Biology subjects

Tizard, R.

Publications and source records attributed to Tizard, R..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2023

An operational methodology to identify Critical Ecosystem Areas to help nations achieve the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) will become the most important multilateral agreement to guide biodiversity conservation actions globally over the coming decades. An ecosystem goal and various targets for maintaining integrity, restoring degraded ecosystems, and achieving representation in conservation areas feature throughout the GBF. Here, we propose an operational framework that combines disparate information on ecosystem type, extent, integrity, levels of protection, and risk of collapse to support the identification of irreplaceable Critical Ecosystem Areas (CEAs), to help advance these ecosystem targets. The framework classifies each component ecosystem based on its integrity, importance in ensuring no ecosystem collapse and its relative value to achieving representation if protected. These CEAs are immediate conservation opportunities, given that they achieve multiple ecosystem goals and targets in the GBF. We showcase its application using Myanmars forested ecosystems as a case study and argue that it could be immediately used across all terrestrial ecosystems.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2020

Myanmar's terrestrial ecosystems: status, threats and conservation opportunities

Myanmar is highly biodiverse, with more than 16,000 plant, 314 mammal, 1131 bird, 293 reptile, and 139 amphibian species. Supporting this biodiversity is a variety of natural ecosystems--mostly undescribed--including tropical and subtropical forests, savannas, seasonally inundated wetlands, extensive shoreline and tidal systems, and alpine ecosystems. Although Myanmar contains some of the largest intact natural ecosystems in Southeast Asia, remaining ecosystems are under threat from accelerating land use intensification and over-exploitation. In this period of rapid change, a systematic risk assessment is urgently needed to estimate the extent and magnitude of human impacts and identify ecosystems most at risk to help guide strategic conservation action. Here we provide the first comprehensive conservation assessment of Myanmars natural terrestrial ecosystems using the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems categories and criteria. We identified 64 ecosystem types for the assessment, and used models of ecosystem distributions and syntheses of existing data to estimate declines in distribution, range size, and functioning of each ecosystem. We found that more than a third (36.9%) of Myanmars area has been converted to anthropogenic ecosystems over the last 2-3 centuries, leaving nearly half of Myanmars ecosystems threatened (29 of 64 ecosystems). A quarter of Myanmars ecosystems were identified as Data Deficient, reflecting a paucity of studies and an urgency for future research. Our results show that, with nearly two-thirds of Myanmar still covered in natural ecosystems, there is a crucial opportunity to develop a comprehensive protected area network that sufficiently represents Myanmars terrestrial ecosystem diversity.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2020

Only 40% of the world's forests are in good health

Many global environmental agendas, including halting biodiversity loss, reversing land degradation, and limiting climate change, depend upon retaining forests with high ecological integrity, yet the scale and degree of forest modification remains poorly quantified and mapped. By integrating data on observed and inferred human pressures and an index of lost connectivity, we generate the first globally-consistent, continuous index of forest condition as determined by degree of anthropogenic modification. Globally, only 17.4 million km2 of forest (40.5%) have high landscape level integrity (mostly found in Canada, Russia, the Amazon, Central Africa and New Guinea) and only 27% of this area is found in nationally-designated protected areas. Of the forest in protected areas, only 56% has high landscape level integrity. Ambitious policies that prioritize the retention of forest integrity, especially in the most intact areas, are now urgently needed alongside current efforts aimed at halting deforestation and restoring the integrity of forests globally.

ecology↗