The Yellow Sea – a rapidly narrowing bottleneck for migrating shorebirds

The shrinking of mudflats along the coasts of the Chinese Yellow Sea is an increasing problem for birds trying to migrate between Siberia (for breeding) and Australia and New Zealand (for survival when not breeding). Research by an international team of ecologists from The Netherlands, Australia and China, led by the Chair in Global Flyway Ecology at the University of Groningen and staff member of … Continue reading The Yellow Sea – a rapidly narrowing bottleneck for migrating shorebirds

Managing impacts of land use change

This blog post is part of the blog series ‘Authors in Asia’, to accompany the recent Virtual Issue in Journal of Applied Ecology. You can read other posts in this series here. This post features three manuscripts which look at managing impacts of land use change. First, Kei Uchida discusses his paper ‘Land abandonment and intensification diminish spatial and temporal β-diversity of grassland plants and … Continue reading Managing impacts of land use change

Threats and opportunities for conserving migrating shorebirds within a productive coastal landscape in Southeast Asia

This blog post is part of the blog series ‘Authors in Asia’, to accompany the recent Virtual Issue in Journal of Applied Ecology. You can read other posts in this series here. In this post Jonathan Green, Siriya Sripanomyom, Xingli Giam and David Wilcove discuss their manuscript ‘The ecology and economics of shorebird conservation in a tropical human-modified landscape’. They look at the difficulties migrating … Continue reading Threats and opportunities for conserving migrating shorebirds within a productive coastal landscape in Southeast Asia

Forest cover change in the Greater Mekong sub-region

This blog post is part of the blog series ‘Authors in Asia’, to accompany the recent Virtual Issue in Journal of Applied Ecology. You can read other posts in this series here. Minerva Singh is a PhD Candidate at the University of Cambridge and she is involved with the BES Conservation Ecology Special Interest Group. Her research focuses on using high resolution airborne data for … Continue reading Forest cover change in the Greater Mekong sub-region

A simple recipe for regenerating floodplain forests: add water and exclude browsers

In this post Gillis Horner, Shaun Cunningham, James Thomson, Patrick Baker and Ralph Mac Nally discuss their recent paper ‘Recruitment of a keystone tree species must concurrently manage flooding and browsing’ Floodplain forests are threatened by the three-pronged attack of land-use change, river regulation and climate change. Establishing new seedlings – a fundamental component of any strategy to sustain these vital forests – depends mainly … Continue reading A simple recipe for regenerating floodplain forests: add water and exclude browsers

The importance of small patches of habitat for conservation

In this post Associate Editor Akira Mori discusses a paper he recently handled by Ayesha Tulloch and colleagues ‘Understanding the importance of small patches of habitat for conservation’ Landscape perspectives are important for land management in human-modified ecosystems, and the related development of land-clearing policy. Informed by a large body of macroecological theory and field research, scientists as well as practitioners have long discussed and … Continue reading The importance of small patches of habitat for conservation

Restoration methods of conifer plantations on ancient forest sites

In this post Associate Editor mentee Lander Baeten discusses a paper he handled by Beth Atkinson and colleagues ‘A comparison of clearfelling and gradual thinning of plantations for the restoration of insect herbivores and woodland plants’ Since the pioneering work of George Peterken in the 1970s, numerous studies have shown that many forest plant species are extremely slow to re-establish once lost from the ecosystem. … Continue reading Restoration methods of conifer plantations on ancient forest sites

VIDEO – Doing more with less: ecosystem services in Massachusetts

For this post Meghan Blumstein has created a video about her recent paper with Jonathan Thompson “Land-use impacts on the quantity and configuration of ecosystem service provisioning in Massachusetts, USA” Ecosystem services are the benefits that we receive from nature every day, both tangible, such as clean drinking water and recreational opportunities, and some less visible, such as climactic regulation through the uptake of carbon by … Continue reading VIDEO – Doing more with less: ecosystem services in Massachusetts