Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) of food and agriculture generally include potential effects on global warming, eutrophication, ecotoxocity and acidification some of which again affect biodiversity. However, LCA most often does not include specific indicators of the product’s or agricultural system’s impact (negative or positive) on biodiversity. Using LCA methodology on agricultural products makes it highly relevant to assess the impacts of land use. Some LCA’s include a simple category of land use. This is sometimes interpreted as “nature occupation”. However, if this is the only impact category addressing land use related biodiversity, the LCA cannot distinguish between different forms of agricultural systems, which may differ in their biodiversity impact (e.g. organic versus conventional products). Biologists as well as policy makers consider some agricultural land use, such as grazing semi-natural grasslands, as beneficial for biodiversity preservation. Thus, land use in food production systems can have both positive and negative impacts on biodiversity compared to leaving the land untouched by humans. Simple, operational indicators to account for the different impacts on biodiversity in food production systems could take the point of departure in the most important factors affecting biodiversity (easy obtainable pressure indicators) instead of estimating e.g. species diversity directly.

Protected areas throughout the world are key for conserving biodiversity, and land use is key for providing food, fiber, and other ecosystem services essential for human sustenance. As land use change isolates protected areas from their surrounding landscapes, the challenge is to identify management opportunities that maintain ecological function while minimizing restrictions on human land use. Building on the case studies in this Invited Feature and on ecological principles, we identify opportunities for regional land management that maintain both ecological function in protected areas and human land use options, including preserving crucial habitats and migration corridors, and reducing dependence of local human populations on protected area resources. Identification of appropriate and effective management opportunities depends on clear definitions of: (1) the biodiversity attributes of concern; (2) landscape connections to delineate particular locations with strong ecological interactions between the protected area and its surrounding landscape; and (3) socioeconomic dynamics that determine current and future use of land resources in and around the protected area.

[Departement_IRSTEA]GT [TR1_IRSTEA]SET / DYMON | International audience | Mountain regions and UNESCO Mountain Biosphere Reserves (MBRs) encapsulate broad elevational ranges, cover large gradients of geological, topographical and climatic diversity, and thus host greater biodiversity than the surrounding lowlands. Much of the biological richness in MBRs results from the interaction of climatic contrasts and gravitational forces along elevational gradients. External forces such as atmospheric change and human land use interact with these gradients, and result in distinct landscape patchiness, ie mosaics of land cover types within and across elevational belts. The management of MBRs influences land use and land cover, which affects biodiversity and ecosystem processes, both of which provide goods and services to society. Due to their broad environmental and biological diversity, MBRs are ideally suited for global change research and will be increasingly important in illustrating biodiversity conservation. This article summarizes the ecologically relevant results of an international workshop on elevational gradients that aimed to achieve a synthesis of the major ecosystem and biodiversity conditions and drivers in an altitude context. The workshop developed a core research agenda for MBRs that prioritizes long-term research and changes in land use across a broad elevational range.

BACKGROUND, AIM AND SCOPE: Land use by agriculture, forestry, mining, house-building or industry leads to substantial impacts, particularly on biodiversity and on soil quality as a supplier of life support functions. Unfortunately there is no widely accepted assessment method so far for land use impacts. This paper presents an attempt, within the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, to provide a framework for the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) of land use. Materials and Methods: This framework builds from previous documents, particularly the SETAC book on LCIA (Lindeijer et al. 2002), developing essential issues such as the reference for occupation impacts; the impact pathways to be included in the analysis; the units of measure in the impact mechanism (land use interventions to impacts); the ways to deal with impacts in the future; and bio-geographical differentiation. Results: The paper describes the selected impact pathways, linking the land use elementary flows (occupation; transformation) and parameters (intensity) registered in the inventory (LCI) to the midpoint impact indicators and to the relevant damage categories (natural environment and natural resources). An impact occurs when the land properties are modified (transformation) and also when the current man-made properties are maintained (occupation). Discussion: The size of impact is the difference between the effect on land quality from the studied case of land use and a suitable reference land use on the same area (dynamic reference situation). The impact depends not only on the type of land use (including coverage and intensity) but is also heavily influenced by the bio-geographical conditions of the area. The time lag between the land use intervention and the impact may be large; thus land use impacts should be calculated over a reasonable time period after the actual land use finishes, at least until a new steady state in land quality is reached. Conclusions: Guidance is provided on the definition of the dynamic reference situation and on methods and time frame to assess the impacts occurring after the actual land use. Including the occupation impacts acknowledges that humans are not the sole users of land. Recommendations and Perspectives: The main damages affected by land use that should be considered by any method to assess land use impacts in LCIA are: biodiversity (existence value); biotic production potential (including soil fertility and use value of biodiversity); ecological soil quality (including life support functions of soil other than biotic production potential). Bio-geographical differentiation is required for land use impacts, because the same intervention may have different consequences depending on the sensitivity and inherent land quality of the environment where it occurs. For the moment, an indication of how such task could be done and likely bio-geographical parameters to be considered are suggested. The recommendation of indicators for the suggested impact categories is a matter of future research.

