Drew Brummitt: Outside Reading 1 - Land use, climate, and conservation

 https://doi.org/10.3390/su14094933

Yang et al (2022) examines how current Asian elephant habitats will be affected by climate change and human influence with respect to biodiversity and to determine how effective established protected area networks are in conserving elephants. The authors analyzed elephant habitats using a MaxEnt model to study thirteen countries/regions where Asian elephants are found in south and southeast Asia. Variables were chosen for the species distribution model to represent different circumstances caused by climate change or human land uses based on existing data and were incorporated into a MexEnt model to predict which habitats will be suitable in the future. The authors found that the environmental variables that had the greatest effect indicated that elephant populations were the most successful in mixed forest habitats with dry environments, lower levels of human influences, and high water availability. Yang et al (2022) also describes how the range of suitable elephant habitats is projected to increase at first, and then decrease after around the year 2050. The results from the human footprint maps showed that core habitats with low human footprint values increased significantly while the countries/regions with high human footprint values did not change significantly. The results of Yang et al (2022) can be utilized to determine what factors are most crucial for the sustainability of asian elephants such as low precipitation and greater distance from human activity. I believe this journal is important to understand how land use and climate change will impact the habitats of not only Asian elephants, but other animals whose habitats are susceptible to climatic and anthropogenic influences. A potential solution that is presented in the journal is to establish protected area networks in core habitats that have already been identified in order to make the networks more effective. I also think that doing so could result in lower implementation/enforcement costs.

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