| Sahyadri Conservation Series - 6 |
ENVIS Technical Report: 22, February 2012 |
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CONSERVATION OF ENDANGERED FAUNA IN SHARAVATHI RIVER BASIN, CENTRAL WESTERN GHATS |
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GLOSSARY
- Adapt (adaptation) - to adjust to new conditions or surroundings in an effort to survive
when our family moved to Minnesota we had to adapt to the cold winters.
- Biodiversity - the variety of plants and animals, their genetic variability, and their interrelationships and ecological processes, and the communities and landscapes in which they exist.
- Biogeography: the study of the geographic distributions of organisms, both past and present (Brown and Gibson 1983:557).
- Connectivity: a parameter of landscape function that measures the processes by which a set of populations is interconnected into a metapopulation (adapted from Baudry and Merriam 1988:23).
- Corridor: a spatial linkage that facilitates movements of organisms among habitat patches in a landscape (adapted from Merriam 1988:16).
- Deciduous forest: type of forest made up of trees that lose their leaves in the winter.
- Deciduous/semi-deciduous broadleaf forest: Natural forests with > 30% canopy cover, below 1200 m altitude in which between 50-100% of the canopy is deciduous and broadleaves predominate (> 75% of canopy cover)
- Deforestation: destruction of forested habitats for conversion to other uses.
- Degraded forest: A degraded forest is a secondary forest that has lost, through human activities, the structure, function, species composition or productivity normally associated with a natural forest type expected on that site. Hence, a degraded forest delivers a reduced supply of goods and services from the given site and maintains only limited biological diversity. Biological diversity of degraded forests include many non-tree components, which may dominate in the undercanopy vegetation.
- Diversity: typically used in relation to species, a single index that incorporates the number of species and relative abundances of species (evenness). For example, a collection is said to have high diversity if it has many species and their abundances are relatively even. There are many types of diversity indices (Pielou 1977:292; Wiens 1989a:123):
- Ecological communities: a group of interacting plants and animals living in a defined area.
- Ecosystem: a group of plants and animals occurring together, along with the physical environment with which they interact.
- Ecological Processes:The relationships between living organisms, and their environment. Among these processes are natural disturbances such as periodic fire, flooding, or beaver activity; natural stresses such as disease or insects; catastrophic weather related events such as severe storms or lightning strikes, or more subtle ongoing processes such as succession and hydrology.
- Ecosystem Management:The careful and skillful use of ecological, economic, social, and managerial principles in managing ecosystems to produce, restore, or sustain ecosystem integrity uses, products, and services over a long-term.
- Ecotone: a habitat created by the juxtaposition of distinctly different habitats; an edge habitat; a zone of transition between habitat types (Ricklefs 1979:869) or adjacent ecological systems having a set of characteristics uniquely defined by space and time scales and by the strength of the interactions (Hansen and diCastri 1992:6) (see Boundary).
- Edge effect: (1) changes in a community due to the rapid creation of abrupt edges in large units of previously undisturbed habitat (Reese and Ratti 1988:127); (2) tendency for increased variety and density of organisms at community or habitat junctions (Odum 1971:157).
- Edge species: species preferring the habitat created by the abutment of distinctive vegetation types (Ricklefs 1979:869).
- Endemic species: An endemic species is a native species restricted to a particular geographic region owing to factors such as isolation or response to soil or climatic conditions.
- Evergreen forest: a forest made up of trees that do not lose their leaves or needles in the winter.
- Forest biological diversity: Forest biological diversity means the variability among forest living organisms and the ecological processes of which they are a part; this includes diversity in forests within species, between species and of ecosystems and landscapes.
- Forest biome: This reflects the ecological and physiognomic characteristics of the vegetation and broadly corresponds to climatic regions of the Earth. In this document, it is used in reference to boreal, temperate and tropical forest biomes.
- Forest degradation: Changes within the forest that negatively affect the structure or function of the stand or site, and thereby lower the capacity to supply products and/or services.
