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Accounting for Ecosystem Alteration Doubles Estimates of Conservation Risk in the Conterminous United States

Previous national and global conservation assessments have relied on habitat conversion data to quantify conservation risk. However, in addition to habitat conversion to crop production or urban uses, ecosystem alteration (e.g., from logging, conversion to plantations, biological invasion, or fire s...

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Autores principales: Swaty, Randy, Blankenship, Kori, Hagen, Sarah, Fargione, Joseph, Smith, Jim, Patton, Jeannie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3151280/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21850248
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0023002
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author Swaty, Randy
Blankenship, Kori
Hagen, Sarah
Fargione, Joseph
Smith, Jim
Patton, Jeannie
author_facet Swaty, Randy
Blankenship, Kori
Hagen, Sarah
Fargione, Joseph
Smith, Jim
Patton, Jeannie
author_sort Swaty, Randy
collection PubMed
description Previous national and global conservation assessments have relied on habitat conversion data to quantify conservation risk. However, in addition to habitat conversion to crop production or urban uses, ecosystem alteration (e.g., from logging, conversion to plantations, biological invasion, or fire suppression) is a large source of conservation risk. We add data quantifying ecosystem alteration on unconverted lands to arrive at a more accurate depiction of conservation risk for the conterminous United States. We quantify ecosystem alteration using a recent national assessment based on remote sensing of current vegetation compared with modeled reference natural vegetation conditions. Highly altered (but not converted) ecosystems comprise 23% of the conterminous United States, such that the number of critically endangered ecoregions in the United States is 156% higher than when calculated using habitat conversion data alone. Increased attention to natural resource management will be essential to address widespread ecosystem alteration and reduce conservation risk.
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spelling pubmed-31512802011-08-17 Accounting for Ecosystem Alteration Doubles Estimates of Conservation Risk in the Conterminous United States Swaty, Randy Blankenship, Kori Hagen, Sarah Fargione, Joseph Smith, Jim Patton, Jeannie PLoS One Research Article Previous national and global conservation assessments have relied on habitat conversion data to quantify conservation risk. However, in addition to habitat conversion to crop production or urban uses, ecosystem alteration (e.g., from logging, conversion to plantations, biological invasion, or fire suppression) is a large source of conservation risk. We add data quantifying ecosystem alteration on unconverted lands to arrive at a more accurate depiction of conservation risk for the conterminous United States. We quantify ecosystem alteration using a recent national assessment based on remote sensing of current vegetation compared with modeled reference natural vegetation conditions. Highly altered (but not converted) ecosystems comprise 23% of the conterminous United States, such that the number of critically endangered ecoregions in the United States is 156% higher than when calculated using habitat conversion data alone. Increased attention to natural resource management will be essential to address widespread ecosystem alteration and reduce conservation risk. Public Library of Science 2011-08-05 /pmc/articles/PMC3151280/ /pubmed/21850248 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0023002 Text en Swaty et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Swaty, Randy
Blankenship, Kori
Hagen, Sarah
Fargione, Joseph
Smith, Jim
Patton, Jeannie
Accounting for Ecosystem Alteration Doubles Estimates of Conservation Risk in the Conterminous United States
title Accounting for Ecosystem Alteration Doubles Estimates of Conservation Risk in the Conterminous United States
title_full Accounting for Ecosystem Alteration Doubles Estimates of Conservation Risk in the Conterminous United States
title_fullStr Accounting for Ecosystem Alteration Doubles Estimates of Conservation Risk in the Conterminous United States
title_full_unstemmed Accounting for Ecosystem Alteration Doubles Estimates of Conservation Risk in the Conterminous United States
title_short Accounting for Ecosystem Alteration Doubles Estimates of Conservation Risk in the Conterminous United States
title_sort accounting for ecosystem alteration doubles estimates of conservation risk in the conterminous united states
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3151280/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21850248
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0023002
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