Nature and Human Society The Quest for a Sustainable World (1997) / Chapter Skim
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4 Means to Measure Biodiversity
4 Means to Measure Biodiversity
Pages 253-300
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From page 255... ...
It brought together and motivated large numbers of scientists of varied description and inclination to address, in a highly pluralistic manner, the problem of the greatest loss of biological diversity in 65 million years. It continues to do so, with some degree of success, although history must be the final judge of its efficacy.
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From page 256... ...
The "balance~of~nature" paradigm has been usurped by a "flux~of~nature" view' point (Pickett and others 1992~. Finally, conservation biologists recognize that it would be hopelessly naive to ignore humans in the conservation equation or to focus our attention solely on highly natural or pristine systems and lock them away from humanity.
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From page 257... ...
It promotes the concept that the quality and spatial configuration of habitat is at least as important to the protection of biodiversity as the total amount of habitat available. Work on metapopulations, spatially explicit models, and the highly practical tool of population viability analysis, also developed by conservation biologists, are related to the spatial considerations of habitat frag
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From page 258... ...
First, it caused some staid and conservative disciplines such as traditional fisheries, wildlife, and forestry to take notice of ideas, controversies, and approaches that had been simmering under the surface for some time. In fact, the clinging to tradition by these fields may have helped to spawn conservation biology, because individuals who were unhappy with the status quo searched for and developed a new discipline that offered an alternative to traditional, consumption-oriented approaches to natural-resource management.
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From page 259... ...
Recognition of the many natural and human sources of un' certainty has led to multiple calls for adaptive management (Gunderson and others 1995; Holling 1978; Walters 1986) , which management agencies are start' ing to heed and embrace; and · incorporating natural patterns of variation, such as disturbance regimes, into management.
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From page 260... ...
Society at large does not realize what conservation biologists have to offer or the relevance of conservation biology to their lives, other than in a vague connection to a general concern for the environment. Conservation biologists have not done a good job of positioning the field to be a globally effective agent of social change.
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From page 261... ...
Third, in my opinion, conservation biology is still too academic: it clings to its roots in academe and seems fearful of venturing too far into unknown territories. I believe that conservation biologists need to be more pragmatic and more practi' cat, and the field needs more relevance to immediate problems of the day if we are to have a greater influence on the protection and recovery of biodiversity.
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From page 262... ...
· Conservation biologists need to do a better job of teaching about the con' nection between the overall ecological condition and individual human~health or social conditions. Many times, the arguments we muster for the protection of biodiversity, although compelling to scientists, do not resonate with average citi' zens who are just trying to make a living.
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From page 263... ...
Cons Biol 12:259-60. Meffe GK, Carroll CR.
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From page 264... ...
Moreover, the coordination or planning of any conservation effort also involves issues outside the realm of biology, because most environmental~conser' vation solutions are compromises between the biological requirements of a natural system and the socioeconomic and political realities of the human populations that are associated with that system. Therefore, the conservation of biodiversity must strike a balance between the needs of a growing human population and the viability of biological systems in the face of a rapidly changing environment.
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From page 265... ...
Conservation genetics is more a focus than a field of study, but it has at its root the application of molecular and quantitative genetic methods to the preservation of genetic, species, and ecosystem diversity. Genetics can be applied to these issues in numerous ways, but the term conservation genetics usually refers specifically to molecular genetic techniques that help to · identify evolutionarily distinct groups of organisms (for example, populations or species)
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From page 266... ...
This implies that gene flow still may be occurring between the different forms and that they therefore should not be considered evolutionarily distinct. For example, the now~extinct dusky seaside sparrow (Am' modramus maritimus nigrescens)
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From page 267... ...
Chiloe island is only 5 km off the coast and likely was connected to the mainland during the last glaciation (about 13,000 years ago) , which would have created opportunities for gene flow between Darwin's and grey foxes.
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From page 268... ...
or MUs, which might deserve special attention if specific conservation measures become necessary to preserve a given species. The identification of specific MUs and their geographic location currently has one of the highest priorities in most efforts that use molecular markers for conservation purposes, and intraspecific phylogeography provides a theoretical framework to accomplish this.
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From page 269... ...
Second, a geographically referenced population-genetic analysis suggests that the populations outside Borneo can be divided into two groupings or MUs west Sumatra, and east Sumatra and Malaya on the basis of significant differences in the frequency of mtDNA variants and the restriction of gene flow that they imply. Thus, translocation and other conservation efforts should take these three distinct units (ESUs or MUs)
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From page 270... ...