- Forest ecosystem: A forest ecosystem can be defined at a range of scales. It is a dynamic complex of plant, animal and microorganism communities and their abiotic environment interacting as a functional unit, where trees are a key component of the system. Humans, with their cultural, economic and environmental needs are an integral part of many forest ecosystems.
- Forest fragmentation: patchwork conversion and development of forest sites (usually the most accessible or most productive ones) that leave the remaining forest in stands of varying sizes and degrees of isolation (Harris 1984:4
- Forest improvement: Changes within the forest that positively affect the structure or function of the stand or site, and thereby increase the capacity to supply products and/or services.
- Forest plantation: A forest established by planting or/and seeding in the process of afforestation or reforestation. It consists of introduced species or, in some cases, indigenous species.
- Forest species: A forest species is a species that forms a part of a forest ecosystems or is dependent on a forest for part or all of its day-to-day living requirements or for its reproductive requirements. Therefore, an animal species may be considered a forest species even if it does not live most of its life in a forest.
- Forest: The FAO definition of a forest is considered as the basic one (FAO, 1998; FRA 2000), but many other useful definitions of "forest" exist in published form. The fact that "forest" has been defined in many ways is a reflection of the diversity of forests and forest ecosystems in the world and of the diversity of human approaches to forests. In this document, a forest is a land area of more than 0.5 ha, with a tree canopy cover of more than 10%, which is not primarily under agricultural or other specific non-forest land use. In the case of young forests or regions where tree growth is climatically suppressed, the trees should be capable of reaching a height of 5 m in situ, and of meeting the canopy cover requirement.
- Forest type: Within biomes, a forest type is a group of forest ecosystems of generally similar composition that can be readily differentiated from other such groups by their tree and under canopy species composition, productivity and/or crown closure.
- Gap formation: the creation of a habitat patch of different characteristics within a larger patch (Wiens 1989b:201).
- Genetic drift: the change in allele frequency due to random variations in fecundity and mortality in a population (Ricklefs 1979:871).
- Habitat: the place where a particular type of plant or animal lives. An organism's habitat must provide all of the basic requirements for life and should be free of harmful contaminants.
- Habitat edge: region where one type of habitat (for example: forest) borders on another type of habitat (for example: grassland or cropland).
- Habitat fragmentation: breaking up large areas of continuous natural habitats into smaller patches of natural habitats isolated from each other by human-altered habitats. The area that is too small may not provide enough space to maintain a breeding population of the species.
- Habitat loss: Habitat loss, used with reference to an individual species, is the permanent conversion of former (forest) habitat to an area where that species can no longer exist, be it still forested or not.
- Habitat patches: areas distinguished from their surroundings by environmental discontinuities. Patches are organism-defined (i.e., the edges or discontinuities have biological significance to an organism) (adapted from Wiens 1976:83).
- Heterogeneity: the variety of qualities found in an environment (habitat patches) or a population (genotypic variation) (Ricklefs 1979:872).
- Home range: an area, from which intruders may or may not be excluded, to which an individual restricts most of its usual activities (Ricklefs 1979:872) (cf Territory).
- Index method: a counting method involving sampling that yields measures of relative abundance rather than density values (Ralph 1981:578).
- Index: (1) the proportional relation of counts of objects or signs associated with a given species to counts of that species on a given area; (2) counts of individuals (e.g., at a feeding station) reflecting changes in relative abundance on a specified or local area (Ralph 1981:578).
- Keystone species: a species whose abundance dramatically alters the structure and dynamics of ecological systems (Brown and Heske 1990:1705).
- Landscape: the traits, patterns and structure of a specific geographic area, including its biological composition, its physical environment, and its anthropogenic or social patterns. An area where interacting ecosystems are grouped and repeated in similar form.
- Landscape change: alteration in the structure and function of the ecological mosaic of a landscape through time (Turner 1989:173).
- Landscape composition: the relative amounts of habitat types contained within a landscape (Dunning et al. 1992:170).
