biodiversity conservation Articles
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Partnership for biodiversity and sustainable development
Partnership with the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), a global program that since 2000 has provided grants to Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and private sector organizations to help protect the world's biodiversity hotspots, enhanced synergies between the Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development (BCSD) project's aims and CEPF projects in the area through ...
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Beta diversity as a tool for determining priority streams for management actions
Beta diversity has become essential for understanding ecosystem functioning and for determining biodiversity-conservation priority areas. However, the beta diversity patterns of invertebrates in tropical aquatic ecosystems are not well known, particularly in streams. Using data from low-order streams located in southern Brazil, we evaluated the beta diversity of Chironomidae. We tested the ...
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Optimal operation of a multi-reservoir system for environmental water demand of a river-connected lake
Dongting Lake, a large river-connected lake in the Yangtze River watershed, plays important roles in flood control, drought mitigation, and biodiversity conservation. Its ecosystem has recently been severely affected by upstream water resource development such as reservoir operations. In this study, an optimization model is developed for the operation of a multi-reservoir system, including ...
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Protected areas
Protected areas provide a wide range of services in a context of increasing pressures and a rapidly changing environment In addition to their critical role in biodiversity conservation, European protected areas are important for many other reasons. Covering a wide range of ecosystems, including forests, grasslands, wetlands, peat lands, mountain, coastal and marine areas, protected areas ensure ...
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The World is Starting to Run Short on Sand
As cities get bigger and modernization spreads globally, a natural resource that once seemed limitless is starting to disappear faster than Mother Nature can replace it. Sand. About 40 to 50 billion metric tons of sand, gravel and aggregates were used each year since 1991, tripling previous annual totals, according to The Global Sand Observatory, a United Nations-related group out of Geneva, ...
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Water requirement of vegetation and infiltration method for determining the ecological water requirement of dried-up rivers
Many rivers in the region of northwest China are drying up, and the ecological environment is getting worse. Studying methods of calculating the ecological water requirement (EWR) for dried-up rivers will help to slow down the deterioration of the ecological environment and conserve biodiversity. The water requirement of vegetation and infiltration (WRVI) method is proposed in this paper. This ...
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Biodiversity and its conservation in the Sundarban Mangrove Ecosystem
Abstract. The Sundarban, covering about one million ha in the delta of the rivers Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna is shared between Bangladesh (~60%) and India (~40%), and is the world’s largest coastal wetland. The area experiences a subtropical monsoonal climate with an annual rainfall of 1,600–1,800 mm and severe cyclonic storms. Enormous amounts of sediments carried by the rivers contribute to ...
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Peatlands – guidance for climate change mitigation by conservation, rehabilitation and sustainable use
Peatlands provide many important ecosystem services, including water regulation, biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration and storage. Because of the enormous size of the peat carbon pool, its high sensitivity for disturbance, the large emissions from a small land area (which continue long after conversion), and the virtual irreversibility of peat carbon losses, any further degradation ...
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Wetlands International in the Mediterranean
Wetlands International’s goal is that wetlands are wisely used and restored for the role they play in: - improving human well-being and local livelihoods - conserving biodiversity - sustaining the water cycle - reducing climate change and its impacts Wetlands International was one of the founding partners of the MedWet Initiative twenty years ago. Our work in this region has spanned ...
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Distribution and targeting of the CAP budget from a biodiversity perspective
Executive summary Change in agricultural land use is a major cause of the decline of biodiversity in Europe. This is characterised by widespread intensification of farming systems on better land, and abandonment or afforestation of poorer land. More traditional, low‑intensity farming systems with high nature value are gradually disappearing. In the Kyiv Resolution on Biodiversity (2003), ...
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Briefing paper: accelerating action to Save Peat for Less Heat!
Emissions from drained and degrading peatlands (organic soils) amount to almost double the amount of CO2 emissions from aviation1, even when skyrocketing emissions from peat fires are not included. This briefing paper shows where the most urgent action is needed and presents a roadmap and policy recommendations for accelerating action. Peatlands cover only 3% of the global land surface. Some 15% ...
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Marine protected areas in Europe`s seas - An overview and perspectives for the future
1. The EU and marine protected areas Europe's seas are under pressure. Marine protected areas (MPAs) can act as a key conservation measure to safeguard marine ecosystems and biodiversity as well as the services these ecosystems provide. Aim, structure and supporting data of this report This document reports on progress made to date in establishing MPAs and MPA networks in Europe's seas (Table ...
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Biodiversity
Introduction This biodiversity assessment is integrating our knowledge on species, habitats and protected areas into the complex issues of ecosystem management, ecosystem services, human health and wellbeing. Chapter 2 includes an overview of the state of biodiversity in the EU and EEA member countries and an analysis on pressures with a more specific focus on terrestrial ecosystems. ...
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“Novel ecosystems” are a Trojan horse for conservation
They provide a license to trash nature if they provide ecosystem services Conservation biology and restoration ecology have been roiled by a bandwagon termed “novel ecosystems,” heralded as the “new ecological world order” in a manifesto published in 2006 by several ecologists headed by Richard Hobbs, then editor in chief of the journal Restoration Ecology. The claim is ...
By Ensia
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Managing Mali’s Wetland Wealth for People and Nature
Introduction Wetlands International has been in Mali since 1998, when it started a partnership with the national government to help better manage the country’s water resources for both its people and nature. Those early efforts involved scoping out the state of Mali’s unique natural habitats, not least its globally important wetland, the Inner Niger Delta, and sharing those findings ...
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Scientists, a new quota species?
Globally, marine conservation is high on the agenda. The need to protect and conserve species and habitats from deleterious anthropogenic impacts has never been of more concern than it is currently. However, that is not to say we, as a society, are achieving effective marine conservation, in fact we are far from it. Global summits have come and gone, as have the targets they set for marine ...
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How we can save coral reefs (and why we should want to)
As oceans grow warmer and more acidic, scientists are developing new strategies to rescue the “rainforests of the sea.” Coral reefs are among the most beautiful ecosystems on Earth — “a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet,” in oceanographer Sylvia Earle’s words. They also are extremely valuable. Reefs cover less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the ...
By Ensia
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Wetlands of International Importance in Russia
The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat was adopted on the 2nd February 1971 in the Iranian city of Ramsar. Thus, it has come to be popularly known as the “Ramsar Convention”, and the 2nd of February each year is celebrated as World Wetlands Day. Wetlands are areas where water is the primary factor controlling the environment and the ...
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Drought Shifts Chinas Focus to Infrastructure
Hydropower crisis and climate change prompt new water projects This year’s record heat wave in China has dried up large swaths of the Yangtze River basin, and the drought has caused a continuing hydropower crisis in the southwest. The drought is affecting groundwater and agriculture. It is estimated that 80% of China’s groundwater is contaminated with toxins, including heavy metals ...
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Freshwater ecosystem management: from theory to application
At the start of the 21st Century, humankind is struggling with many complex issues related to the management of freshwater resources. A key concern is that over-exploitation, in a world of increasing water stress, will result in environmental degradation, and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services beneficial to humankind. "Ecosystem management" is one approach to managing natural resources, ...
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