Biology subjects

Miu, I. V.

Publications and source records attributed to Miu, I. V..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

Identification of areas of very high biodiversity value to achieve the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 key commitments. A case study using terrestrial Natura 2000 network in Romania

BackgroundThe European Union strives to increase protected areas of the EU terrestrial surface to 30% by year 2030, of which one third should be strictly protected. Designation of the Natura 2000 network, the backbone of nature protection in the EU, was mostly an expert-opinion process with little systematic conservation planning. The designation of the Natura 2000 network in Romania followed the same non-systematic approach, resulting in a suboptimal representation of invertebrates and plants. To help identify areas with very high biodiversity without repeating past planning missteps, we present a reproducible example of spatial prioritization using Romanias current terrestrial Natura 2000 network and coarse-scale terrestrial species occurrence. MethodsWe used 371 terrestrial Natura 2000 Sites of Community Importance (Natura 2000 SCI), designated to protect 164 terrestrial species listed under Annex II of Habitats Directive in Romania in our spatial prioritization analyses (marine Natura 2000 sites and species were excluded). Species occurrences in terrestrial Natura 2000 sites were aggregated at a Universal Traverse Mercator spatial resolution of 1 km2. To identify priority terrestrial Natura 2000 sites for species conservation, and to explore if the Romanian Natura 2000 network sufficiently represents species included in Annex II of Habitats Directive, we used Zonation v4, a decision support software tool for spatial conservation planning. We carried out the analyses nationwide (all Natura 2000 sites) as well as separately for each biogeographic region (i.e., Alpine, Continental, Pannonian, Steppic and Black Sea). ResultsThe results of spatial prioritization of terrestrial Natura 2000 vary greatly by planning scenario. The performance of national-level planning of top priorities is minimal. On average, when 33% of the landscape of Natura 2000 sites is protected, only 20% of the distribution of species listed in Annex II of Habitats Directive are protected. As a consequence, the representation of species by priority terrestrial Natura 2000 sites is lessened when compared to the initial set of species. When planning by taxonomic group, the top-priority areas include only 10% of invertebrate distribution in Natura 2000. When selecting top-priority areas by biogeographical region, there are significantly fewer gap species than in the national level and by taxa scenarios; thusly, the scenario outperforms the national-level prioritization. The designation of strictly protected areas as required by the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 should be followed by setting clear objectives, including a good representation of species and habitats at the biogeographical region level.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2020

Governance networks around grasslands with contrasting management history

Romanian grasslands have high nature value, being among the most important biodiversity hotspots at the European level. The European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) contradicts the Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 objective by hindering coordinated grassland governance and collaboration among the involved actors. At the European level, few attempts have been made in creating conceptual strategies for implementing conservation measures in a multi-actor and multi-scale governance setting. Our paper focuses on a comparative network analysis of grassland landscape governance of three Romanian regions (Iron Gates Natural Park - SW; Sighisoara - Tarnava Mare - center; and Dobrogea - SE), representatives for grassland management in mountain and lowland settings. We investigated the structural characteristics of one-mode directed grassland governance networks in the three protected areas (standard cohesion and reciprocity metrics and exponential random graph models), the position of institutions participating in networks (node-level centrality metrics), and the perception of CAP influence on grassland governance by farmers benefiting of CAP agri-environmental payments. In Sighisoara, grasslands governance has been centralized but biodiversity-friendly, while in Iron Gates, grasslands were traditionally managed through a decentralized, community-level system, and this type of governance continues to date. Whereas for Dobrogeas grasslands, the governance was performed in an intensive, centralized state-run management regime during the communist time and by large landowners after the transition period ended. Our findings illustrate the structure of the three governance networks and dissimilar patterns of collaboration, indicating distinct particularities to be considered when exploring barriers to and options for successful governance in traditionally managed grasslands in the context of CAP measures-driven management.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2018

Who is researching biodiversity hotspots in Eastern Europe? A case study on grasslands from Romania

Farming landscapes of Europe are vital arenas for social-ecological sustainability because of their significant coverage and potential to integrate food production with biodiversity conservation. Knowledge gathered by scientific research is a critical ingredient for developing and implementing socio-economically and ecologically sustainable grassland management strategies for grasslands. The quality of scientific knowledge and its potential to address grasslands as complex social-ecological systems is strongly dependent on the creativity and scientific ambition of the researcher, but also on the network (from academic and non-academic sectors) around the researcher. The goal of this paper is to map the research network around Romanias grasslands. These systems have exceptional socio-cultural and economic values and are between the most biodiverse ecosystems of the world. Considering the multiple threats to these grasslands, it is an urgent need to understand the existing scientific knowledge profile around these systems. This paper aims at using bibliometrics analysis, a well-developed scientific domain that envisages network theory to analyze relationships between affiliations network, co-authorship network, and co-word analysis. The number of studies targeting grassland management in Romania is increasing mainly thanks to international involvement. However, the management of the grasslands is still deficient and the contribution of science to the process is virtually absent. The subject of research is mainly related to the biological and ecological characteristics of grasslands, a notable absence from internationally visible research being the management of grasslands, especially in the context of EU Common Agricultural Policies. To increase scientific performance, and better inform EU and local policies on grassland management, Romanian researchers should better capitalize on international collaborations and local academic leaders. Our findings can be used to identify research gaps and to improve collaboration and knowledge exchange between practitioners, scientists, policy makers, and stakeholders.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2018

Empirical analysis and modelling of Argos Doppler location errors in Romania

BackgroundAdvances in wildlife tracking technology have allowed researchers to understand the spatial ecology of many terrestrial and aquatic animal species. Argos Doppler is a technology that is widely used for wildlife tracking owing to the small size and low weight of the Argos transmitters. This allows them to be fitted to small-bodied species. The longer lifespan of the Argos units in comparison to units outfitted with miniaturized global positioning system (GPS) technology has also recommended their use. In practice, large Argos location errors often occur due to communication conditions such as transmitter settings, local environment, and the behavior of the tracked individual.\n\nMethodsConsidering the geographic specificity of errors and the lack of benchmark studies in Eastern Europe, the research objectives were: (1) to evaluate the accuracy of Argos Doppler technology under various environmental conditions in Romania, (2) to investigate the effectiveness of straightforward destructive filters for improving Argos Doppler data quality, and (3) to provide guidelines for processing Argos Doppler wildlife monitoring data. The errors associated with Argos locations in four geographic locations in Romania were assessed during static, low-speed and high-speed tests. The effectiveness of the Douglas Argos distance angle filter algorithm was then evaluated to ascertain its effect on the minimization of localization errors.\n\nResultsArgos locations received in the tests had larger associated horizontal errors than those indicated by the operator of the Argos system, including under ideal reception conditions. Positional errors were similar to those obtained in other studies outside of Europe. The errors were anisotropic, with larger longitudinal errors for the vast majority of the data. Errors were mostly related to speed of the Argos transmitter at the time of reception, but other factors such as topographical conditions and orientation of antenna at the time of the transmission also contributed to receiving low-quality data. The Douglas-Argos filter successfully excluded the largest errors while retaining a large amount of data when the threshold was set to the local scale (2 km).\n\nDiscussionFilter selection requires knowledge about the movement patterns and behavior of the species of interest, and the parametrization of the selected filter typically requires a trial and error approach. Selecting the proper filter reduces the errors while retaining a large amount of data. However, the post-processed data typically includes large positional errors; thus, we recommend incorporating Argos error metrics such as error ellipse or use complex modeling approaches when working with filtered data.

ecology↗