Unshifting the baseline: a framework for documenting historical population changes and assessing long-term anthropogenic impacts
Unshifting the baseline: a framework for documenting historical population changes and assessing long-term anthropogenic impacts
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DOI：
10.1098/rstb.2019.0220
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发表时间：
2019-11
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
A. Rodrigues;Sophie Monsarrat;A. Charpentier;T. Brooks;M. Hoffmann;R. Reeves;M. Palomares;S. Turvey
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文献类型：
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作者：
A. Rodrigues;Sophie Monsarrat;A. Charpentier;T. Brooks;M. Hoffmann;R. Reeves;M. Palomares;S. Turvey
生态基线——物种分布和丰度的参考状态——是支撑许多保护和管理干预措施的科学论证的关键，也是公众支持这些干预措施的关键。然而，社会和科学对这些基线的看法往往基于已被人类活动深刻改变的生态系统。尽管人们对这种转移基线综合症的普遍性及其影响的认识有所提高，但目前对生物多样性状况的全球评估并未考虑到对生物多样性的长期、累积的人为影响。在这里，我们提出了一个记录此类影响的新框架，通过根据它们在没有人类活动的情况下偏离基线的程度对种群进行分类。我们将这一框架应用于弓头鲸（Balaena mysticetus），以说明如何使用它来评估不同地理位置和已知或疑似影响时间线的种群。通过其他例子，我们讨论了如何通过充分利用现有的生态、历史和考古数据，将框架应用于存在广泛多样性的现有知识的人群。结合多个种群，该框架为评估人类活动对生物多样性的累积影响提供了一个标准。这篇文章是讨论会议议题“过去是一个外国：化石记录能在多大程度上为保护提供信息？”的一部分。”
Ecological baselines—reference states of species' distributions and abundances—are key to the scientific arguments underpinning many conservation and management interventions, as well as to the public support to such interventions. Yet societal as well as scientific perceptions of these baselines are often based on ecosystems that have been deeply transformed by human actions. Despite increased awareness about the pervasiveness and implications of this shifting baseline syndrome, ongoing global assessments of the state of biodiversity do not take into account the long-term, cumulative, anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity. Here, we propose a new framework for documenting such impacts, by classifying populations according to the extent to which they deviate from a baseline in the absence of human actions. We apply this framework to the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) to illustrate how it can be used to assess populations with different geographies and timelines of known or suspected impacts. Through other examples, we discuss how the framework can be applied to populations for which there is a wide diversity of existing knowledge, by making the best use of the available ecological, historical and archaeological data. Combined across multiple populations, this framework provides a standard for assessing cumulative anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The past is a foreign country: how much can the fossil record actually inform conservation?’