In this era of global environmental change and rapid regime shifts, managing core areas that species require to survive and persist is a grand challenge for conservation. Wildlife monitoring data are often limited or local in scale. The emerging ability to map and track spatial regimes (i.e., the spatial manifestation of state transitions) using advanced geospatial vegetation data has the potential to provide earlier warnings of habitat loss because many species of conservation concern strongly avoid spatial regime boundaries. Using 23 yr of data for the lek locations of Greater Prairie-Chicken (Tympanuchus cupido; GPC) in a remnant grassland ecosystem, we demonstrate how mapping changes in the boundaries between grassland and woodland spatial regimes provide a spatially explicit early warning signal for habitat loss for an iconic and vulnerable grassland-obligate known to be highly sensitive to woody plant encroachment. We tested whether a newly proposed metric for the quantification of spatial regimes captured well-known responses of GPC to woody plant expansion into grasslands. Resource selection functions showed that the grass:woody spatial regime boundary strength explained the probability of 80% of relative lek occurrence, and GPC strongly avoided grass:woody spatial regime boundaries at broad scales. Both findings are consistent with well-known expectations derived from GPC ecology. These results provide strong evidence for vegetation-derived delineations of spatial regimes to serve as generalized signals of early warning for state transitions that have major consequences to biodiversity conservation. Mapping spatial regime boundaries over time provided interpretable early warnings of habitat loss. Woody plant regimes displaced grassland regimes starting from the edges of the study area and constricting inward. Correspondingly, the relative probability of lek occurrence constricted in space. Similarly, the temporal trajectory of spatial regime boundary strength increased over time and moved closer to the observed limit of GPC lek site usage relative to grass:woody boundary strength. These novel spatial metrics allow managers to rapidly screen for early warning signals of spatial regime shifts and adapt management practices to defend and grow habitat cores at broad scales.

中文翻译：

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跟踪空间状况作为对保护问题物种的早期预警

在这个全球环境变化和制度快速更替的时代，管理物种生存和生存所需的核心区域是保护的一项重大挑战。野生动物监测数据通常是有限的或局部的。使用先进的地理空间植被数据绘制和跟踪空间状态（即状态转换的空间表现）的新兴能力有可能提供栖息地丧失的早期警告，因为许多保护关注的物种强烈避免空间状态边界。使用 23 年的数据确定大草原鸡（Tympanuchus cupido; GPC）在残余草地生态系统中，我们展示了草地和林地空间制度之间边界变化的绘图如何为已知对木本植物侵蚀高度敏感的标志性和脆弱草地专性提供栖息地丧失的空间明确预警信号。我们测试了新提出的空间体系量化指标是否捕捉到了众所周知的 GPC 对木本植物扩展到草地的反应。资源选择函数表明，草：木本空间体系边界强度解释了 80% 的相对泄漏发生的概率，并且 GPC 在大尺度上强烈避免草：木本空间体系边界。这两项发现都与 GPC 生态学的众所周知的预期一致。这些结果提供了强有力的证据，证明植被衍生的空间制度描绘可以作为对生物多样性保护产生重大影响的状态转变的早期预警信号。随着时间的推移绘制空间区域边界图提供了可解释的栖息地丧失早期预警。木本植物体系取代了草地体系，从研究区域的边缘开始向内收缩。相应地，lek发生的相对概率在空间上有所收缩。类似地，空间区域边界强度的时间轨迹随着时间的推移而增加，并且更接近于观察到的 GPC lek 站点使用相对于草：木质边界强度的限制。