Context. The European Landscape Convention (ELC) of the Council of Europe represents the first in... more Context. The European Landscape Convention (ELC) of the Council of Europe represents the first international treaty that envisage all aspects when planning European landscapes. Through this convention, public authorities have been encouraged to adopt policies and measures at local, national and international level in order to protect, manage and properly plan landscapes in a sustainable manner. Objectives. Our study aims to provide a better understanding of the landscape governance research trends by using an innovative methodology to highlight ways to improve and optimize ELC implementation. Methods: For this, we analyzed published articles in international journals directly connected to ELC implementation between 2000 and 2020 (n=400). We use bibliometric indicators (i.e., publications, authors affiliations) and co-occurrence analysis with overlay visualization in time (i.e. keywords), in order to discover the landscape research trends and evolution in the past 20 years. Furthermo...
Romanian grasslands have high nature value, being between the best biodiversity hotspots at the g... more Romanian grasslands have high nature value, being between the best biodiversity hotspots at the global level. Current agri-environment measures of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) contradicts the Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 objective by hindering coordinated grassland governance and collaboration among the involved actors. At the European level, few attempts have been made in creating conceptual strategies for implementing conservation measures in a multi-actor and multi-scale governance setting. Our paper focuses on a comparative network analysis of grassland landscape governance of three Romanian regions (Iron Gates Natural Park – SW; Sighisoara - Tarnava Mare – center; and Dobrogea - SE), representatives for grassland management in mountain and lowland settings. In Sighisoara, grasslands governance has been centralized but biodiversity-friendly, while in Iron Gates, grasslands were traditionally managed through a decentralized, community-level system, and thi...
Large urban settlements are being organized in metropolitan areas, with a polarizing city influen... more Large urban settlements are being organized in metropolitan areas, with a polarizing city influencing and shaping the landscape of the hinterland. Transport infrastructure networks are the main vectors for the permanent flux of resources, and these exchanges should be maintained undisturbed. A poor transportation network impedes the continuity of these flows, causing unsatisfaction, ultimately generating planning-based conflicts within metropolitan zones. This study aims in assessing the potential occurrence of metropolitan conflicts generated by the transportation network design. We used a quantitative approach based on a set of new proposed indexes. The methods were applied on nine metropolitan zones from Romania. The results show that each metropolitan zone has specific potential for conflict occurrence. The higher potential was recorded within the more recent established metropolitan zones. Our results raise the question on whether the Romanian metropolitan zones are fully funct...
Background Advances in wildlife tracking technology have allowed researchers to understand the sp... more Background Advances in wildlife tracking technology have allowed researchers to understand the spatial ecology of many terrestrial and aquatic animal species. Argos Doppler is a technology that is widely used for wildlife tracking owing to the small size and low weight of the Argos transmitters. This allows them to be fitted to small-bodied species. The longer lifespan of the Argos units in comparison to units outfitted with miniaturized global positioning system (GPS) technology has also recommended their use. In practice, large Argos location errors often occur due to communication conditions such as transmitter settings, local environment, and the behavior of the tracked individual. Methods Considering the geographic specificity of errors and the lack of benchmark studies in Eastern Europe, the research objectives were: (1) to evaluate the accuracy of Argos Doppler technology under various environmental conditions in Romania, (2) to investigate the effectiveness of straightforwar...
Brown bear movement patterns are driven by their opportunistic feeding behaviour, with their comp... more Brown bear movement patterns are driven by their opportunistic feeding behaviour, with their complex life history and seasonality playing an important role in habitat selection. Within a large unfragmented forest habitats persisting over decades in the Romanian Carpathians and a prohibitive hunting management during 40 years of communist centralised game management, information about brown bear movements and spatial ecology is lacking. Using data obtained from 13 brown bears fitted with GPS telemetry collars, we estimated home ranges and core activity areas and we investigated the daily, seasonal and altitudinal movements of brown bears in the Eastern Romanian Carpathians and surrounding high hills. The median MCP95% home ranges of brown bears was 629.92 km2 and the median size of core activity areas (estimated as 50% kernel density) was 36.37 km2, with no significant differences between males and females. The mean daily distance travelled, measured as daily displacement length, was...
Background: Advances in wildlife tracking technology have allowed researchers to understand the s... more Background: Advances in wildlife tracking technology have allowed researchers to understand the spatial ecology of many terrestrial and aquatic animal species. Argos Doppler is a technology that is widely used for wildlife tracking owing to the small size and low weight of the Argos transmitters. This allows them to be fitted to small-bodied species. The longer lifespan of the Argos units in comparison to units outfitted with miniaturized global positioning system (GPS) technology has also recommended their use. In practice, large Argos location errors often occur due to communication conditions such as transmitter settings, local environment, and the behavior of the tracked individual. Methods: Considering the geographic specificity of errors and the lack of benchmark studies in Eastern Europe, the research objectives were: (1) to evaluate the accuracy of Argos Doppler technology under various environmental conditions in Romania, (2) to investigate the effectiveness of straightforw...
