human activities Archives - Resilient Landscapes

Reducing forest degradation by managing bushfires in The Gambia

Key findings:

Over 90% of bushfires in the Gambia are aggravated by human activities such as fuelwood and charcoal production, forest and farm clearing activities, pests and disease control, smoking, and increased fuel loads that accelerate fire spread
Bushfires affect half of the Gambia forests, which are estimated at 423,000 hectares (about 47% of total land area), with 70% of them facing one or more forms of degradation
In The Gambia, precipitation patterns are critical predictors of bushfire occurrence. Bushfires are highest during the dry and hot seasons and lowest during the rainy/wet seasons
There is a wide human and institutional capacity gap in bushfire management in the Gambia, including an inadequate number of well-trained personnel, inadequate equipment and resources to suppress bushfires, inadequate communications and coordination on wildfire management, and lack of incentives towards preventing, suppressing and recovering after bushfires.

Towards spatially continuous mapping of soil organic carbon in croplands using multitemporal Sentinel-2 remote sensing

Intensified human activities can augment soil organic carbon (SOC) losses from the world’s croplands, making SOC a highly dynamic parameter both in space and time. Sentinel-2 spectral imagery is well placed to capture the spatiotemporal variability of SOC, but its capability has only been demonstrated for agricultural regions mostly located in Europe. Furthermore, most studies so far only used single-date images that resulted in spatially non-continuous SOC maps, hampering their ability to aid multiscale SOC assessments. Here, we aim to achieve spatially continuous mapping of SOC in croplands, by creating multitemporal bare soil composites that maximize cropland coverage in two regions of varying agroecosystems and landscape structure in the Northeast China Chernozem region and the Belgian Loam Belt. Bare soil pixels were extracted via spectral index thresholding that excluded contaminated pixels from external perturbance. Multitemporal soil composites were then obtained by averaging over multiple single-date bare soil images that were selected within pre-determined optimal time-windows, corresponding to the region-specific crop sowing periods when best possible surface conditions were expected. Results show that the optimal time-window filter ensured selective inclusion of single-date images that themselves yielded stable and robust SOC predictions across multiple years. Spectral-based models developed from multitemporal composites consistently produced better or similar prediction accuracies than single-date images for both study regions (R2: 0.52–0.62; RMSE: 0.17–0.21 g 100 g−1), while also achieved maximum cropland coverage (>82 %). Bootstrap modelling demonstrated that SOC mapping via multitemporal Sentinel-2 data was associated with small uncertainties. Investigations into the significant spectral bands that contributed to the prediction of SOC suggested that, regardless of the study regions, the physical relationship between spectral bands and SOC that predominantly exists for laboratory spectra is largely translated into Sentinel-2 platforms. This study highlights the widespread applicability of multitemporal Sentinel-2 remote sensing for effective and high-resolution SOC mapping, in order to detect localized soil degradation as well as to inform regional cropland management in diverse agroecosystems.

Land Use Planning and Impacts on the Sustainable Management of Forest Ecosystems in Central Africa

Land use planning (LUP) is, generally speaking, a policy that tends to organize human activities in a predetermined geographical area, based on a long-term objective. The aim of this policy is to strengthen the social cohesion of that area at different levels. On a finer scale, the way the territory is organized establishes zones and subterritories, and for each of these it allocates objectives in line with the overall long-term objective of the LUP.

Humans and climate modulate fire activity across Ethiopia

Fire occurrence is influenced by interactions between human activity, climate, and fuels that are difficult to disentangle but crucial to understand, given fire’s role in carbon dynamics, deforestation, and habitat maintenance, alteration, or loss. To determine the relative balance of climatic and anthropogenic influences on fire activity, we quantified interannual variability in burned area across Ethiopia from 2001 to 2018 and developed a statistical model to assess climate and human factors contributing to patterns of area burned. Annual burned area declined nationally and within several regions from 2001 to 2018 and was closely related to climate, particularly antecedent temperature. Of the area that burned at least once, 62% reburned at 1–3-year intervals and the geographic region of frequent-fire areas did not shift over time. Despite increased enforcement of a fire ban over the past 20 years, no strong spatiotemporal shifts in fire occurrence patterns were detected at a national level. Our results suggest that human influence combined with dynamics of vegetation and fuels strongly influenced fire occurrence in Ethiopia, indicating that geographic variation in cultural fire practices was highly influential and relatively unchanging between 2001 and 2018. In contrast, interannual variability in total burned area was strongly related to climate and the influence of climate on fuel abundance. Our results highlight that climate can strongly influence short-term variability in fire activity even as longer-term patterns may depend more strongly on human influence.

Human Dimensions of Pangolin Conservation: Indigenous and Local Knowledge, Ethnozoological Uses, and Willingness of Rural Communities to Enhance Pangolin Conservation in Nepal

Understanding local knowledge about wildlife, local uses, and local people’s willingness to support conservation activities are crucial factors in formulating wildlife conservation strategies. We conducted a semi-structured questionnaire survey of 1017 people from 105 villages located in different ecological regions across all seven Provinces of Nepal. We performed generalized linear mixed modeling (GLMM) to investigate the key drivers influencing respondents’ knowledge about pangolins, based on a questionnaire score. We identified provinces, ethnicity, occupation, gender, and age group as strong predictors influencing local ecological knowledge about pangolins. The respondents from provinces in the western part of Nepal represented significantly lower knowledge scores than the respondents from the eastern and central provinces. Similarly, respondents belonging to non-Indigenous groups, students, females, and people aged between 18–30 years had the lowest knowledge scores about pangolins. A range of uses and beliefs about pangolins were reported across Nepal, and 48% of respondents believed that pangolin scales and meat were used for traditional medicines. The majority of respondents (71.1%) were willing to support pangolin conservation in their local areas. Our study suggests that awareness programs, alternative livelihood, and income-generating trainings for local communities could be helpful in enhancing the long-term conservation of pangolins in Nepal. Increased efforts are needed in western Nepal and across the country with non-Indigenous communities, females, young people, and students. Thus, this study offers an important baseline to help design and execute effective community-based conservation actions and management decisions for pangolin conservation.

