Laura J. Graham
The incidence function model as a tool for landscape ecological impact assessments
Graham, Laura J.; Haines-Young, Roy; Field, Richard
Authors
Abstract
Landscape-scale approaches to assessing the impact of land-use change on species' persistence are necessary because species depend on processes acting at varying scales, yet existing approaches to ecological impact assessment tend only to be site-based. A further major criticism of current ecological impact assessments is that they tend to be qualitative. Here we develop methods that apply the Incidence Function Model (IFM) in real urban planning contexts, by generating repeatable and comparable quantitative measures of ecological impacts. To demonstrate the methods for a case study (Nottingham, UK), we estimated landscape-scale measures of species' persistence that indicate metapopulation viability. We based these on Nottingham’s landscape when urban developments were recently proposed, then adjust the land cover to include the proposed developments, and also for two projected landscapes where 10% and 20% of the original natural or semi-natural land cover is lost. We find that the IFM shows promise as a tool for quantitative landscape-scale ecological impact assessment, depending on the size of the impact. We detected minimal differences in the species' viability measures between the original and post-development landscapes. This suggests that for small (around 2%) cumulative losses of natural/ semi-natural space, current site-based approaches are sufficient. However, when the cumulative effect of continued development was modelled by increasing the losses of natural/semi-natural land cover to 10–20% of existing cover, the impact on many of the species studied was more substantial. This indicates that a landscape-scale approach is necessary for larger, prolonged and cumulative habitat losses.
Citation
Graham, L. J., Haines-Young, R., & Field, R. (2018). The incidence function model as a tool for landscape ecological impact assessments. Landscape and Urban Planning, 170, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2017.10.008
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Oct 28, 2017 |
Online Publication Date | Nov 7, 2017 |
Publication Date | Feb 28, 2018 |
Deposit Date | Nov 9, 2017 |
Publicly Available Date | Nov 9, 2017 |
Journal | Landscape and Urban Planning |
Print ISSN | 0169-2046 |
Electronic ISSN | 0169-2046 |
Publisher | Elsevier |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 170 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2017.10.008 |
Keywords | Ecological impact assessment; Incidence function model; Landscape scale; Habitat loss; Decision making tool; Species persistence |
Public URL | https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/917191 |
Publisher URL | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204617302876 |
Files
Incidence 1-s2.0-S0169204617302876-main.pdf
(860 Kb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
Copyright information regarding this work can be found at the following address: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
You might also like
Analysing the distribution of strictly protected areas toward the EU2030 target
(2023)
Journal Article
The role of refuges in biological invasions: A systematic review
(2023)
Journal Article
Understanding trait diversity: the role of geodiversity
(2023)
Journal Article
Downloadable Citations
About Repository@Nottingham
Administrator e-mail: digital-library-support@nottingham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search