Conservation Biology in Sub-Saharan Africa comprehensively explores the challenges and potential solutions to key conservation issues in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Easy to read, this lucid and accessible textbook includes fifteen chapters that cover a full range of conservation topics, including threats to biodiversity, environmental laws, and protected areas management, as well as related topics such as sustainability, poverty, and human-wildlife conflict. This rich resource also includes a background discussion of what conservation biology is, a wide range of theoretical approaches to the subject, and concrete examples of conservation practice in specific African contexts. Strategies are outlined to protect biodiversity whilst promoting economic development in the region.

Hank wraps up Crash Course Ecology by taking a look at the growing fields of conservation biology and restoration ecology, which use all the moves we've learned about in the past eleven weeks, and applies them to protecting ecosystems and to cleaning up the messes that we've already made.

Chapters:
1) Types of Diversity
2) Conservation Biology
A) Small Population Conservation
B) Declining Population Conservation
3) Restoration Ecology
A) Structural Restoration
B) Bioremediation
C) Biological Augmentation

Ecology For All! Is an ecology text designed in modules so that instructors can choose the pieces that make sense to assign in their context. This book has been in development for several years and is a collaborative effort of authors at Gettysburg College, Franklin & Marshall College, and University of Pittsburgh. The textbook covers a wide range of topics including Introduction to Ecology, Evolution, Adaptations to the Physical Environment, various ecological communities, Population Ecology, Behavioral Ecology, Species Interactions, Ecological Succession, Biogeochemical Cycles, Landscape Ecology, Biodiversity, Conservation Biology, and Human Impact on Global Climate among others. The authors have presented on it at the Ecological Society of America meeting and the book continues to evolve.

Why do some organisms go extinct? What impact do humans play in the extinction of animals? What can we do about it? If something is extinct is it truly gone forever? These are some of the major questions that conservation biologists are currently asking. Extinction is when a species no longer has any living members in the wild or in captivity. Extinction can happen for a number of reasons including habitat loss, overhunting, and climate change. Mass extinction is widespread extinction across many species. Right now, we are experiencing the sixth mass extinction event on Earth and it has been primarily caused human activity. Conservation biologists have been hard at work coming up with solutions to prevent extinction of organisms at risk, however, extinction still occurs. But does it have to be permanent? This module walks students through the major processes that cause extinction, what strategies conservation has used so far to prevent extinction, what de-extinction is, and what consequences de-extinction may have through the use of videos, research, and a class debate. 

Review of Conservation Biology for All
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xEZHQE5eNIJtCRQMeUqVzzuftjzOF87DWYkGhV2SFZs

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Islands are hotspots of biodiversity. But they’re in danger. Human activities are disrupting the natural habitats of numerous island plant and animal species, causing them to degrade, fragment, or perish altogether. Including here, in the islands of Japan. In response, the Japanese government has recently committed to a 17% expansion of its network of protected areas, spaces such as national parks that support long-term conservation of biodiversity and natural resources. The proposed expansion is one of the common global strategic plans for biodiversity, specifically, the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. The problem is that experts have no comprehensive, ecologically justified way of determining which areas to include. Now, a team of researchers from Japan and Finland has devised an analytical framework that could make Japan’s protected area expansion as efficient as possible..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Plant diversity is quickly dwindling across the world. That’s put our planet’s pollinators in danger. Pollen contains a variety of nutritional elements that are key to life itself. Not only are global changes affecting pollen amounts, they’re also affecting pollen varieties. This means that many pollinators, including bees, aren’t eating the best-balanced diet they need to survive. Understanding how the elemental ingredients in pollen affect different traits in bees, such as their survival, body mass, and ability to protect themselves, could help scientists determine whether and how the scarcity of specific nutrients affects them. And it could lead to new ways of conserving pollinators and the critical roles they play in many ecosystems. For their part, researchers from Jagiellonian University in Poland examined the effects of an inadequate supply of potassium, sodium, and zinc in pollen on _Osmia bicornis_, the red mason bee..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Life, in all its forms, is a constant balance of energy and matter. A look at any food web reveals how organisms are tightly connected to each other and their environment. On the smallest and most fundamental scale, the process is cyclical. Atoms representing vital minerals flow in a never-ending circuit from one sink to the next. Understanding this flow helps scientists answer questions about how organisms transform food into energy and body mass for growth and survival. But while these strategies tend to vary with species, life stage, and sex, studies often treat members of a population as being, for all intents and purposes, the same. Researchers from Jagiellonian University in Poland are taking a different approach. By tracking the assimilation, excretion, and allocation of the individual minerals found in pollen, they’re beginning to understand how the diet of the red mason bee contributes to its growth and survival and how the nutritional budget differs with life stage and sex..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Forests are disappearing at an alarming rate, with human activities such as logging being a major cause of this loss. One way China is addressing this problem is through so-called mountain closure, that is, by stopping all anthropogenic activity within degraded forests. But precisely how mountain closure affects ecosystem renewal isn’t well known. To answer this question, researchers have turned their attention underground, to fine roots. By following the status of these structures, they’ve shed light on how forests renew themselves over the decades after human activity is stopped. Plants use fine roots to acquire water and nutrients from soil, which gives them a crucial role in terrestrial carbon and nutrient cycling. Because soil composition is key to ecosystem productivity, changes in fine root abundance are one indicator of a forest’s health. This prompted the researchers to use fine roots to assess how forests fare after closure..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.