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Global Driving Forces Over Protected Areas
Compared to today, nature conservation could have been regarded as relatively
straightforward, although that was never really the case. The main focus historically
had been on the establishment of protected areas where nature would thrive and
sustain itself whilst those areas outside, although still supporting varying types of
habitats and wildlife, would primarily be available for exploitation by humans.
Whilst conservation reserves are vital, and have played an important role in species,
habitat and ecosystem protection, this view has had to change, largely because of a
human population that has doubled in the past 40 years from 3 to over 7 billion,
through expansion at an average rate of 80 million people per year, and which is
anticipated to increase to over 9 billion by 2038. A major consequence of this
increase has been and continues to be a rapid rise in levels of greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere, primarily because of fossil fuel consumption since the industrial
revolution but also losses of natural vegetation, including carbon rich forests. The
resulting net increase in global temperatures has contributed to the loss of ice sheets
and glaciers, greater frequencies and intensities of fires across the globe and the
melting of permafrost, with these further exacerbating changes in climate through
positive feedbacks. The result now is that protected areas are no longer protected, as
the majority of ecosystems are now vulnerable to the global phenomenon of climate
change as well as other changes such as increased atmospheric nitrogen
depositions.
The sheer magnitude of environmental change across the world has only been
fully realized because of regular observations by satellites, which really only started
from the 1960s onwards. These early sensors provided insights and warnings of
what was to come, including the initial signs of deforestation and associated burning in the Amazon (from NOAA AVHRR data; Setzer and Pereira 1991), the existence of the ozone hole (Farman et al. 1985) and the losses of ice in the Arctic
(Strove et al. 2007). As the value of Earth observations became greater, more and
more sensors were launched, with these providing different views of the Earth’s
surface and sub-surface and progressively documenting the changes that have been
occurring over the past 60 years. The development of algorithms for describing and
quantifying features of the landscapes has also resulted in new insights into the
functioning of natural systems, with examples being retrieval of glacial velocities
(Rignot and Kanagaratnam 2006), the three-dimensional structure and biomass of
vegetation (Lefsky 2010; Saatchi et al. 2011) and the frequencies and durations of
water inundation (Pekel et al. 2016; Díaz-Delgado et al. 2016). By providing new
information of the environment from these earth observation data, we have been
able to gain a better understanding of how our world has changed and the causes and
consequences. Such knowledge is vital if we are to address nature conservation over
the coming years and decades.
R. Lucas et al.
Global Driving Forces Over Protected Areas
Compared to today, nature conservation could have been regarded as relatively
straightforward, although that was never really the case. The main focus historically
had been on the establishment of protected areas where nature would thrive and
sustain itself whilst those areas outside, although still supporting varying types of
habitats and wildlife, would primarily be available for exploitation by humans.
Whilst conservation reserves are vital, and have played an important role in species,
habitat and ecosystem protection, this view has had to change, largely because of a
human population that has doubled in the past 40 years from 3 to over 7 billion,
through expansion at an average rate of 80 million people per year, and which is
anticipated to increase to over 9 billion by 2038. A major consequence of this
increase has been and continues to be a rapid rise in levels of greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere, primarily because of fossil fuel consumption since the industrial
revolution but also losses of natural vegetation, including carbon rich forests. The
resulting net increase in global temperatures has contributed to the loss of ice sheets
and glaciers, greater frequencies and intensities of fires across the globe and the
melting of permafrost, with these further exacerbating changes in climate through
positive feedbacks. The result now is that protected areas are no longer protected, as
the majority of ecosystems are now vulnerable to the global phenomenon of climate
change as well as other changes such as increased atmospheric nitrogen
depositions.
The sheer magnitude of environmental change across the world has only been
fully realized because of regular observations by satellites, which really only started
from the 1960s onwards. These early sensors provided insights and warnings of
what was to come, including the initial signs of deforestation and associated burning in the Amazon (from NOAA AVHRR data; Setzer and Pereira 1991), the existence of the ozone hole (Farman et al. 1985) and the losses of ice in the Arctic
(Strove et al. 2007). As the value of Earth observations became greater, more and
more sensors were launched, with these providing different views of the Earth’s
surface and sub-surface and progressively documenting the changes that have been
occurring over the past 60 years. The development of algorithms for describing and
quantifying features of the landscapes has also resulted in new insights into the
functioning of natural systems, with examples being retrieval of glacial velocities
(Rignot and Kanagaratnam 2006), the three-dimensional structure and biomass of
vegetation (Lefsky 2010; Saatchi et al. 2011) and the frequencies and durations of
water inundation (Pekel et al. 2016; Díaz-Delgado et al. 2016). By providing new
information of the environment from these earth observation data, we have been
able to gain a better understanding of how our world has changed and the causes and
consequences. Such knowledge is vital if we are to address nature conservation over
the coming years and decades.
R. Lucas et al.