Week One & Two
Bronfenbrenner Theory:
- about human behavior
and the relationship
between humans and
the environment
- help to understand
development, behavior
and personality
Inputs – from environment ex.
precipitation, sunlight
Throughput – rates of flow ex.
trampled vegetation of humans
using system
Outputs – to environment ex.
products, carbon/oxygen
Equilibrium: constant change is
still taking place
Homeostasis: keeping internal
conditions steady as external conditions change
Feedback: process that maintains equilibrium, can be positive (continuing ex. arctic
sea ice) or negative (reversing)
Gap Phase forests: tree ages and dies, opens up for other species. When we clear cut
the rainforest it cannot adjust to this like the boreal
Carrying capacity: the maximum population size of the species that the environment
can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities
available in the environment
Controls of wildlife population: population control, starvation, disease, accidents,
weather, hunting, predators
Threshold: once past the threshold cannot go back – level of stress and tolerance of
the environment, things you cannot track
Disturbance ecology: fires, disease, hurricanes, landslides, flooding
Alternative stable state: one system can have more than one state, depending on
what it’s been exposed to
Blue Mountain: area where the most active landslides occur in Canada
Systems of Niagara Escarpment: cliff face, buried face, rounded face
Scarlet Tanager: after breeding settled in gaps in the forests
System property: response to change or disturbance Persistence or inertia: ability of a living system to resist being disturbed or altered
Constancy: ability of a living system such as a population to keep its numbers within
the limits imposed by available resources
Resilience: ability to restore itself to original condition
Stability: linear, cause and effect, manageable and quickly returns to stable
state
Instability: disturbance can be absorbed, change in composition
Adaptive cycle: exploitation, conservation, release, reorganization
Potential: sets the limits to what is possible – number of future options available
Connectedness: the certain degree to which a system can control it’s own destiny
through internal controls, as distinct from being influenced by external values
Resilience: determines how vulnerable a system is to unexpected disturbances that
can exceed or break control
Panarchy: mixture of stability and change, complex systems
Revolt: occurs when fast, small events overwhelm large, slow ones, as when a
small fire in a forest spreads to the crowns of trees, then to another patch, and
eventually the entire forest
Remember: occurs when the potential accumulated and stored in the larger,
slow levels influences the reorganization. For example, after a forest fire the
processes and resources accumulated at a larger level slow the leakage of
nutrients, and options for renewal draw from the seed bank, physical structures
and surrounding species that form a biotic legacy
Week Three
Small population paradigm:
Community ecology: groups of species interacting
Population ecology: interbreeding of groups
Declining population paradigm:
Landscape ecology: spatial patterns and ecological processes
Behavioral ecology: individual behavior
Preservation: response to loss resources – game management, maintain wilderness
and ecological integrity
Conservation: value in anthropogenic landscapes, local people involved in
conservation
Ecological integrity: a condition that is determined to be characteristic of its natural
region and likely to persist, including abiotic components and the composition and
abundance of native species and biological communities, rates of change and
supporting processes
Ecological integrity – Parks Canada: understanding of the history of the system,
conservation strategies should reflect natural processes, understand ecological
integrity at a landscape scale Landscape ecology: pattern of land and species matrix, biophysical processes and
human interaction with environment
Fragmentation: break up of natural matrix, damaging process, there are many
susceptible species – loss of natural forest, patch patterns
Picture above: below 30% there is a drop in ecological processes, passes the
threshold
Roads: major cause of fragmentation
Metapopulations: also a cause of fragmentation, big populations connected to
subpopulations by corridors of roads and highways
Source population: produce enough young to sustain, provide excess to populate
other areas
Sink populations: not enough young to be sustainable – requires immigrants
Credit Valley: source-sink populations
Patch dynamics: patches, corridors and matrixes make up an area, parks need to be
aware of the flow of energy and species from park to other areas
Patch landscapes: in town, ponds, small creeks – more complex like forests and
rivers
Koala: population decline, you can see the patches of koala populations declining
Edge habitat: produces high species diversity – game species
Corridors: maintain high diversity, encourage immigration, but increased
susceptibility to fire and poaching
Buffers/Transition zones: strips of grass, shrubs, trees, ditches, creeks etc. Week Four
Parks: have developed from isolated management to integrated management
Considerations: species that take up the most room, minimum number of
individuals to self-sustain, carnivores and species at risk
Alberta/NWT: Wood Buffalo National Park, sustains smaller species too
Island Biography: Small islands support smaller number of species
Ecological islands: surrounded by water or unsuitable habitat – e.g. urban,
agricultural fields
Survival: equilibrium between species immigration and extinction
Factors: size and distance to colonizing source
SLOSS debate: Single Large or Several Small
Risk of extinction: evaluating risk of population becoming extinct – population
viability (vulnerability) analysis (PVA)
Estimate extinction: possible events and impacts on species – carrying capacity and
hunting
Minimal Viable Population (MVP): small population – reduced biodiversity
Genetic drift: loss of alleles or reduced gene pool – if no newcomers than
not replaced
Elephant seal: population was going extinct, they have increased the population but
population may only have one set of genes and may not be able to adapt
Hurricane Hugo: hit South Carolina – Francis Marion National Forest, killed 63% of
population and destroyed 83% of nest cavities
Presqu’ile Provincial Park: egg oiling, nest destruction, harassment, sharp-shooting
cull
Massassauga Rattlesnake: species at risk
Double-crested Cormorants: threatened by pesticides, birth defects – came back and
now considered a nuisance
Impacts on vegetation: ground nests, tree nests
Great park ecosystem: also called ecosystem based management (EBM) – integrated
approach to natural resource management
Pukaskwa National Park: community mapping, relevant regional land users,
Bruce: protected areas, forest cover, land use, planning,
Three functions of biosphere reserves: conservation of biodiversity, development –
association of environment with development, logistic support – international
network for research and monitoring
Biosphere reserves: design
Core:
- Protected lands
- Minimal environmental disturbance
- Biodiversity/monitoring
Buffer: - Environmental education
- Recreation
- Research station
Transition or Cooperation:
- Land use – farms, fisheries, towns
- Government, NGO, cultural group, economic interests
Week Five
Traditional Systems: linkages between biodiversity hot spots and small cultural
indigenous groups
Biocultural diversity: link between culture and biodiversity, has there been a loss of
traditional values – biodiversity persists because of cultural diversity, indigenous
communities protect biological resources
Indigenous communities: small demands on resources, traditional ecological
knowledge (TEK), custom regulations
TEK:
- Sanction land use regulations, resource use
- Religious beliefs support regulation
- Handed down through generations
- Holistic – spiritual health, language and culture
- Relationship between living things and environment
- Dynamic: Common sense based on teaching and experience
- Local communities – active participation in management
TEK examples:
- James Bay Cree: staggering harvest of prey
- African herders: dealing with seasonal pattern of rain and grazing
conditions
- Sweden: local fishing association
India: sacred groves – patches of trees and vegetation protected by local community
and their beliefs and rituals, keeps conservation (threats of urbanization etc.)
