosystems as spatial entities with interrelated and interacting components has since been advanced as a result of work in several ecological subfields – notably landscape ecology in the 1980s (Urban et al. 1987) and more recently macrosystems biology (Heffernan et al. 2014). Macrosystems biology focuses on ecological processes occurring at scales ranging from regional to continental, and emphasizes teleconnections (ie phenomena that link geographically distant regions), macroscale feedbacks (ie amplified or diminished broad-scale feedbacks), and crossscale interactions (ie phenomena at one temporal or spatial scale influencing another) as fundamental characteristics (Heffernan et al. 2014). In addition, because of the ubiquitous influence of human activities, macrosystems are inherently interconnected, complex human–natural systems (Liu et al. 2015a). Human activities are influencing the spatiotemporal scales at which ecological processes operate (Rose et al. 2017). Spatially, human activities can induce processes to expand (eg larger dust storms due to reduced vegetation cover) or contract (eg anthropogenic channelization of rivers). From a temporal perspective, some processes accelerate (eg rates of sea-level rise) while others slow (eg persisting alterations in forest composition due to land-use change) (Rose et al. 2017). Such novel spatiotemporal combinations can result in new scaling rules for ecological processes, and can at times alter a system’s resilience by pushing it closer to a threshold beyond which the system can no longer retain its essential properties (ie a tipping point; Scheffer et al. 2001; Peters et al. 2004). Few studies have explicitly incorporated both local and distant interactions, feedbacks, and socioecological dynamics into macrosystems biology (as highlighted by Hefferman et al. 2014; Rose et al. 2017; but see Liu 2017). As a result, macrosystems research has tended to focus primarily on systems that are in close proximity or systems with exclusively long-distance teleconnections, such as those Macrosystems as metacoupled human and natural systems

Y. Hwang, Anuj Jain

Urban landscapes have the potential to conserve wildlife. Despite increasing recognition of this potential, there are few collaborative efforts to integrate ecology and conservation principles into context-dependent, spatial and actionable design strategies. To address this issue and to encourage multi-disciplinary research on urban human–wildlife interactions, we ask the following questions. To what extent should design and planning actions be aligned with urban ecology in the context of a compact city? How can wildlife conservation meet the seemingly conflictual demands of urban development and public preference? To answer these questions, we refer to the relevant literature and a number of design projects. Using the compact tropical city of Singapore as a case study, we propose 12 design strategies. We encourage designers and planners to strengthen the links between wildlife and urban dwellers and promote wildlife conservation within cities.

Jeremy M. Chacón, Sarah P. Hammarlund, J. Martinson et al.

Mutually beneficial interspecific interactions are abundant throughout the natural world, including between microbes. Mutualisms between microbes are critical for everything from human health to global nutrient cycling. Studying model microbial mutualisms in the laboratory enables highly controlled experiments for developing and testing evolutionary and ecological hypotheses. In this review, we begin by describing the tools available for studying model microbial mutualisms. We then outline recent insights that laboratory systems have shed on the evolutionary origins, evolutionary dynamics, and ecological features of microbial mutualism. We touch on gaps in our current understanding of microbial mutualisms, note connections to mutualism in nonmicrobial systems, and call attention to open questions ripe for future study. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, Volume 52 is November 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

M. Nocente

<p>The question of porousness and liminality of prison has been the subject of a huge amount of research. This article focuses on the relationships, communications, and narratives that occur behind prison walls. It examines letter writing in relation to the construction of a bridge that connects the opacity of the inside with the outside, creating a counter-carceral liminal space. The article investigates the encounter between the outside, represented in OLGa (the political collective in which I participate), and the inside (the prisoners) through the process of letter writing. The article further draws upon my own positionality through an engaged discussion on the limitations of scholar activism and the problem of speaking for others.</p>

Caitlyn Madden

J. Azevedo, S. Luque, Cynnamon Dobbs et al.

The debate around the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has raised multiple and incompletely answered questions regarding how zoonoses are transmitted from wild populations to humans, how they spread within human communities, over regions and across continents, how countries and societies can fight or counter pandemics and how landscapes will have to be effectively managed for limiting the spread of diseases keeping communities safe and healthy. A broader long-standing debate on the (un)sustainability of ongoing development models where biodiversity, climate, and socio-economic crises are central, both as causes and effects, has received additional attention in the context of the current pandemic. This has stressed the urgency of changing development paradigms to reduce pressures on ecosystems and biodiversity, increase investments in ecosystem and landscape restoration and integrate natural capital and ecosystem services valuation into decision-making processes, also at the urban scale. Inspired in Forman’s 1987 book chapter ‘‘The Ethics of Isolation, the Spread of Disturbance, and Landscape Ecology’’ (Forman 1987).

H. Bulkeley

Just as global institutions and environmental assessment processes embark on the latest effort to integrate more social science into global environmental change research, it appears that the social sciences of climate change are unable or unwilling to address this challenge. In this article, I explore the nature of these dynamics within human geography and argue that climate change occupies a curiously ambiguous position within our discipline of both an explicit presence and an underlying absence. Framed predominantly in terms of a biophysical challenge requiring some form of social response, work on climate change retains an assumed socio-nature divide – a position which has yet to be substantively challenged by the different strands of political ecology, new materialism and environmental humanities that now pervade the discipline. To advance new geographies of climate change, the article argues that our understanding of climate change needs to shift from that of a problem that needs specific responses to a condition that is constituted through specific forms of socio-spatial relation and in turn constitutes the politics, ethics and meaning of particular socio-spatial orderings, from the citizen to the city, the community to the corporation.