The perspective of 'biocomplexity' in the form of 'coupled natural and human systems' represents a resource for the future conservation of biodiversity hotspots in three direct ways: ( i) modelling the impact on biodiversity of private land-use decisions and public land- use policies, ( ii) indicating how the biocultural history of a biodiversity hotspot may be a resource for its future conservation, and ( iii) identifying and deploying the nodes of both the material and psycho-spiritual connectivity between human and natural systems in service to conservation goals. Three biocomplexity case studies of areas notable for their biodiversity, selected for their variability along a latitudinal climate gradient and a human-impact gradient, are developed: the Big Thicket in southeast Texas, the Upper Botanamo River Basin in eastern Venezuela, and the Cape Horn Archipelago at the austral tip of Chile. More deeply, the biocomplexity perspective reveals alternative ways of understanding biodiversity itself, because it directs attention to the human concepts through which biodiversity is perceived and understood. The very meaning of biodiversity is contestable and varies according to the cognitive lenses through which it is perceived.

Land use is expanding and intensifying in the unprotected lands surrounding many of the world's protected areas. The influence of this land use change on ecological processes is poorly understood. The goal of this paper is to draw on ecological theory to provide a synthetic framework for understanding how land use change around protected areas may alter ecological processes and biodiversity within protected areas and to provide a basis for identifying scientifically based management alternatives. We first present a conceptual model of protected areas embedded within larger ecosystems that often include surrounding human land use. Drawing on case studies in this Invited Feature, we then explore a comprehensive set of ecological mechanisms by which land use on surrounding lands may influence ecological processes and biodiversity within reserves. These mechanisms involve changes in ecosystem size, with implications for minimum dynamic area, species–area effect, and trophic structure; altered flows of materials and disturbances into and out of reserves; effects on crucial habitats for seasonal and migration movements and population source/sink dynamics; and exposure to humans through hunting, poaching, exotics species, and disease. These ecological mechanisms provide a basis for assessing the vulnerability of protected areas to land use. They also suggest criteria for designing regional management to sustain protected areas in the context of surrounding human land use. These design criteria include maximizing the area of functional habitats, identifying and maintaining ecological process zones, maintaining key migration and source habitats, and managing human proximity and edge effects.

Conservation easements are one of the primary tools for conserving biodiversity on private land. Despite their increasing use, little quantitative data are available on what species and habitats conservation easements aim to protect, how much structural development they allow, or what types of land use they commonly permit. To address these knowledge gaps, we surveyed staff responsible for 119 conservation easements established by the largest nonprofit easement holder, The Nature Conservancy, between 1985 and 2004. Most easements (80%) aimed to provide core habitat to protect species or communities on‐site, and nearly all were designed to reduce development. Conservation easements also allowed for a wide range of private uses, which may result in additional fragmentation and habitat disturbance. Some residential or commercial use, new structures, or subdivision of the property were permitted on 85% of sampled conservation easements. Over half (56%) allowed some additional buildings, of which 60% restricted structure size or building area. Working landscape easements with ranching, forestry, or farming made up nearly half (46%) of the easement properties sampled and were more likely than easements without these uses to be designated as buffers to enhance biodiversity in the surrounding area. Our results demonstrate the need for clear restrictions on building and subdivision in easements, research on the compatibility of private uses on easement land, and greater public understanding of the trade‐offs implicit in the use of conservation easements for biodiversity conservation.

