Conservation Gateway | TNC Science Articles

This is a list of peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters authored by TNC staff, including links to pdf versions where available. Click an article's title for more information. To submit additions or corrections, or to report problems using this site, please email us.

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Title	Journal	Authors	Year	Created
Cartographie de la végétation du bas Ogooué (Chapter 6)		Viennois, G.; Stevart, T.; Vande weghe, J.P.; Saatchi, S.; Schill, S.; Aldous, A.; Paiz, M.C.; Boupoya, A.; Barbier, N.	2017	2019/05/09
Direct and indirect drivers of change in biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people (Chapter 4)		Bustamante, M.; Helmer, E.H.; Schill, S.; Belnap, J.; Brown, L.K.; Brugnoli, E.; Compton, J.E.; Coupe, R.H.; Hernandez-Blanco, M.; Isbell, F.; Lockwood, J.; Lozoya Ascarate, J.P.; McGuire, R.; Rodrigues, R.R.;Sanchez-Azofeifa, G.A.; Soutullo, A.; Suarez, A.; Troutt, E.; Thompson, L.	2018	2019/05/07
Reef Rover: A Low-Cost Small Autonomous Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) for Mapping and Monitoring Coral Reefs	drones	Raber, George T.; Schill, Steven R.	2019	2019/05/07	In the effort to design a more repeatable and consistent platform to collect data for Structure from Motion (SfM) monitoring of coral reefs and other benthic habitats, we explore the use of recent advances in open source Global Positioning System (GPS)-guided drone technology to design and test a low-cost and transportable small unmanned surface vehicle (sUSV). The vehicle operates using Ardupilot open source software and can be used by local scientists and marine managers to map and monitor marine environments in shallow areas (	coral reef; small unmanned surface vehicle (sUSV); Rover; underwater; SfM; monitoring
Capturing the true value of trees, cool roofs, and other urban heat island mitigation strategies for utilities	Energy Efficiency	Shickman, Kurt; Rogers, Martha	2019	2019/04/25	A growing body of research values the broad benefits of cooling down cities, such as improved energy efficiency, worker productivity, air quality, health, and equity, at hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to a single city. However, widespread adoption of urban heat mitigation programs, such as urban greening and reflective surfaces, has been slower than their economic potential suggests it should be. One possible cause for this lag is a lack of robust engagement from important stakeholders like utilities that could fund and implement heat mitigation strategies. This paper highlights the benefits of urban heat mitigation and demonstrates how these benefits fit into private utility programs’ standard cost–benefit tests. This paper serves as an introduction on how to include the wide suite of benefits that urban heat mitigation programs provide in cost–benefit tests and concludes with program design guidance.	cool roofs; utilities; trees; vegetation; urban heat island
Battling a Common Enemy: Joining Forces in the Fight against Sewage Pollution	BioScience	Wear, Stephanie L.	2019	2019/04/24	The health of both coral reefs and people are imperiled by a local threat that is widespread across the globe—sewage and the typical components it carries (e.g., nutrients, sediments, heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, pathogens, and pharmaceuticals). Despite this common threat, those concerned with human health and those concerned with coral reef health have rarely joined forces. To jump-start an alliance between coral conservation and human health sectors, this article documents the threats that humans and reefs face and identifies threat-abatement strategies that will benefit both people and reefs, highlighting the mitigation of water pollution as a prime example. By joining forces, marine conservationists and human health practitioners can increase the amount and efficiency of both intellectual and financial resources they bring to bear against sewage.	coral reefs; human health; sewage pollution; sanitation; water quality
New insights into the variability of the tropical land carbon cycle from the El Nino of 2015/2016	Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B	Malhi, Yadvinder; Rowland, Lucy; Aragao, Luiz E.O.C.; Fisher, Rosie A.	2018	2019/04/24		ecology; environmental science