Thus, a fundamental concern of conservation biologists is to preserve genetic diversity in populations and species and the resulting evolutionary potential. The field of population genetics plays a critical role in determining how that diversity is distributed and how best to preserve it.
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From page 271... ...
of existing genetic diversity. The Japanese macaque is considered an endangered species by the IUCN; thus, given its current population genetic structure, efforts to conserve this species must include a broad geographic representation of different island populations to maximize the genetic diversity to preserve.
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From page 272... ...
The ultimate goals are to ensure proper assimilation of introduced individuals into other populations or into unoccupied but suitable patches of habitat and to conserve a "natural" amount of genetic diversity in the combined forest fragments, including the empty ones that will be colonized by translocated lion tamarins. One way to ensure proper assimilation of introduced lion tamarins is to mimic their natural dispersal patterns and their current population genetic structure.
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From page 273... ...
CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have highlighted the important uses of genetic analyses to define the units of conservation and the units of management, the geographic locations of those units, and the ways in which genetic variation is distributed within and among the populations that make up each unit. This discussion and the examples we have offered are meant to provide a brief introduction to the nonspecialist reader and to highlight the value of these approaches for wildlife managers, other conservation practitioners, and environmental policy-makers.
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From page 274... ...
1997. Mitochondrial DNA variability and conservation genetics of the Sumatran rhinoceros.
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From page 275... ...
1996. The use of mitochondrial DNA Control region sequencing in conservation genetics.
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From page 276... ...
Realistically, only a relatively small portion of the total tropical land area is likely to be devoted to biodiversity conservation, so it is critical to identify areas rich in species diversity and endemism (the characteristics of spe' cies that are native or confined to a particular area) as a first step toward protect tion of remaining natural habitat before the areas are destroyed.
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From page 277... ...
RESULTS The Continental Area Protected areas in Africa occupy slightly over 2 million square kilometers or 7% of the continent's 30 million square kilometers (figure 1~. Among various eco' regions, barren and sparsely vegetated lands make up about 9.6 million square
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From page 278... ...
Percentages of class protected are reported. kilometers, whereas biodiversity~rich, tropical evergreen broadleaf forests make up about 3 million square kilometers.
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From page 279... ...
· About 6% of the area covered by biodiversity-rich, tropical evergreen broadleaf forests in Africa is protected. Most of these valuable ecoregions, rich in biodiversity and endemic species, are concentrated in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar, and seem to lack adequate protection.
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From page 280... ...
The work was jointly funded by the United Nations Environment Programme, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the US Geological Survey. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My sincere thanks to a number of scientists, including Bhaska Ramachandran, Gene Fosnight, Tom Crawford, Grey Tappan, Brad Reed, Eric Wood, Jim Rowland, Steve Howard of Hughes SIX, and Anna Stabrawa of UNEP, who con' tributed to this work and made valuable suggestions.
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From page 281... ...
, and they have proved vulnerable to extreme population reduction and even extinction owing to introduced predators, competitors, and diseases. Although Hawaii accounts for only about 0.2% of the land area of the United States, it has 31% of the nation's endangered species and 42% of its endangered birds.
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From page 282... ...
To address the information need, the Hawaii legislature in 1992 designated the Bishop Museum, which houses the world's largest natural-history collections from Hawaii (nearly 4 million specimens) as the Hawaii Biological Survey (HBS)
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From page 283... ...
Although our efforts arose out of an urgent need to address critical conservation issues in a relatively small geographic area, we feel that they can serve as an effective model for the role that museums can play in understanding and managing biodiversity. Our overall theme is that museum collections and associated databases are crucial information resources for understanding and managing biological diversity.
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From page 284... ...
HBS information~based products are used by government, commercial, and private clients for a variety of purposes, including agriculture, conservation, education, fisheries, forestry, health services, land management, quarantine and regulatory services, and other research, as shown on the right side of figure 1. Some of the primary partners of HBS in recent years have been state and fed' eral natural-resource management agencies (Hawaii Department of Agriculture, Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, US Department of Agricul' sure, and US Department of the Interior, especially the Fish and Wildlife Service and the former National Biological Survey, now part of the US Geological Sur' vey)
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From page 285... ...
Rather than duplicate these efforts, we seek to link with them through the development of authority files, data standards, and information models (http:/ /www.bishop.hawaii.org/asc-coc/)
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From page 286... ...
Data and products are generally accessible through the World Wide Web. titled Records of the Hawaii Biological Survey.
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From page 287... ...
