Date:
2018/06/12
Time:
11:00
Room:
K306 Anton
Overall (first) results of the ‘100 questions for biodiversity conservation in Mediterranean-type regions of the world’ initiative
(Oral)
Francisco Moreira
, Pedro Beja
, Ana Filipa Filipe
, Lluís Brotons
, Miguel Clavero
, John Thompson
, Danilo Russo
, Leonardo Ancilloto
, Adriano Martinoli
, Margarita Arianoutsou
, Panayiotis Dimitrakopoulos
, Linda Olsvig-Whittaker
, Eliezer Frankenberg
, Jeffrey Clary
, Peggy Fiedler
, Phil Rundel
, Raquel Fagoaga
, Milena Holmgren
, Maria Martinez-Harms
, Pablo Marquet
, Patricio Pliscoff-Varas
, Jasper Slingsby
, Karen Esler
, Nicky Allsopp
, Grant Wardell-Johnson
, Ben Miller
, Angela Wardell-Johnson
SEE PEER REVIEW
Mediterranean-type ecosystems (MTEs), with their characteristic climate, occur in just five regions of the world: the Mediterranean Basin, the Cape Region of South Africa, Southwestern and South Australia, California, and central Chile. In spite of their small geographic area, they harbour a significant and exclusive proportion of the planet’s biodiversity. Biodiversity values in MTE are threatened by a range of factor including land use changes, overexploitation of natural resources, global climate changes, among others. Researchers have a key role in providing solutions for conserving biodiversity in face of these multiple stressors and socio-economic challenges.
Under the scope of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) – Europe Section and the International Society of Mediterranean Ecologists (ISOMED), a group of researchers from the five MTE regions of the world organized an initiative to identify the 100 priority questions that,
if answered, would have a high probability of increasing the success of actions targeted at the conservation of biological diversity in the five Mediterranean regions of the world. We will present the first overall results of this exercise. A total of 1490 original questions were merged into a final 171 questions divided in 11 major topics. The three topics with higher importance were governance, climate change and habitat restoration. Further results on patterns across Mediterranean-type regions and stakeholder types, in order to identify topics of overall and regional importance, will be presented.
INTRO: The abstract starts by presenting the importance of Mediterranean-type ecosystems (MTEs) in terms of biological diversity and the main pressures that threaten their values. It then describes an initiative aiming to identify 100 priority questions that if answered, could enhance the success of biodiversity conservation in the five MTEs of the world. It ends by indicating some the main outputs of the exercise, mainly the final number of questions retained and the most important topics raised.
MERITS: The abstract is concise and presented in a flowing and accessible language. The study endeavours to discern the most pressing and urgent issues that hamper biodiversity conservation in MTEs. The results will thus be of great interest to researchers, conservation practitioners, policy makers and land managers.
CRITIQUE: Briefly mentioning the methods used to collect questions (workshops, interviews etc.) would make the abstract stronger, I think.
DISCUSSION: This study will greatly benefit the conservation of Mediterranean biodiversity throughout the world, particularly in those understudied areas in North Africa. It would be interesting to have this approach replicated for other ecosystems, like deserts.