Properties of land mosaics: Implications for nature conservation in agricultural environments

摘要: Agricultural landscapes are mosaics of different land uses. Their vast extent throughout the world means that they have a key role in conservation biodiversity. To provide sound basis for management, it is important to recognise emergent properties and understand how influence components In most studies agricultural landscapes, inference restricted single sites or patches because this unit used sampling analysis. For mosaic-level inference, must encompass multiple uses elements within mosaic, be aggregated represent ‘whole’ replicated across mosaics. This paper reviews which replication, identify on biota three categories mosaic structure: habitat, composition spatial configuration elements. The habitat usually dominant occurrence species richness assemblages defined by type (e.g., forest birds). based proportions present, strongly influences faunal assemblages. Heterogeneity diversity often positively correlated with taxonomic separate independent effects properties, generally exerts less than composition. A fourth property, geographic position environmental variation among mosaics, also significantly affects status fauna many studies. Temporal persistence turnover influenced structure but there few long-term data sets allow comparison temporal changes properties. There great scope further investigation mechanisms affect includes responses from wider range (in addition birds), scale responses, change (and potential time-lags response), population demography ecological processes.