Habitat fragmentation threatens biodiversity by disrupting dispersal. The mechanisms and consequences of this disruption are controversial, primarily because most organisms are difficult to track. We examined the effect of habitat corridors on long-distance dispersal of seeds by birds, and tested whether small-scale (<20 meters) movements of birds could be scaled up to predict dispersal of seed...

Global increases in both agriculture and biodiversity awareness raise a key question: Should cropland and biodiversity habitat be separated, or integrated in mixed land uses? Ecosystem services by wildlife make this question more complex. For example, birds benefit agriculture by preying on pest insects, but other habitat is needed to maintain the birds. Resulting land use questions include wha...

Dispersal is a fundamental component of many spatial population models. Concerns over the need to incorporate detailed information on dispersal behavior in spatially explicit population models (SEPMs) motivated us to undertake a simulation study in which we explored (1) the conditions under which landscape structure affects dispersal success and (2) the dependency of dispersal success on the ch...

This paper develops a theoretical model to analyze the spatial targeting of incentives for the restoration of forested landscapes when wildlife habitat can be enhanced by reducing fragmentation. The key theoretical result is that the marginal net benefits of increasing forest are convex, indicating that corner solutions – converting either none or all of the agricultural land in a section to fo...

The Instream Flow Incremental Methodology (IFIM) and the Physical Habitat Simulation System (PHABSIM) are commonly used in the instream flow water allocation process. This methodology is based on the premise that physical habitat plays a major role in structuring fish populations and that physical habitat can be described through modeling of rivers. PHABSIM is a series of programs designed to c...

Vegetation modelling is an important topic in the sciences in at least two streams of applications. The former applies the modelling and simulation of vegetation for predicting the impacts of climate change on forestry, studies of forest succession for resource and habitat management, and animal habitat modelling while the latter attempts to reconstruct past landscapes for geological studies or...

Enhanced cognition within the temporal vicinity of animal attacks arguably allowed our hominid ancestors to better build and associate memories related to the animals and their typical habitat markers, which in turn increased their survival chances. This may be at the source of an unusual phenomenon with limited but interesting practical uses in the design of human-technology interaction interf...

Understanding patterns, processes, and consequences of land-cover change requires close linkages among various ecological, socioeconomic, demographic, and behavioral data. In this chapter, we present an interdisciplinary study of human impacts on land cover and panda habitat in Wolong Nature Reserve (China). Wolong is one of the largest reserves (200,000 ha) designated for giant panda conservat...

1. Habitat heterogeneity in lotic systems is usually associated with the availability of refuges. Heterogeneous habitats (here, rough substrata) should mediate the effect of high-flow disturbances by protecting benthic algae, thus increasing the resistance and resilience of the system. Additionally, the ability of algae to resist a disturbance and recover after it should be dependent on biologi...