Protected spring and sacred forest institutions at the instrumental — relational value interface

Dependable supplies of clean water, as provided by springs, have attracted human settlements inducing the emergence of local institutions to protect water sources as a common good, often along with surrounding forests or tree cover. Instrumental values of nature as a source of clean water used to be embedded in relational values of sacred forests that implied norms of behavior and sanctions to be feared. The balance between private, communal, and public rights and obligations with regard to clean water access has shifted along with historical development across the world. The mechanistic understanding of springs as part of the full hydrological cycle shifted emphasis from springs as such toward source areas and belowground flows in the wider landscape. Rediscovered relational values of respect for the natural water cycle can synergize with the instrumental values of minimizing negative human impact on water cycles, as part of a bold water action agenda.

Occurrence dynamics of mammals in protected tropical forests respond to human presence and activities

Protected areas (PAs) play a vital role in wildlife conservation. Nonetheless there is concern and uncertainty regarding how and at what spatial scales anthropogenic stressors influence the occurrence dynamics of wildlife populations inside PAs. Here we assessed how anthropogenic stressors influence occurrence dynamics of 159 mammal species in 16 tropical PAs from three biogeographic regions. We quantified these relationships for species groups (habitat specialists and generalists) and individual species. We used long-term camera-trap data (1,002 sites) and fitted Bayesian dynamic multispecies occupancy models to estimate local colonization (the probability that a previously empty site is colonized) and local survival (the probability that an occupied site remains occupied). Multiple covariates at both the local scale and landscape scale influenced mammal occurrence dynamics, although responses differed among species groups. Colonization by specialists increased with local-scale forest cover when landscape-scale fragmentation was low. Survival probability of generalists was higher near the edge than in the core of the PA when landscape-scale human population density was low but the opposite occurred when population density was high. We conclude that mammal occurrence dynamics are impacted by anthropogenic stressors acting at multiple scales including outside the PA itself.

A changing coastal ecosystem: Cox’s Bazar in southeastern coastal region of Bangladesh

The southeastern coastline of Bangladesh where the longest natural sea beach Cox’s Bazar is located has experienced more pronounced changes due to human intervention compared to the changes due to storms, cyclones and flooding. Over the past 30 years, nature-dependent livelihood and economic activities have generated employment, income and shelter to people but has also enhanced exposure level and consequent vulnerability and risks to fast growing economic activities and human settlements to projected climate-induced natural disasters. Satellite imageries clearly show the changing land-use pattern due to human intervention. On the ground, questionnaire-based, face-to-face interview method has helped in understanding the key drivers behind the changing economic activities, occupation category-wise exposure and vulnerability of the people along the coast. Fishing, salt-shrimp practice, fish drying, agriculture, tourism, and related small trading business are now the main economic activities, and human settlement expansion has changed the coastal ecosystem. The vulnerability assessment suggests that the fast emergence of salt-shrimp farm-based employment and livelihood is one of the most sensitive to natural threats. As per anthropogenic threats, the hotel and restaurant industries are polluting the most fragile coastal ecosystem.

Blind spots obscure understanding of how forests affect human health

Health crises have raised awareness of the links between forests and human health. For example, outbreaks of Ebola virus and hypotheses about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 have highlighted the risk of zoonotic spillover events from forest-dwelling animals.1, 2 Likewise, forest fires in Australia (2019–20), the Amazon rainforest (2019), and southeast Asia (2015) have drawn attention to the respiratory health effects on populations exposed to smoke and haze.3 Other links between forests and health, such as the role of forests in mitigating natural disasters4 and regulating infectious disease vectors,5 are well established but less well known outside the scientific community. For example, the loss of coastal mangroves exacerbated morbidity and mortality following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami,6 and forest loss amplified the effects of the 2021 flooding across Europe,7 contributing to injury, increased prevalence of waterborne diseases, and death.

Ecosystem health, ecosystem services, and the well-being of humans and the rest of nature

An ecosystem is healthy if it is active, maintains its organization and autonomy over time, and is resilient to stress. Healthy ecosystems provide human well-being via ecosystem services, which are produced in interaction with human, social, and built capital. These services are affected by different ecosystem stewardship schemes. Therefore, society should be aiming for ecosystem health stewardship at all levels to maintain and improve ecosystem services. We review the relationship between ecosystem health and ecosystem services, based on a logic chain framework starting with (1) a development or conservation policy, (2) a management decision or origin of the driver of change, (3) the driver of change itself, (4) the change in ecosystem health, (5) the change in the provision of ecosystem services, and (6) the change in their value to humans. We review two case studies to demonstrate the application of this framework. We analyzed 6,131 records from the Ecosystem Services Valuation Database (ESVD) and found that in approximately 58% of the records data on ecosystem health were lacking. Finally, we describe how the United Nations’ System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) incorporates ecosystem health as part of efforts to account for natural capital appreciation or depreciation at the national level. We also provide recommendations for improving this system.

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