Overview of Countryside biogeography
Following text excerpted from: Daily, G. C. 1999. Developing a scientific basis for managing Earth's life support systems. Conservation Ecology 3(2): 14. [complete text, web version].
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| Coffee harvest in Costa Rica. Photo by Taylor Ricketts. |
Countryside biogeography is a field aimed at understanding the diversity, abundance, conservation, and restoration of species in rural and other human-dominated landscapes.
What is the capacity of human-dominated landscapes to support biodiversity? This question could determine the future course, consequences and appropriate policy responses to the mass extinction currently underway. The answer to this question has sweeping implications for strategies to produce food and conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services, but it remains little studied relative to its counterpart, namely, the capacity of remnants of native habitat to support biodiversity.
Although habitat modifications and the habitat affiliations of species are poorly documented (for most habitats and species globally), two things are clear: first, large regions of the world are not presently at the extreme end of intensity of land use; and, second, a substantial fraction of biodiversity occurs, at least for the moment, in many kinds of human-dominated habitats. The organisms that can take advantage of countryside (rural and suburban landscapes devoted primarily to human activities) deserve more attention, for a series of reasons. First, it is unlikely that many large, relatively undisturbed tracts of natural habitat will remain in the face of projected growth in the size and environmental impacts of the human population. Second, the conservation potential for many species may rest on preserving or enhancing certain aspects of rural landscapes containing remnants of native habitat, in lieu of protecting large tracts of more or less intact habitat. Third, the supply of important ecosystem system services, such as pest control and pollination, will depend, in many instances, on the biodiversity that occurs locally, in the vicinity of human habitation, i.e., in countryside habitats. Finally, a growing interest in restoration in some regions will require comparing the potential of alternative sites for reestablishing desired community assemblages.