Farming landscapes of Europe are vital arenas for social-ecological sustainability because of the... more Farming landscapes of Europe are vital arenas for social-ecological sustainability because of their significant coverage and potential to integrate food production with biodiversity conservation. Knowledge gathered by scientific research is a critical ingredient for developing and implementing socio-economically and ecologically sustainable grassland management strategies for grasslands. The quality of scientific knowledge and its potential to address grasslands as complex social-ecological systems is strongly dependent on the creativity and scientific ambition of the researcher, but also on the network (from academic and non-academic sectors) around the researcher. The goal of this paper is to map the research network around Romania's grasslands. These systems have exceptional socio-cultural and economic values and are between the most biodiverse ecosystems of the world. Considering the multiple threats to these grasslands, it is an urgent need to understand the existing scient...
The Natura 2000 protected area network is the cornerstone of European Union's biodiversity co... more The Natura 2000 protected area network is the cornerstone of European Union's biodiversity conservation strategy. These protected areas range across multiple biogeographic regions, and they include a diversity of species assemblages along with a diversity of managing organizations, altogether making difficult to pool relevant sites to facilitate the flow of knowledge significant to their management. Here we introduce an approach to navigating protected area networks that has the potential to foster systematic identification of key sites for facilitating the exchange of knowledge and diffusion of information within the network. To demonstrate our approach, we abstractly represented Romanian Natura 2000 network as a co-occurrence network, with individual sites as nodes and shared species as edges, further combining into our analysis network topology, community detection, and network reduction methods. We identified most representative Natura 2000 sites that may increase the transf...
Based on species occurrence records of museum collections, published literature, and unpublished ... more Based on species occurrence records of museum collections, published literature, and unpublished records shared by mammalian experts, we compiled a distribution database for 59 terrestrial mammals populating the extensively protected Dobrogea Region of Romania. The spatial patterns of mammal distribution and diversity was evaluated and systematic conservation planning applied to identify priority areas for their conservation. The spatial analyses revealed that intensive sampling was not directly correlated to mammal diversity but rather to accessibility for inventory. The spatial prioritisation analysis indicated a relatively aggregated pattern of areas with a high or low conservation value with virtually no connecting corridors between them. The significant overlap between Natura 2000 sites and national protected areas induced an over-optimistic vision of the effectiveness and representativeness of existing Natura 2000 network for species found in Annexes II and IV of the Habitats ...
Context. The European Landscape Convention (ELC) of the Council of Europe represents the first in... more Context. The European Landscape Convention (ELC) of the Council of Europe represents the first international treaty that envisage all aspects when planning European landscapes. Through this convention, public authorities have been encouraged to adopt policies and measures at local, national and international level in order to protect, manage and properly plan landscapes in a sustainable manner. Objectives. Our study aims to provide a better understanding of the landscape governance research trends by using an innovative methodology to highlight ways to improve and optimize ELC implementation. Methods: For this, we analyzed published articles in international journals directly connected to ELC implementation between 2000 and 2020 (n=400). We use bibliometric indicators (i.e., publications, authors affiliations) and co-occurrence analysis with overlay visualization in time (i.e. keywords), in order to discover the landscape research trends and evolution in the past 20 years. Furthermo...
Romanian grasslands have high nature value, being between the best biodiversity hotspots at the g... more Romanian grasslands have high nature value, being between the best biodiversity hotspots at the global level. Current agri-environment measures of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) contradicts the Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 objective by hindering coordinated grassland governance and collaboration among the involved actors. At the European level, few attempts have been made in creating conceptual strategies for implementing conservation measures in a multi-actor and multi-scale governance setting. Our paper focuses on a comparative network analysis of grassland landscape governance of three Romanian regions (Iron Gates Natural Park – SW; Sighisoara - Tarnava Mare – center; and Dobrogea - SE), representatives for grassland management in mountain and lowland settings. In Sighisoara, grasslands governance has been centralized but biodiversity-friendly, while in Iron Gates, grasslands were traditionally managed through a decentralized, community-level system, and thi...
Large urban settlements are being organized in metropolitan areas, with a polarizing city influen... more Large urban settlements are being organized in metropolitan areas, with a polarizing city influencing and shaping the landscape of the hinterland. Transport infrastructure networks are the main vectors for the permanent flux of resources, and these exchanges should be maintained undisturbed. A poor transportation network impedes the continuity of these flows, causing unsatisfaction, ultimately generating planning-based conflicts within metropolitan zones. This study aims in assessing the potential occurrence of metropolitan conflicts generated by the transportation network design. We used a quantitative approach based on a set of new proposed indexes. The methods were applied on nine metropolitan zones from Romania. The results show that each metropolitan zone has specific potential for conflict occurrence. The higher potential was recorded within the more recent established metropolitan zones. Our results raise the question on whether the Romanian metropolitan zones are fully funct...
