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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability, Biodiversity and Conservation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2023) | Viewed by 6655

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Special Issue Editor

Dr. Alexandra D. Solomou

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Guest Editor

Institute of Mediterranean and Forest Ecosystems, Hellenic Agricultural Organization- DIMITRA, 11528 Athens, Greece
Interests: utilization and conservation of plant biodiversity; biodiversity indicators; aromatic and medicinal plants; ecosystem function; services and resilience; environmental impacts and threats to biodiversity; restoring biodiversity; ecology
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is focused on biodiversity and ecosystem services in agriculture, forestry and urban ecosystems.

Ecosystems are known to provide services that are considered to be assets to humanity. These assets /services can be classified into four main categories:

Provisioning services relating to food, fibre and freshwater.
Regulating services which concern pest regulation, pollination and water purification.
Supporting services involving nutrient cycling, soil formation and photosynthesis.
Cultural services such as recreation, touristic and aesthetic values.

These services can be seen as nature's offerings to people regarding Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), promoting the quality of our life. Biodiversity is integral to the health and resilience of any ecosystem and it supports most of our development, from raw materials to food production.

It supports and even advances the function of any ecosystem and, of course, its importance to human welfare is already known.

Biodiversity must be protected and we should also stress the necessity of improving supply and access to all ecosystem services. In this way we will maintain the health of our planet and safeguard nature's benefits. Considering all the above, biodiversity monitoring, such as finding the right strategies concerning the right handling of biodiversity, aiming at its production and preservation, is a paramount importance. Monitoring determines the status of biological diversity at one or more ecological levels and evaluates the possible changes across time and space.

We welcome submissions in all areas related to terrestrial biodiversity dealing with theoretical aspects, new research methods, observation data analysis, and predictive modelling, but we particularly encourage submissions on the following topics:

Ecosystems, ecosystem services and biodiversity of terrestrial ecosystems;
Phylogenetic and/or functional abundance and diversity;
Monitoring of biodiversity, ecosystem processes and environmental drivers;
Effects of biogeography on community diversity;
Effects of climate change on community diversity and species distributions;
Effects of environmental factors on biodiversity;
Aromatic and medicinal plants.

Dr. Alexandra D. Solomou
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

biodiversity
ecosystem services and functions
bioindicators
ecology
environmental factors
plants
terrestrial vegetation
agriculture
forestry
urban areas
climate change
land-use change

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 31540 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatial Conservation Prioritization for Land in Megacity Facing Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss

by Jiping Wen, Jie Xi, Yitong Pan, Siyu Wang, Zhouyu Fan and Wei Fu

Sustainability 2024, 16(4), 1392; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16041392 - 7 Feb 2024

Viewed by 911

Abstract

Climate change and biodiversity loss are two major threats to the world. Ecosystem conservation is an important issue for humanity, and international intergovernmental science-policy platforms highlight the mutually beneficial relationships among biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services and measures to mitigate climate change. Rapid urbanization has brought various deeply interconnected ecological problems to large cities. Therefore, key areas for conservation must be identified in an integrative manner to maximize conservation effectiveness and meet both ecological and human social needs. Spatial conservation prioritization provides a way to consider different functional needs as a whole in light of certain objectives while highlighting their contradictions and overlaps in spatial utilization. The megacity of Beijing continues to experience frequent extreme weather events despite the implementation of a series of ecological restoration measures. We integrated the potential distributions of 64 critically endangered native species to represent biodiversity and used five main ecosystem services required for climate governance to represent ecosystem services in the city. Using the spatial prioritization software Zonation 5, we assessed the spatial distribution of conservation priorities at the municipal scale and changes in conservation effectiveness in four protection scenarios. The results showed that the existing PAs in Beijing could protect 24.99% of the current distribution of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The conservation effectiveness can reach 78.75% when the PAs are increased to 30%. This efficiency rate is 4.46% lower than that of the optimal scenario, which does not consider the existing PAs. An emphasis on urban rewilding spaces may be the key to overcoming conservation bottlenecks to further enhance the efficiency of ecological conservation. To achieve future conservation targets, policy development may start with urban built-up areas. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Agriculture, Forestry and Urban Ecosystems)

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20 pages, 2707 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Assessment of Herbaceous Plant Composition, Diversity, and Indicator Species in the Juniperus drupacea Forest Openings of the Mountain Parnonas in Greece

by Alexandra D. Solomou, Evangelia Korakaki, Evangelia V. Avramidou, Stefanos Boutsios, Spyridon Oikonomidis and Evangelia Daskalakou

Sustainability 2023, 15(18), 13765; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151813765 - 15 Sep 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 843

Abstract

A significant challenge in community ecology is the establishment of ecological baselines, which permit the evaluation of the variations in ecological dynamics at different temporal and spatial scales. To our best knowledge, few studies have been conducted in the forest openings of Mt. Parnon to establish a baseline for future monitoring. Hence, a floristic study of the herbaceous plant species composition, diversity, cover, and biomass was conducted in the forest openings of the Mt. Parnon-Natura 2000 Site in Greece to develop an ecological baseline that could be utilized in decision making for conservation and the sustainable use of forest biodiversity and ecosystem services in the forest ecosystem of Mt. Parnon. In the spring season, a thorough floristic survey was performed on Mt. Parnon for two consecutive years, 2021 and 2022. Herbaceous plant composition, diversity, cover, biomass, and plant indicator species (indicator value analysis) in the forest openings of Mt. Parnon were assessed. In the studied area, 63 plant species belonging to 58 genera from 20 families were recorded. The most numerous families were Asteraceae and Poaceae, followed by Fabaceae. Variable plant diversity, herbaceous plant cover, and produced biomass were recorded in different sites. It is noteworthy that some plant species could be regarded as indicators of the sites in the study area [Geranium molle L., Cerastium candidissimum Correns, Vicia villosa Roth, Euphorbia myrsinites L., Odontarrhena muralis (Waldst. & Kit.) Endl., Medicago lupulina L., Lotus corniculatus L., Crepis fraasii Sch. Bip., Bellis sylvestris Cirillo, and Trifolium stellatum L.], and information about these indicators, including Ellenberg type indicator values, is also provided. This study contributes to the understanding of the relevant ecological topics and provides key elements that could be utilized in decision making for the conservation and sustainable use of forest biodiversity and ecosystem services on Mt. Parnon. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Agriculture, Forestry and Urban Ecosystems)