In studies of biodiversity, considerations of scale--the spatial or temporal domain to which data provide inference--are important because of the non-arithmetic manner in which species richness increases with area (and total abundance) and because fine-scale mechanisms (for example, recruitment, growth, and mortality of species) can interact with broad scale patterns (for example, habitat patch configuration) to influence dynamics in space and time. The key to understanding these dynamics is to consider patterns of environmental heterogeneity, including patterns produced by natural and anthropogenic disturbance. We studied how spatial variation in three aspects of biodiversity of terrestrial gastropods (species richness, species diversity, and nestedness) on the 16-ha Luquillo Forest Dynamics Plot (LFDP) in a tropical forest of Puerto Rico was affected by disturbance caused by Hurricanes Hugo and Georges, as well as by patterns of historic land use. Hurricane-induced changes in spatial organization of species richness differed from those for species diversity. The gamma components of species richness changed after the hurricanes and were significantly different between Hurricanes Hugo and Georges. Alpha and two beta components of species richness, one related to turnover among sites within areas of similar land use and one related to variation among areas of different land use, varied randomly over time after both hurricanes. In contrast, gamma components of species diversity decreased in indistinguishable manners after both hurricanes, whereas the rates of change in the alpha component of species diversity differed between hurricanes. Beta components of diversity related to turnover among sites declined after both hurricanes in a consistent fashion. Those related to turnover among areas with different historic land uses varied stochastically. The immediate effect of hurricanes was to reduce nestedness of gastropod assemblages. Thereafter, nestedness increased during post-hurricane secondary succession, and did so in the same way, regardless of patterns of historic land use. The rates of change in degree of nestedness during secondary succession were different after each hurricane as a result of differences in the severity and extent of the hurricane-induced damage. Our analyses quantified temporal changes in the spatial organization of biodiversity of gastropod assemblages during forest recovery from hurricane-induced damage in areas that had experienced different patterns of historic human land use, and documented the dependence of biodiversity on spatial scale. We hypothesize that cross-scale interactions, likely those between the local demographics of species at the fine scale and the landscape configuration of patches at the broad scale, play a dominant role in affecting critical transfer processes, such as dispersal, and its interrelationship with aspects of biodiversity. Cross-scale interactions have significant implications for the conservation of biodiversity, as the greatest threats to biodiversity arise from habitat modification and fragmentation associated with disturbance arising from human activities.

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Biodiversity Management and Research in collaboration with Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin | Human societies have, for centuries, impacted and altered the natural environments through different land use practises. Unsustainable land use practices are seen as one of the major threats to biodiversity around the globe. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to assess the impacts of different land use types, mainly grazing and browsing by wildlife and livestock; land clearance for cultivation and wood harvesting on plant species diversity, composition and vegetation structure in the Kalahari woodlands of the Salambala conservancy in northeast Namibia. Three areas representing the different land use types were compared. These were the core, transitional and outside areas, which represented low, medium and high land use intensities, respectively. The nested plots design method was used to determine the minimal plot area. Trees (stem diameter 15cm) were assessed in 20m*20m plots, shrubs (stem diameter 15cm) were assessed in 5m*5m subplots and grasses and forbs were assessed in 1m*1m subplots. The structural attributes measured were tree basal circumference (cm), tree and shrub height, woody cover (line-intercept method) and visual estimation of grass cover. The range condition was assessed based on decreaser-increaser method. Plant species diversity and richness were significantly higher in the core and transitional areas. The hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) recognised three main floristic associations. These are, Combretum collinum mixed tall-sparse woodland, Combretum collinum-Terminalia sericea tall-dense woodland and Combretum collinum woodland thicket corresponding to the land use types in the core, transitional and outside areas respectively. The Detredend Correspondence Analysis (DCA) showed that 44.3 of the total variation in species composition was accounted for along the first axis, which was mainly associated with land use intensity. Tree density and total basal area were significantly higher in the transitional area; and higher in the core than the outside area, although not statistically supported. Stem density and woody cover were higher in the outside area. Grass cover was higher in the core area, but did not differ between the transitional and outside areas. Basal area and height class distribution differed significantly among the three sites. Shrub and forb densities did not differ significantly among the sites. The range condition in the core area was classified as selectively grazed (50); 40 selectively and 40 overgrazed in the transitional area and 86 overgrazed in the outside area. Plant species diversity, richness and composition are clearly being negatively impacted by the different land use types, evident from significantly low diversity and richness in the highly utilised outside area. The effect of land use on species composition is more pronounced in the herbaceous layers, contributing more to the separation of the vegetation by the classification and ordination methods. There is clear evidence that the different land use types are gradually transforming Kalahari woodlands in the Salambala conservancy from woodlands to woodland thickets. The effects of past land use in the conservancy could also be linked to the current structure and composition of the vegetation. Future studies and research programmes especially in communal area conservancies, should take into consideration the assessment of the status of vegetation and other components of biodiversity, as well as carrying capacity and stocking rates of the range. | Windhoek | Namibia | University of Namibia | Master of Science in Biodiversity Management and Research(MSc)

This article reviews critical linkages between land-use transition and human health in the Himalayan region by applying ecosystem approaches to human health (EcoHealth). Land-use transition in the Himalayan region includes sedentarization, agricultural intensification, habitat modification, migration, change of livelihoods and lifestyles, biodiversity loss, and increasing flash floods. These transitions, which can have impacts on human health, are driven by state policies, a market economy, and climate change. Ecosystem management has been a key means of controlling disease vectors and creating suitable habitats for human well-being. Institutional and policy issues for land-use and health transitions are also discussed.