- Landscape ecology: field of study that considers the development and dynamics of spatial heterogeneity, interactions and exchanges across heterogeneous landscapes, the influences of spatial heterogeneity on biotic and abiotic processes, and the management of spatial heterogeneity (Turner 1989:172).
- Landscape function: the interactions among the spatial elements, that is, the flow of energy, materials, and organisms among the component ecosystems (Turner 1989:173).
- Landscape: the landforms of a region in the aggregate; the land surface and its associated habitats at scales of hectares to many square kilometres (for most vertebrates); a spatially heterogeneous area (Turner 1989:173); mosaic of habitat types occupying a spatial scale intermediate between an organism's normal home-range size and its regional distribution (Dunning et al. 1992:169).
- Line transect: a sampling route, through a surveyed area, that is followed by an observer counting contacts over a measured distance (Ralph 1981:578).
- Lower montane forest: Natural forests with > 30% canopy cover, between 1200-1800 m altitude, with any seasonality regime and leaf type mixture.
- Lowland evergreen broadleaf rain forest: Natural forests with > 30% canopy cover, below 1200 m altitude that display little or no seasonality, the canopy being >75% evergreen broadleaf.
- Metapopulation: a collection or set of local populations living where discrete patches of the area are habitable and the intervening regions are not habitable (Gilpin 1987:127); basic demographic unit composed of a set of populations in different habitat patches linked by movement of individuals (Merriam and Wegner 1992:151).
- Microhabitat: the particular parts of a habitat that an individual encounters in the course of its activities (Ricklefs 1979:874).
- Migration: regular, extensive, seasonal movements of birds between their breeding regions and their "wintering" regions (Welty 1975:463).
- Monitoring: measuring population trends using any of the various counting methods (Ralph et al.) in press.
- Native species: A native species is one that naturally exists at a given location or in a particular ecosystem, i.e. it has not been moved there by humans.
- Native species plantation: Intensively managed forests with > 30% canopy cover, which have been planted by people with species that occur naturally in that country.
- Natural expansion of forest: Expansion of forests through natural succession on land that, until then, was under another land use (e.g. forest succession on land previously used for agriculture). Implies a transformation from non-forest to forest.
- Natural forest: A forest composed of indigenous trees and not classified as forest plantation.
- Natural regeneration on forest lands: Natural succession of forest on temporarily unstocked lands that are considered as forest.
- Old growth forest: Old growth forest stands are stands in primary or secondary forests that have developed the structures and species normally associated with relic primary forests distinct from any younger age class.
- Primary forest: A primary forest is a forest that has never been logged and has developed following natural disturbances and natural processes, regardless of its age. "Direct human disturbance" is referred to as the intentional clearing of forest by any means (including fire) to manage or alter them for human use. Also included as primary forests, are forests that are used inconsequentially by indigenous and local communities living in traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity.
- Quadrat: a small sample plot, usually square or rectangular (Ralph 1981:578).
- Reforestation: It is the re-growth of forests after a temporary (<10 years.) condition with less than 10% canopy cover due to human-induced or natural perturbations (FAO, FRA 2000).
- Remote sensing: the imaging of earth features from suborbital and orbital altitudes, using various wavelengths of the visible and invisible spectrum (Richason 1978:xi).
- Restoration: any action taken to repair, maintain, protect, and enhance the ecological integrity of a Basin. .
Secondary forest: A secondary forest is a forest that has been logged and has recovered naturally or artificially.
- Semi-evergreen moist broadleaf forest: Natural forests with > 30% canopy cover, below 1200 m altitude in which between 50-75% of the canopy is evergreen, > 75% are broadleaves, and the trees display seasonality of flowering and fruiting.
- Species richness: the number of species in a given area (Ralph 1981:578).
- Transect: a cross section of an area along which the observer moves in a given direction (Ralph 1981:578) (see Line transect, Point transect, Strip transect method).
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