The 50 most important questions relating to the maintenance and restoration of an ecological continuum in the European Alps.

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_2BE0E66B24F8
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Title
The 50 most important questions relating to the maintenance and restoration of an ecological continuum in the European Alps.
Journal
PLoS One
Author(s)
Walzer C., Kowalczyk C., Alexander J.M., Baur B., Bogliani G., Brun J.J., Füreder L., Guth M.O., Haller R., Holderegger R., Kohler Y., Kueffer C., Righetti A., Spaar R., Sutherland W.J., Ullrich-Schneider A., Vanpeene-Bruhier S.N., Scheurer T.
ISSN
1932-6203 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
1932-6203
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2013
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
8
Number
1
Pages
e53139
Language
english
Abstract
The European Alps harbour a unique and species-rich biodiversity, which is increasingly impacted by habitat fragmentation through land-use changes, urbanization and expanding transport infrastructure. In this study, we identified the 50 most important questions relating to the maintenance and restoration of an ecological continuum - the connectedness of ecological processes across many scales including trophic relationship and disturbance processes and hydro-ecological flows in the European Alps. We initiated and implemented a trans-national priority setting exercise, inviting 48 institutions including researchers, conservation practitioners, NGOs, policymakers and administrators from the Alpine region. The exercise was composed of an initial call for pertinent questions, a first online evaluation of the received questions and a final discussion and selection process during a joint workshop. The participating institutions generated 484 initial questions, which were condensed to the 50 most important questions by 16 workshop participants. We suggest new approaches in tackling the issue of an ecological continuum in the Alps by analysing and classifying the characteristics of the resulting questions in a non-prioritized form as well as in a visual conceptualisation of the inter-dependencies among these questions. This priority setting exercise will support research and funding institutions in channelling their capacities and resources towards questions that need to be urgently addressed in order to facilitate significant progress in biodiversity conservation in the European Alps.
Keywords
Conservation of Natural Resources, Ecosystem, Europe
Pubmed
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Create date
01/09/2016 12:25
Last modification date
20/08/2019 13:11
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