TEK limitations: technology can override, set of species and not necessarily
biodiversity, focus on local and not large, cannot compensate for environmental
change
TEK and adaptive management:
- Adaptive: trial and error
- Social learning: between and across generations
- Observational
- Experimentation: innovation
- Protected forests: Borneo
- Integrating with science: Austrailia
Impact of Indigineous groups: not always good for nature
Easter island: high agriculture production, soil erosion and isolated population –
starving, cannibalism North American mega fauna: more than overhunting – burning of hunting grounds,
introduction of exotics, disease, climate change
Hunting and Gathering: practice conservation or efficiency in food/resource
collected?
Resource Use – Individual Strategies: two types of resource extraction (restraint or
exploitation), nurturing resources or depleting them, consider resource-harvesting
strategies
Hunters – Foraging Strategies: natural selection – out-compete competitors, better
or efficient strategies to get resources, passed on to offspring, short term gains
Optimal foraging theory: used to determine – prey choice or food items, selection of
preferred foods, length of time spent on foraging – patch patterns
Foraging Model: everyone has their own, what they ate, choose, influences etc.
Optimal Diet Breadth Model (ODB): potential prey types are ranked, profitability or
energy return rate per encounter (time spent)
- Prey with highest profitability pursued
- Shift to lower ranked prey
- Change in system because of technology
- How technology changes foraging strategy
Canadian Cree: introduction of guns, nets, steel traps, transport – increased speed of
catch, new prey
Optimal Forage Theory: what species to take, groups, technologies to invest in, other
systems too such as fuel wood and pastoral subsistence (selfish)
Conservation hypothesis: optimal foraging is efficiency hypothesis
Hunting: hunters move from less prey regions to more, hard to measure restraint of
hunters
Intent to Conserve:
1. Intrinsic characteristics of the resource
2. Individual’s evaluation of benefits of resource can decay over
time
3. Individual’s concern someone will steal the resource
Characteristic of Resource: needs value into future, no benefit if short lived,
environments favor greater restraint
Discount rate (over time): favors instant benefits and deferred costs, market
demand for resource
Ownership: do individuals hold secure rights, issues of cooperation and community
institutions
Types of wildlife harvesting:
- Commercial
- Sustainable
- Recreational
- Trophy
- Research
- Trade Hunting Pros:
- Enjoyment - Spin off jobs
- Food source - Animal
- Money population
- Processing plants control
- Tourism - Social/culture
- Suppliers - Sport skills
Hunting Cons:
- Hunting - By catch
accidents - Endangered
- Habitat species
disturbance - Accidental
- Cruel shooting
- Over hunting - Pollution
- Ecosystem
collapse
Bambi syndrome: first strong anti-hunting message to the masses, cruel and
indifferent and caused the growth of animal rights
Growth of anti-hunting: urban view of nature, interpretations because of TV,
feelings to nonhuman animals, legal and ethical rights
Seal hunt: harp seal, controversial intense (350000) hunt in the spring on the east
coast, horrible cruel killings, hunt for cod stocks to recover
Subsistence hunting: arctic and subarctic, Africa – traditional uses of wild foods,
substantial portions of diet
Week Six & Seven
Northern North America: the concern that subsistence hunting is depleting
population of those already in decline, hunting out of season
Co-Management: shared decision making powers, local level projects, community
involvement, management from science and TEK
Yukon Goose Management Plan: emperor goose is endangered
Subsistence hunting: accounted for 8% of spring bird population, 70% of yearly
hunting, predation and over winter mortality is the main cause of death in young
birds, little potential for development of non-consumptive use of resource limited
access
Management issues and strategies: 50% decline in population from historic level,
illegal harvest continues need for hunting closures and encourage compliance,
increased risks by predators, and oil exploration
Arctic Co-Management: Arctic Char – strategies include concentrating effort on
abundant fish, intensive harvest and then move on, variety in fish sizes Traditional Management: distribution of effort over time, maximize catch per unit of
effort (diachronic data)
Transition: 1940’s shift to market economy, decline in fur industry
Conventional Management: scientific information, top-down approach, decisions
from a distance, maximize catch (synchronic data)
Co-Management: informal and formal evolution, mutual recognition of problems,
conflicts between subsistence and recreational fishers
- Informal response: governmental limited catch of sport fisher,
community ban on gill-net fishing
- Formal response: land claims agreements, Inuit legal rights to
recourses
- Effective system: recognizes Inuit harvesting rights and
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