Inter-comparison and assessment of gridded climate products over tropical forests during the 2015/2016 El Nino	Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B	Burton, C.; Rifai, S.; Malhi, Y.	2018	2019/04/24	To understand the impacts of extreme climate events, it is first necessary to understand the spatio-temporal characteristics of the event. Gridded climate products are frequently used to describe climate patterns but have been shown to perform poorly over data-sparse regions such as tropical forests. Often, they are uncritically employed in a wide range of studies linking tropical forest processes to large-scale climate variability. Here, we conduct an inter-comparison and assessment of near-surface air temperature fields supplied by four state-of-the-art reanalysis products, along with precipitation estimates supplied by four merged satellite-gauge rainfall products. Firstly, spatio-temporal patterns of temperature and precipitation anomalies during the 2015–2016 El Niño are shown for each product to characterize the impact of the El Niño on the tropical forest biomes of Equatorial Africa, Southeast Asia and South America. Using meteorological station data, a two-stage assessment is then conducted to determine which products most reliably model tropical climates during the 2015–2016 El Niño, and which perform best over the longer-term satellite observation period (1980–2016). Results suggest that eastern Amazonia, parts of the Congo Basin and mainland Southeast Asia all experienced significant monthly mean temperature anomalies during the El Niño, while northeastern Amazonia, eastern Borneo and southern New Guinea experienced significant precipitation deficits. Our results suggest ERA-Interim and MERRA2 are the most reliable air temperature datasets, while TRMM 3B42 V7 and CHIRPS v2.0 are the best-performing rainfall datasets. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The impact of the 2015/2016 El Niño on the terrestrial tropical carbon cycle: patterns, mechanisms and implications’.	reanalysis; validation; El Nino; southern oscillation; tropical forests
ENSO Drives interannual variation of forest woody growth across the tropics	Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B	Rifai, Sami W.; Girardin, Cecile A.J.; Berenguer, Erika; del Aguila-Pasquel, Jhon; Dahlsjo, Cecilia A.L.; Doughty, Christopher E.; Jeffery, Kathryn J.; Moore, Sam; Oliveras, Imma; Riutta, Terhi; Rowland, Lucy M.; Araujo Murakami, Alejandro; Addo-Danso, Shalom D.; Brando, Paulo; Burton, Chad; Evouna Ondo, Fidele; Duah-Gyamfi, Akwasi; Farfan Amezquita, Filio; Freitag, Renata; Hancco Pacha, Fernando; Huaraca Huasco, Walter; Ibrahim, Forzia; Mbou, Armel T.; Mihindou Minhindou, Vianet; Peixoto, Karine S.; Rocha, Wanderley; Rossi, Liana C.; Seixas, Marina; Silva-Espejo, Javier E.; Abernethy, Katharine A.; Adu-Bredu, Stephen; Barlow, Jos; da Costa, Antonio C.L.; Marimon, Beatriz S.; Marimon-Junior, Ben H.; Meir, Patrick; Metcalfe, Daniel B.; Phillips, Oliver L.; White, Lee J.T.; Malhi, Yadvinder	2018	2019/04/24	Meteorological extreme events such as El Niño events are expected to affect tropical forest net primary production (NPP) and woody growth, but there has been no large-scale empirical validation of this expectation. We collected a large high–temporal resolution dataset (for 1–13 years depending upon location) of more than 172 000 stem growth measurements using dendrometer bands from across 14 regions spanning Amazonia, Africa and Borneo in order to test how much month-to-month variation in stand-level woody growth of adult tree stems (NPPstem) can be explained by seasonal variation and interannual meteorological anomalies. A key finding is that woody growth responds differently to meteorological variation between tropical forests with a dry season (where monthly rainfall is less than 100 mm), and aseasonal wet forests lacking a consistent dry season. In seasonal tropical forests, a high degree of variation in woody growth can be predicted from seasonal variation in temperature, vapour pressure deficit, in addition to anomalies of soil water deficit and shortwave radiation. The variation of aseasonal wet forest woody growth is best predicted by the anomalies of vapour pressure deficit, water deficit and shortwave radiation. In total, we predict the total live woody production of the global tropical forest biome to be 2.16 Pg C yr−1, with an interannual range 1.96–2.26 Pg C yr−1 between 1996–2016, and with the sharpest declines during the strong El Niño events of 1997/8 and 2015/6. There is high geographical variation in hotspots of El Niño–associated impacts, with weak impacts in Africa, and strongly negative impacts in parts of Southeast Asia and extensive regions across central and eastern Amazonia. Overall, there is high correlation (r = −0.75) between the annual anomaly of tropical forest woody growth and the annual mean of the El Niño 3.4 index, driven mainly by strong correlations with anomalies of soil water deficit, vapour pressure deficit and shortwave radiation. This article is part of the discussion meeting issue ‘The impact of the 2015/2016 El Niño on the terrestrial tropical carbon cycle: patterns, mechanisms and implications’.	