Research Report: Canadian national parks as islands: Investigating the role of landscape pattern and human population in species loss
Wiersma YF and Simonson C. 2010. Research Report: Canadian national parks as islands: Investigating the role of landscape pattern and human population in species loss. Park Science. 27(2):70–77
Recent analyses of mammal species loss in protected areas around the world suggest that habitat loss and human population density outside of park boundaries may be better predictors of species loss and biodiversity patterns than absolute area of parks themselves. In North American parks, there have been conflicting studies about the relative impact of habitat versus human population density on the loss of mammals. These differences may be due to scale effects, as past studies in Canadian national parks have not examined the effect of spatial scale on species loss since the time of widespread European settlement. Here, we build on previous work and look at the effects of habitat area and human population density in buffer regions that are 10, 25, 50, and 100 km (6.2, 15.5, 31.1, and 62.1 mi) outside of the boundaries of 24 national parks in Canada on the loss of disturbance-sensitive mammals. We also examine whether the relative importance of predictors is correlated with species body size. As in previous work, we find that the amount of effective habitat area is a more significant predictor than human population density and that scale effects are not significant, at least for the scales and species examined.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Wiersma, Yolanda; Simonson, Christa
- Units
- NRSS
- Keywords
- Biogeography, extirpations, GIS, Habitat, human populations, Land Cover, Land Use, Mammals, minimum reserve area, Protected Areas, spatial scaling