With the advent of modern database technology, the information in museum collections can be made available for a wide range of uses. This has led to the development of new and strengthened partnerships between museums and resource~management agencies, for example, creation of the National Biological Survey in 1993.
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From page 288... ...
and have maximal utility. We have emphasized con' servation applications in this paper, but biological surveys also have important applications in agriculture, medicine, and recreation (Klassen 1986; Roberts 1992)
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From page 289... ...
1995. Records of the Hawaii Biological Survey for 1994.
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From page 290... ...
1996. An international view of national biological surveys.
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From page 291... ...
Recognizing the urgency of the task, the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, through its Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystems, recently coordinated a review of the US National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII)
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From page 292... ...
Initiation of the NBII was one of the primary recommendations made by the 1993 National Research Council report A Biological Survey for the Nation (NRC 1993~. Because our fate and economic prosperity are so completely linked to the natural world, information about biodiversity and ecosystems as well as the infrastructure that supports it is vital to a wide range of scientific, educational, commercial, and government uses.
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From page 293... ...
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ecosystems, each comprising complex interaction among large numbers of species and between those species and multiple abiotic factors. The second source of complexity in biodiversity and ecosystem information is sociologically generated.
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From page 294... ...
THE NEXT GENERATION NBII-2 We envision a "next generation" National Biological Information Infrastructure, NBII-2, that would address many of the concerns described above. The overarching goal of NBII-2 would be to become a fully accessible, distributed, interactive digital library.
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From page 295... ...
NBII-2 would be · the framework to support knowledge discovery for the nation's biodiversity and ecosystem enterprise and to involve many client and potential-client groups; · a common focus for independent research efforts and a global context for sharing information among those efforts; · an accrete-only, no-delete facility from which all information would be available on line 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in a variety of formats; · a facility that would serve the needs of (and eventually be supported by partnership with) government, the private sector, education, and individuals; · an organized framework for collaboration among federal, regional, state, and local organizations in the public and private sectors that would provide improved programmatic efficiencies and economies of scale through better coordination of efforts; · a commodity-based infrastructure that uses readily available, off-the-shelf hardware and software and the products of digital-library research wherever possible; · an electronic facility where scientists and others could "publish" biodiversity and ecosystem information for cataloging, automatic indexing, access, analysis, and dissemination; · a place where intensive work on how people use large information systems would be conducted, including studies of human-computer interaction, the
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From page 296... ...
The human dimensions of the interaction with computers, networks, and information will be particularly important subjects of research as systems are designed for the greatest flexibility and usefulness to people. The research nodes of NBII'2 must address many needs, including · new statistical pattern~recognition and modeling techniques that can work with high~dimensional, large~volume data; · workable data~cleaning methods that automatically correct types of errors in databases; input and other · strategies for sampling and selecting data; · algorithms for classification, clustering, dependency analysis, and change and deviation detection that scale to large databases; · visualization techniques that scale to large and multiple databases; · metadata encoding routines that will make data mining meaningful when multiple distributed sources are searched; · methods for improving connectivity of databases, integrating data-mining tools, and developing better synthetic technologies; · methods for improving large~scale project coordination and scientific collabo' rations; · continuing, formative evaluation, detailed user studies, and quick feedback between domain experts, users, developers, and researchers; · methods for facilitating data entry and the digitization of large amounts of irregularly structured information; and · ways of engaging society in the pursuit of global information~sharing.
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From page 297... ...
Our natural-history museums, for example, contain at least 750 million specimens, the vast majority of which have not been recorded in databases. The same holds for the published record, where most biodiversity and ecosystem information still resides in paper-based journals, books, field notes, and the like.
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From page 298... ...
statement or even a program can be written to retrieve the information needed to answer a query like, "Show me the list of gene sequences for which voucher specimens exist in natural-history collections and for which we also know the physiology and ecological associates of those species." Many of the interesting questions that users of biodiversity and ecosystem information would like to ask are of this type: they are "fuzzy," the data needed to answer them must come from multiple sources that will be inherently different in structure and conceptually incompatible, and the answers might be approximate. Major advances are needed in methods for knowledge representation and interchange, database management and federation, navigation, modeling, and datadriven simulation; in approaches to describing large, complex networked information resources; and in techniques to support networked information discovery and retrieval in extremely large-scale distributed systems.
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From page 299... ...
Working on these problems will undoubtedly advance our understanding and use of information technologies, perhaps more than in any other circumstance. ACTION PLAN We have laid out the case for building a fully digital, interactive, research-library system for biodiversity and ecosystem information and the basic requirements of and goals for the library and its research and service.
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From page 300... ...
1993. A biological survey for the nation.
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