El Nino; tropical forests; woody net primary production; drought; meteorological anomalies
Are coastal habitats important nurseries? A meta‐analysis	Conservation Letters	Lefcheck, Jonathan S.; Hughes, Brent B.; Johnson, Andrew J.; Pfirrmann, Bruce W.; Rasher, Douglas B.; Smyth, Ashley R.; Williams, Bethany L.; Beck, Michael W.; Orth, Robert J.	2019	2019/04/11	Nearshore‐structured habitats—including underwater grasses, mangroves, coral, and other biogenic reefs, marshes, and complex abiotic substrates—have long been postulated to function as important nurseries for juvenile fishes and invertebrates. Here, we review the evolution of the “nursery habitat hypothesis” and use >11,000 comparisons from 160 peer‐reviewed studies to test whether and which structured habitats increase juvenile density, growth, and survival. In general, almost all structured habitats significantly enhanced juvenile density—and in some cases growth and survival—relative to unstructured habitats. Underwater grasses and mangroves also promoted juvenile density and growth beyond what was observed in other structured habitats. These conclusions were robust to variation among studies, although there were significant differences with latitude and among some phyla. Our results confirm the basic nursery function of certain structured habitats, which lends further support to their conservation, restoration, and management at a time when our coastal environments are becoming increasingly impacted. They also reveal a dearth of evidence from many other systems (e.g., kelp forests) and for responses other than density. Although recent studies have advocated for increasingly complex approaches to evaluating nurseries, we recommend a renewed emphasis on more straightforward assessments of juvenile growth, survival, reproduction, and recruitment.	coral reef; density; growth; juvenile; mangrove; marsh; seagrass; survival
Single species conservation as an umbrella for management of landscape threats	PLOS ONE	Runge, Claire A.; Withey, John C.; Naugle, David E.; Fargione, Joseph E.; Helmstedt, Kate J.; Larsen, Ashley E.; Martinuzzi, Sebastian; Tack, Jason D.	2019	2019/04/11	Single species conservation unites disparate partners for the conservation of one species. However, there are widespread concerns that single species conservation biases conservation efforts towards charismatic species at the expense of others. Here we investigate the extent to which sage grouse (Centrocercus sp.) conservation, the largest public-private conservation effort for a single species in the US, provides protections for other species from localized and landscape-scale threats. We compared the coverage provided by sage grouse Priority Areas for Conservation (PACs) to 81 sagebrush-associated vertebrate species distributions with potential coverage under multi-species conservation prioritization generated using the decision support tool Zonation. PACs. We found that the current PAC prioritization approach was not statistically different from a diversity-based prioritization approach and covers 23.3% of the landscape, and 24.8%, on average, of the habitat of the 81 species. The proportion of each species distribution at risk was lower inside PACs as compared to the region as a whole, even without management (land use change 30% lower, cheatgrass invasion 19% lower). Whether or not bias away from threat represents the most efficient use of conservation effort is a matter of considerable debate, though may be pragmatic in this landscape where capacity to address these threats is limited. The approach outlined here can be used to evaluate biological equitability of protections provided by flagship species in other settings.	conservation science; grouse; land use; invasive species; ecosystems; endangered species; vertebrates; marine conservation

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