492 Glossary Conservation concession A type of payment for ecosystem services in which a buyer purchases the right to manage a large tract of natural habitat for conservation purposes instead of commercial exploitation Conservation planning The process of identifying spatially explicit priorities and actions for the conservation of a region’s biodiversity or natural capital Conservation practice or effort Any action taken to maintain environmental quality or to produce environmental improvements Conservation refugees A term for people who, as a result of the establishment of a protected area, have been displaced without fair compensation from the place where they lived, hunted, foraged, or grazed livestock Conservation tillage Tillage that reduces soil disruption in order to conserve organic matter and water and reduce erosion Conservation tourism Tourism that yields a net positive benefit for conservation of biodiversity, i.e where contributions to conservation outweigh environmental impacts See also ECOTOURISM Conserved Of a scientific name, one that the appropriate international body has decided should continue to be used for an organism in cases where a strict application of the Code would mean it had to be replaced Conspecific Belonging to the same species An organism of the same species as another Constitutive defense A defense manufactured and maintained by a plant, regardless of whether it has been attacked by an herbivore or pathogen Consumer surplus A measure of the welfare that people gain from the consumption of goods and services, typically measured as the difference between the price that they are willing and able to pay for a good or service and the actual market price Contemporary (environmental) factors The current abiotic and biotic characteristics of an area, including chemical and physical aspects, as well as the composition of the biotic community Continental drift The movement of continents as a result of plate tectonic processes This was especially important for Southern Hemisphere continents Continental rise An area at the base of the continental slope (see below) between 3000 and 4000 m, where the bottom slope is slight and sediments often accumulate Continental shelf A region of ocean bottom extending from the low water mark at the edge of continents to a depth (greater than 200 m) at which the incline increases markedly and the continental slope (see next) begins Continental slope The ocean bottom extending from the edge of the continental shelf at an average incline of greater than 41 (3000–10,000 m) at which the slope decreases and the continental rise (see above) begins Contour hedgerow intercropping An agricultural system in which crops are regrown in the interspaces between rows of planted woody shrub or tree species that usually are legumes, and in which the woody species are periodically pruned during the cropping season Also called ALLEY CROPPING Contracted vegetation A term for vegetation restricted to wadis that receive additional water supply Control A process or technique of managing the population or limiting the spread of invasive species to reduce the damage they cause after becoming established in a new habitat See also BIOLOGICAL CONTROL Convective mixing Vertical atmospheric mixing produced by the increasing density of a fluid in the upper layer, especially during winter in temperate and polar regions Convention on Biological Diversity (Biodiversity) (abbreviated CBD) An international convention that originated at the Earth Summit of Rio de Janeiro in 1992 Its objectives are stated as ‘‘the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources, including by appropriate access to genetic resources and by appropriate transfer of relevant technologies, taking into account all rights over those resources and to technologies, and by appropriate funding.’’ To date 193 nations have either ratified, acceded to, approved, or accepted the Convention, with the U.S being the most prominent exception Convergence The evolution of similar characters in genetically unrelated or distantly related species, usually as the result of selection in response to similar environmental pressures in different places Also, convergent evolution Conveyance The movement of water through an area For example, by increasing the cross-sectional area available to convey flood waters, floodplains can reduce flood stage Cooperation See SOCIAL COOPERATION Cooperative breeding A social system in which more than two individuals care for young Coppice The regrowth of a felled tree from the stump Coral reef A benthic environment characterized by reefbuilding corals with symbiotic dinoflagellates Coral Triangle A name for the region, located in the waters of southeast Asia (e.g., Indonesia and the Philippines), that contains the highest diversity of corals and other marine organisms Core and satellite model A network of habitat patches in which centrally located core patches harbor stable populations that provide emigrants (or colonists) to ephemeral populations in satellite patches Core range The central part of the home range of an animal, as opposed to its outlying areas Correlation The process of determining the relative age of geological strata Corridor A linear strip of habitat connecting two otherwise isolated patches of suitable habitat, especially in a landscape altered by human activity Corridors can be established through the conservation of existing habitat or by ecological restoration Also, HABITAT CORRIDOR Cosmopolitan Being present everywhere; globally distributed Countryside (habitat) A landscape in which native and human-influenced habitats are combined Countryside biogeography A field aimed at understanding the diversity, distribution, and conservation of species in agricultural and other human-modified landscapes Cover (type) A term for a type of mapped land feature (e.g., forest, freshwater, or grassland).The dominant natural cover