A 2.5‐million‐year perspective on coarse‐filter strategies for conserving nature's stage

Climate change will require novel conservation strategies. One such tactic is a coarse‐filter approach that focuses on conserving nature's stage (CNS) rather than the actors (individual species). However, there is a temporal mismatch between the long‐term goals of conservation and the short‐term nature of most ecological studies, which leaves many assumptions untested. Paleoecology provides a valuable perspective on coarse‐filter strategies by marshaling the natural experiments of the past to contextualize extinction risk due to the emerging impacts of climate change and anthropogenic threats. We reviewed examples from the paleoecological record that highlight the strengths, opportunities, and caveats of a CNS approach. We focused on the near‐time geological past of the Quaternary, during which species were subjected to widespread changes in climate and concomitant changes in the physical environment in general. Species experienced a range of individualistic responses to these changes, including community turnover and novel associations, extinction and speciation, range shifts, changes in local richness and evenness, and both equilibrium and disequilibrium responses. Due to the dynamic nature of species responses to Quaternary climate change, a coarse‐filter strategy may be appropriate for many taxa because it can accommodate dynamic processes. However, conservationists should also consider that the persistence of landforms varies across space and time, which could have potential long‐term consequences for geodiversity and thus biodiversity.     

Mud,muddle and models in the knowledge value-chain to action on tropical peatland conservation

Tropical peatlands are known not only for their high, area-based, carbon emissions in response to land-use change but also as hot spots of debate about associated data uncertainties. Perspectives are still evolving on factors underlying the variability and uncertainty. Debate includes the ways of reducing emissions through rewetting, reforestation and agroforestry. A knowledge value-chain that is long and complex links (a) fundamental understanding of peat and peatland processes leading to sciencebased quantification and default values, (b) willingness and (c) ability to act towards emission reduction, and ultimately (d) to local, national and global actions that effectively provide rules, incentives and motivation to conserve peat and reduce emissions. We discuss this value chain, its stakeholders and issues that still remain partially unresolved. We conclude that, to shorten the denial and conspiracy-theory stages of debate that otherwise slow down steps B and C, networks of international and national scientists have to be involved at the early stage of identifying policysensitive environmental issues. Models span part of the knowledge value-chain but transition of analysis units requires specific attention, from soil volumes through area and commodity flows to opportunities for reductions. While drainage of peatlands triggers landscape-scale increases in emissions, factors beyond drainage depth, including nutrient supply, may have a major influence on decomposition rates. Attempts to disentangle the contributions of plant and peat-based respiration in surface flux measurements involve assumptions that cannot be easily verified in comparisons between land uses. With progress on A leading to new internationally accepted defaults and with resistance on step B reduced, the reality of C and lack of working solutions for D is currently constraining further progress.     

Incorporating connectivity into conservation planning for the optimal representation of multiple species and ecosystem services

Conservation planning tends to focus on protecting species’ ranges or landscape connectivity but seldom both—particularly in the case of diverse taxonomic assemblages and multiple planning goals. Therefore, information on potential trade-offs between maintaining landscape connectivity and achieving other conservation objectives is lacking. We developed an optimization approach to prioritize the maximal protection of species’ ranges, ecosystem types, and forest carbon stocks, while also including habitat connectivity for range-shifting species and dispersal corridors to link protected area. We applied our approach to Sabah, Malaysia, where the state government mandated an increase in protected-area coverage of approximately 305,000 ha but did not specify where new protected areas should be. Compared with a conservation planning approach that did not incorporate the 2 connectivity features, our approach increased the protection of dispersal corridors and elevational connectivity by 13% and 21%, respectively. Coverage of vertebrate and plant species’ ranges and forest types were the same whether connectivity was included or excluded. Our approach protected 2% less forest carbon and 3% less butterfly range than when connectivity features were not included. Hence, the inclusion of connectivity into conservation planning can generate large increases in the protection of landscape connectivity with minimal loss of representation of other conservation targets.     