P. Câmara, Micheline Carvalho-Silva, O. Pinto et al.

Cylita Guy, J. Ratcliffe, N. Mideo

Abstract Repeated emergence of zoonotic viruses from bat reservoirs into human populations demands predictive approaches to preemptively identify virus‐carrying bat species. Here, we use machine learning to examine drivers of viral diversity in bats, determine whether those drivers depend on viral genome type, and predict undetected viral carriers. Our results indicate that bat species with longer life spans, broad geographic distributions in the eastern hemisphere, and large group sizes carry more viruses overall. Life span was a stronger predictor of deoxyribonucleic acid viral diversity, while group size and family were more important for predicting ribonucleic acid viruses, potentially reflecting broad differences in infection duration. Importantly, our models predict 54 bat species as likely carriers of zoonotic viruses, despite not currently being considered reservoirs. Mapping these predictions as a proportion of local bat diversity, we identify global regions where efforts to reduce disease spillover into humans by identifying viral carriers may be most productive.

A. Loftus

Since its inception, political ecology has marshalled a variety of different understandings of the human subject. Confronted with the challenges of authoritarian populism, as well as the provocations of the Anthropocene, being explicit about such conceptualisations is increasingly necessary. In this third report, I review recent conceptualisations of the subject, beginning with how ‘the people’ have been invoked in authoritarian populist discourses. I then contrast such a perspective with the situated social subjects of everyday political ecology before considering the challenges posed to notions of a sovereign human subject. I conclude with a discussion of political ecological persons in praxis.

Francesco Carrer, K. Walsh, F. Mocci

Human interaction with mountain environments is generally perceived as an adaptation of local communities to the constraining ecological and morphological characteristics of their territory, a preconception challenged by many historians and ecologists yet still largely accepted for seasonally exploited uplands. Traditional upland seasonal practices are considered timeless and immutable as the mountain landscapes shaped by such practices. We combine the methodologies of landscape archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and historical ecology in order to examine the validity of this assumption. Our analysis of two case studies from the French and Italian Alps between the eighteenth and the twenty-first century shows that socioeconomic dynamics affect the resilience of local montane ecosystems and the historical character of upland landscapes, and reveals that historical social, economic, and ecological driving forces contributed to upland landscape change, so that the sustainability of ‘traditional’ mountain land-use should not be presumed.

Brendan J. Barrett, E. Zepeda, L. Pollack et al.

Human-induced rapid environmental change (HIREC) poses threats to a variety of species, and if or how it changes phenotypes is a question of central importance bridging evolutionary ecology and conservation management. Social learning is one type of phenotypic plasticity that can shape organismal responses to HIREC; it allows organisms to acquire phenotypes on a timescale that closely tracks environmental change while minimizing the costs of individual learning. A common assumption in behavioral ecology, is that social learning is generally an adaptive way to cope with HIREC by facilitating the rapid spread of innovative responses to change. While this can be true, social learning can also be maladaptive. It may hinder the spread of adaptive behavior by causing a carryover of old, no longer adaptive behaviors that slow the response to HIREC or even promote the spread of maladaptive behaviors. Here, we present a conceptual framework outlining how an organism’s evolutionary history can shape cognitive mechanisms, social behavior, and population composition, which in turn affect how an organism responds to HIREC. We review quantitative theory and empirical evidence spanning the cultural evolution and behavioral ecology literature discussing how social learning helps or hinders organismal or species’ responses to HIREC. We highlight how mismatch of social learning mechanisms and time-lags in a post-HIREC environment can slow or limit the acquisition of adaptive behavior. We then discuss how different pathways of cultural transmission and social learning strategies can help or hinder responses to HIREC. We also review how HIREC may interfere with the transmission process by altering the public information sent from sender to receiver through the environment before receivers acquire any public information. Lastly, we discuss gaps and future directions including how animals integrate personal and social information, the interaction between personality and social learning, and social learning between heterospecifics.

R. Buxton, P. Lendrum, K. Crooks et al.

Abstract Over the past two decades, the use of camera traps and acoustic monitoring in the investigation of animal ecology have grown rapidly, with each technique enhancing broad-scale wildlife surveying. Camera traps are a cost-effective, noninvasive means of sampling communities of mid-to large-terrestrial species, and acoustic recording devices capture human sounds and sound-producing animals, including species of mammals, birds, anurans, and insects. Rarely are these techniques combined, despite the advantages of merging their respective strengths. Namely, camera traps paired with acoustic recorders can evaluate the abundance, distribution, and behavior of multiple guilds and trophic levels across landscapes while concurrently monitoring multiple human stressors in real time. Moreover, integrating these approaches enhances detection accuracy and strengthens statistical inference at multiple survey scales. We conducted a literature review, and found only 13 studies that combine camera traps and acoustic recorders, 8 of which either compared the ability of each technique to detect species of interest or discussed the advantages of each technique. We outline potential questions that can be addressed by pairing acoustic recorders and camera traps, including enabling the simultaneous assessment of noise pollution and its impacts on mammal and avian communities. Furthermore, we discuss how the analysis of data from each technique face similar challenges; thus, simultaneous innovation offers the ability to apply solutions to both techniques and amplify their respective strengths. Digital technologies and big data are changing nature conservation in increasingly profound ways and integration of camera traps and acoustic recorders will facilitate new, transformative discoveries to meet modern conservation challenges.