Climate-Smart Design for Ecosystem Management: A Test Application for Coral Reefs

Environmental Management - The interactive and cumulative impacts of climate change on natural resources such as coral reefs present numerous challenges for conservation planning and management....     

Moving from agenda to action: evaluating local climate change action plans

Climate change is conventionally recognised as a large-scale issue resolved through regional or national policy initiatives. However, little research has been done to directly evaluate local climate change action plans. This study examines 40 recently adopted local climate change action plans in the US and analyses how well they recognise the concepts of climate change and prepare for climate change mitigation and adaptation. The results indicate that local climate change action plans have a high level of ‘awareness’, moderate ‘analysis capabilities’ for climate change, and relatively limited ‘action approaches’ for climate change mitigation. The study also identifies specific factors influencing the quality of these local jurisdictional plans. Finally, it provides policy recommendations to improve planning for climate change at the local level.     

Digging Deeper: A Case Study of Farmer Conceptualization of Ecosystem Services in the American South

The interest in improved environmental sustainability of agriculture via biodiversity provides an opportunity for placed-based research on the conceptualization and articulation of ecosystem services. Yet, few studies have explored how farmers conceptualize the relationship between their farm and nature and by extension ecosystem services. Examining how farmers in the Southern Piedmont of South Carolina discuss and explain the role of nature on their farm, we create a detail-rich picture of how they perceive ecosystem services and their contributions to the agroeconomy. Using 34 semi-structured interviews, we developed a detail-rich qualitative portrait of these farmers’ conceptualizations of ecosystem services. Farmers’ conceptualization of four ecosystem services: provisioning, supporting, regulating, and cultural are discussed, as well as articulation of disservices. Results of interviews show that most interviewees expressed a basic understanding of the relationship between nature and agriculture and many articulated benefits provided by nature to their farm. Farmers referred indirectly to most services, though they did not attribute services to biodiversity or ecological function. While farmers have a general understanding and appreciation of nature, they lack knowledge on specific ways biodiversity benefits their farm. This lack of knowledge may ultimately limit farmer decision-making and land management to utilize ecosystem services for environmental and economic benefits. These results suggest that additional communication with farmers about ecosystem services is needed as our understanding of these benefits increases. This change may require collaboration between conservation biology professionals and extension and agriculture professionals to extended successful biomass provisioning services to other ecosystem services.