Background Advances in wildlife tracking technology have allowed researchers to understand the sp... more Background Advances in wildlife tracking technology have allowed researchers to understand the spatial ecology of many terrestrial and aquatic animal species. Argos Doppler is a technology that is widely used for wildlife tracking owing to the small size and low weight of the Argos transmitters. This allows them to be fitted to small-bodied species. The longer lifespan of the Argos units in comparison to units outfitted with miniaturized global positioning system (GPS) technology has also recommended their use. In practice, large Argos location errors often occur due to communication conditions such as transmitter settings, local environment, and the behavior of the tracked individual. Methods Considering the geographic specificity of errors and the lack of benchmark studies in Eastern Europe, the research objectives were: (1) to evaluate the accuracy of Argos Doppler technology under various environmental conditions in Romania, (2) to investigate the effectiveness of straightforwar...
Brown bear movement patterns are driven by their opportunistic feeding behaviour, with their comp... more Brown bear movement patterns are driven by their opportunistic feeding behaviour, with their complex life history and seasonality playing an important role in habitat selection. Within a large unfragmented forest habitats persisting over decades in the Romanian Carpathians and a prohibitive hunting management during 40 years of communist centralised game management, information about brown bear movements and spatial ecology is lacking. Using data obtained from 13 brown bears fitted with GPS telemetry collars, we estimated home ranges and core activity areas and we investigated the daily, seasonal and altitudinal movements of brown bears in the Eastern Romanian Carpathians and surrounding high hills. The median MCP95% home ranges of brown bears was 629.92 km2 and the median size of core activity areas (estimated as 50% kernel density) was 36.37 km2, with no significant differences between males and females. The mean daily distance travelled, measured as daily displacement length, was...
Background: Advances in wildlife tracking technology have allowed researchers to understand the s... more Background: Advances in wildlife tracking technology have allowed researchers to understand the spatial ecology of many terrestrial and aquatic animal species. Argos Doppler is a technology that is widely used for wildlife tracking owing to the small size and low weight of the Argos transmitters. This allows them to be fitted to small-bodied species. The longer lifespan of the Argos units in comparison to units outfitted with miniaturized global positioning system (GPS) technology has also recommended their use. In practice, large Argos location errors often occur due to communication conditions such as transmitter settings, local environment, and the behavior of the tracked individual. Methods: Considering the geographic specificity of errors and the lack of benchmark studies in Eastern Europe, the research objectives were: (1) to evaluate the accuracy of Argos Doppler technology under various environmental conditions in Romania, (2) to investigate the effectiveness of straightforw...
Farming landscapes of Europe are vital arenas for social-ecological sustainability because of the... more Farming landscapes of Europe are vital arenas for social-ecological sustainability because of their significant coverage and potential to integrate food production with biodiversity conservation. Knowledge gathered by scientific research is a critical ingredient for developing and implementing socio-economically and ecologically sustainable grassland management strategies for grasslands. The quality of scientific knowledge and its potential to address grasslands as complex social-ecological systems is strongly dependent on the creativity and scientific ambition of the researcher, but also on the network (from academic and non-academic sectors) around the researcher. The goal of this paper is to map the research network around Romania's grasslands. These systems have exceptional socio-cultural and economic values and are between the most biodiverse ecosystems of the world. Considering the multiple threats to these grasslands, it is an urgent need to understand the existing scient...
The Natura 2000 protected area network is the cornerstone of European Union's biodiversity co... more The Natura 2000 protected area network is the cornerstone of European Union's biodiversity conservation strategy. These protected areas range across multiple biogeographic regions, and they include a diversity of species assemblages along with a diversity of managing organizations, altogether making difficult to pool relevant sites to facilitate the flow of knowledge significant to their management. Here we introduce an approach to navigating protected area networks that has the potential to foster systematic identification of key sites for facilitating the exchange of knowledge and diffusion of information within the network. To demonstrate our approach, we abstractly represented Romanian Natura 2000 network as a co-occurrence network, with individual sites as nodes and shared species as edges, further combining into our analysis network topology, community detection, and network reduction methods. We identified most representative Natura 2000 sites that may increase the transf...
Based on species occurrence records of museum collections, published literature, and unpublished ... more Based on species occurrence records of museum collections, published literature, and unpublished records shared by mammalian experts, we compiled a distribution database for 59 terrestrial mammals populating the extensively protected Dobrogea Region of Romania. The spatial patterns of mammal distribution and diversity was evaluated and systematic conservation planning applied to identify priority areas for their conservation. The spatial analyses revealed that intensive sampling was not directly correlated to mammal diversity but rather to accessibility for inventory. The spatial prioritisation analysis indicated a relatively aggregated pattern of areas with a high or low conservation value with virtually no connecting corridors between them. The significant overlap between Natura 2000 sites and national protected areas induced an over-optimistic vision of the effectiveness and representativeness of existing Natura 2000 network for species found in Annexes II and IV of the Habitats ...
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