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16 pages, 2539 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evaluating the Urban-Rural Differences in the Environmental Factors Affecting Amphibian Roadkill

by Jingxuan Zhao, Weiyu Yu, Kun He, Kun Zhao, Chunliang Zhou, Jim A. Wright and Fayun Li

Sustainability 2023, 15(7), 6051; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15076051 - 31 Mar 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1716

Abstract

Roads have major impacts on wildlife, and the most direct negative effect is through deadly collisions with vehicles, i.e., roadkill. Amphibians are the most frequently road-killed animal group. Due to the significant differences between urban and rural environments, the potential urban-rural differences in factors driving amphibian roadkill risks should be incorporated into the planning of mitigation measures. Drawing on a citizen-collected roadkill dataset from Taiwan island, we present a MaxEnt based modelling analysis to examine potential urban-rural differences in landscape features and environmental factors associated with amphibian road mortality. By incorporating with the Global Human Settlement Layer Settlement Model—an ancillary human settlement dataset divided by built-up area and population density—amphibian roadkill data were divided into urban and rural data sets, and then used to create separate models for urban and rural areas. Model diagnostics suggested good performance (all AUCs > 0.8) of both urban and rural models. Multiple variable importance evaluations revealed significant differences between urban and rural areas. The importance of environmental variables was evaluated based on percent contribution, permutation importance and the Jackknife test. According to the overall results, road density was found to be important in explaining the amphibian roadkill in rural areas, whilst precipitation of warmest quarter was found to best explain the amphibian roadkill in the urban context. The method and outputs illustrated in this study can be useful tools to better understand amphibian road mortality in urban and rural environments and to inform mitigation assessment and conservation planning. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Agriculture, Forestry and Urban Ecosystems)

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14 pages, 2865 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Assessment of Forest Ecosystem Services in Burabay National Park, Kazakhstan: A Case Study

by Sara Kitaibekova, Zhailau Toktassynov, Dani Sarsekova, Soleiman Mohammadi Limaei and Elmira Zhilkibayeva

Sustainability 2023, 15(5), 4123; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15054123 - 24 Feb 2023

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1354

Abstract

The issues of forestry and the economic assessment of ecosystem services of forests, in the example of the national park “Burabay” in Kazakhstan, located in the northern part of the country, are investigated in this study. The relevance of forest ecosystem services, such as carbon fixation, oxygen emission, soil conservation from erosion and precipitation redistribution, are important environmental factors that contribute to the conservation of natural capital. Studies by domestic and international scientists show that the value of ecosystem services of forests is much higher than the cost of wood and its material products. Consequently, the ecosystem services of forests should be valued in monetary terms and considered in the context of the national wealth of the country. The main purpose of this research is to establish the value of non-market forest products while considering the prevailing natural and socio-economic conditions. The methods of the ecosystem approach for assessing the above ecosystem services of forests in value terms were implemented, and the real value of the multifunctional value of forests has been revealed. The results obtained can be used in planning measures to improve the sustainability of forests, ecotourism organizations and management decision-making. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Agriculture, Forestry and Urban Ecosystems)

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14 pages, 6136 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Ecological Insight, Anatomical Features, and Fiber Characterization of Leptadenia pyrotechnica (Forrsk.) Decne. as a Promising Resource

by Ahmed M. Abd-ElGawad, Abdulaziz M. Assaeed, Giuliano Bonanomi and Yasser A. El-Amier

Sustainability 2022, 14(24), 16895; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142416895 - 16 Dec 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1239

Abstract

Wild plants are considered promising natural eco-friendly resources for fibers. Leptadenia pyrotechnica is a xerophytic shrub that flourishes in a sandy desert habitat with high biomass production; therefore, it could be a potential resource for fibers. The present study aimed to investigate the vegetation composition of L. pyrotechnica communities and their correlation with soil variables. Additionally, this study aimed to evaluate the anatomical features of the stem as well as fiber characteristics, including chemical, biometry, morphological, and optical properties. The vegetation analysis showed the presence of 60 species belonging to 22 families, with a prevalence of therophytes. Four communities were determined, dominated by L. pyrotechnica and with co-dominance of the shrubs Haloxylon salicornicum, Ochradenus baccatus, and Retama raetam. The soil organic matter, salinity, texture, and cations were parameters that substantially affect the L. pyrotechnica community. The anatomical investigation showed the structural (anatomical) adaptation of L. pyrotechnica to arid habitats. Chemical analysis of the raw plant material revealed satisfactory levels of cellulose and hemicellulose (48.61% and 18.59%), while lignin and ash contents were relatively low, compared to hardwoods and softwoods. The fiber characterization revealed that fibesr length was 0.72 mm, while width and cell wall thickness were 20.46 and 6.48 μm, respectively. The optical properties revealed a birefringence of 0.028, indicating a good refractive index. These fiber characteristics showed that L. pyrotechnica could be used as raw material for the production of good-quality paper. A further feasibility study is recommended for the evaluation of L. pyrotechnica fibers, as a promising resource for papermaking at a large scale. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Agriculture, Forestry and Urban Ecosystems)

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