New tools in local energy planning: experimenting with scenarios,public participation and environmental assessment

This article presents a model for local energy planning and its application in a full-scale experiment in a Swedish municipality. The model is based on legal requirement, research findings and standards of good practice and includes a combination of analytical and procedural tools intended to support rational decision-making: external scenarios, a citizens’ panel, life cycle analysis and qualitative environmental assessment (EA). The application of the model indicates that the decision-support tools selected can give several new and valuable inputs to local energy planning, such as local knowledge and values through citizen dialogue and comprehensive EAs. However, the experiment also shows that there are several challenges involved in applying the tools, for example, it is difficult to get citizens and the industry to participate and that it is complicated to combine several different tools for decision-making into a single planning process. Moreover, the experiences from the application suggest that the model for local energy planning show great potential but needs to be improved before it can be used as a standard of good practice.     

Development of sustainable energy systems in Swedish municipalities: A matter of path dependency and power relations

Abstract

Case studies of two Swedish municipalities indicate that the general energy area was divided into three independent policy areas: one dealing with supply, one with conservation and one with environmental questions related to the Agenda 21 vision of an ecologically sustainable energy system. However, the dominant energy policy area in the municipalities was supply policy. This article discusses why supply policy is dominant and the consequences of this for energy system development. Analysis of this pattern reveals that powerful actors, such as local energy companies, were able to mobilize support for supply policies, not least because they owned the energy plants and distribution networks. These actors were also represented in many different decision arenas; in contrast, actors representing the other energy policy areas often lacked power and resources, and were represented in only a few decision arenas.     

Age-size plasticity for reproduction in monocarpic plants

Empirical and theoretical investigations of monocarpy have usually addressed the question of minimum or threshold sizes for reproduction. However, the range of flowering sizes observed in many monocarpic species is extraordinarily large (well beyond what can be called a "threshold"), and the sizes of flowering and nonflowering plants may overlap greatly. We attempt to explain these reproductive patterns in terms of optimal reaction norms predicted by simple deterministic life history models. We assume that individuals differ in their growth trajectories due to the heterogeneous quality of microsites and ask how the optimal age and size at flowering varies with environmental variation in growth and for different assumptions about fecundity and mortality. Under two very different growth functions (one with no age- or size-related decline in growth rate and another with such a decline as size approaches an asymptote), the optimal reaction norms imply considerable plasticity for size at reproduction, particularly when poor growth is associated with higher mortality or lower asymptotic size. Deterministic models such as these may be more applicable to long-lived than to short-lived monocarps, because fitness potential should be less affected by stochastic variability in yearly growing condition in the former than in the latter. We consider the case of a tropical monocarpic and masting tree species, Cerberiopsis candelabra (Apocynaceae), and show that our model results can account for wide ranges of reproductive size and overlap in size of flowering and nonflowering plants, in accord with observation. We suggest that empirical attention to norms of reaction across growth environments will be a more profitable approach than investigation of size thresholds per se.     

Trends in nitrate concentrations and determination of its origin using stable isotopes (18O and 15N) in groundwater of the Western Central Valley, Costa Rica

A study was conducted to evaluate long-term trends in nitrate concentrations and to try to identify the origin of nitrate using stable isotopes (15N(NO3-) and 18O(NO3-)) in the aquifers of the western Central Valley, Costa Rica, where more than 1 million people depend on groundwater to satisfy their daily needs. Data from 20 sites periodically sampled for 4 to 17 years indicate an increasing trend in nitrate concentrations at five sites, which in a period ranging from 10 to 40 years, will exceed recommended maximum concentrations. Results of isotopic analysis indicate a correspondence between land use patterns and the isotopic signature of nitrate in groundwater and suggest that urbanization processes without adequate waste disposal systems, followed by coffee fertilization practices, are threatening water quality in the region. We conclude that groundwater management in this area is not sustainable, and that land use substitution processes from agricultural activity to residential occupation that do not have proper sewage disposal systems may cause a significant increment in the nitrate contaminant load.     

Social Capital and Sustainability in a Community under Threat

Engaging with dialogue concerning the relevance and applicability of social capital to a model of sustainable community development, we illustrate an in-depth case of a community experiencing an ideological clash with the dominant politico-societal structures. We argue that while the exclusivity of bonding social capital has been described as the 'dark side', it may be essential for progressive sustainable community development (PSCD). When faced with a development threat, such bonds are essential for building links, bridges and solidarity, enabling cultural reproduction and promoting environmental protection for sustainability.