Pond Management

• Ponds are abundant freshwater that supports high diversity of many rare and threatened species
• small catchments in the pond means that actions within it will have large effects, leading to landscape scale habitats and community heterogeneity
• ponds do not fall into legislation acts because they are often too small to be considered: need to be considered as a network instead
• ponds are managed differently depending on the location; some countries will cherish the water and others will utilise it or degrade it due to urbanisation
• distance of ponds in urban areas is related to their community differences, those further away will have more heterogeneity
• most UK pond diversity is due to turnover meaning more ponds would need to be conserved
• spatial structuring of communities in ponds affects the conservation strategy used: nested or turnover
• nested is when all species are found in one site and subsets in other sites, meaning one site can be conserved
• turnover is when sites contain different species, meaning all sites must be conserved
• Ponds can be dug and will colonise quickly - new ponds contribute the most to biodiversity across invertebrates and amphibians