Governing trade-offs in ecosystem services and disservices to achieve human–wildlife coexistence

Sustaining wildlife populations, which provide both ecosystem services and disservices, represents a worldwide conservation challenge. The ecosystem services and Ostrom's social–ecological systems frameworks have been adopted across natural and social sciences to characterize benefits from nature. Despite their generalizability, individually they do not include explicit tools for addressing the sustainable management of many wildlife populations. For instance, Ostrom's framework does not specifically address competing perspectives on wildlife, whereas the ecosystem services framework provides a limited representation of the social and governance context wherein such competing perspectives are embedded. We developed a unified social–ecological framework of ecosystem disservices and services (SEEDS) that advances both frameworks by explicitly acknowledging the importance of competing wildlife perspectives embedded in the social and governance contexts. The SEEDS framework emulates the hierarchical structure of Ostrom's social–ecological systems, but adds subsystems reflecting heterogeneous stakeholder views and experiences of wildlife-based services and disservices. To facilitate operationalizing SEEDS and further broader analyses across human–wildlife systems, we devised a list of variables to describe SEEDS subsystems, such as types and level of services and disservices, cost and benefit sharing, and social participation of stakeholders. Steps to implement SEEDS involve engaging local communities and stakeholders to define the subsystems, analyze interactions and outcomes, and identify leverage points and actions to remedy unwanted outcomes. These steps connect SEEDS with other existing approaches in social–ecological research and can guide analyses across systems or within individual systems to provide new insights and management options for sustainable human–wildlife coexistence.     

Alternative Perspectives on the Sustainability of Alaska's Commercial Fisheries

Many believe commercial fisheries in Alaska (U.S.A.) are sustainability success stories, but ongoing socioeconomic problems across the state raise questions about how this sustainability is being defined and evaluated. Problems such as food insecurity and the disenfranchisement of Alaska Natives from fishing rights are well documented, yet these concerns are obscured by marketing campaigns that convey images of flourishing fishing communities and initiatives to certify Alaska's fisheries as responsibly managed. Fisheries management mandates and approaches built on such metrics and technologies as maximum sustainable yield and systems of tradable quotas actually serve to constrain, circumscribe, and marginalize some Alaskans’ opportunities for effecting change in how the benefits of these fisheries are allocated. Beneath the narrative of sustainability, these management technologies perpetuate a cognitive ecological model of sustainability that is oriented to single‐species outcomes, that casts people as parasites, and thus assumes the necessity of trade‐offs between biological and social goals. Alternative cognitive models are available that draw metaphors from different ecological concepts such as keystone species and mutualisms. Such models, when used to inform management approaches, may improve societal outcomes in Alaska and elsewhere by promoting food security and sustainability through diversified natural resource harvest strategies that are more flexible and responsive to environmental variability and change. Perspectivas Alternativas sobre la Sustentabilidad de las Pesquerías Comerciales en Alaska     

Insights for Integrated Conservation from Attitudes of People toward Protected Areas Near Hwange National Park,Zimbabwe

Increase in human settlements at the edge of protected areas (PAs) is perceived as a major threat to conservation of biodiversity. Although it is crucial to integrate the interests of surrounding communities into PA management, key drivers of changes in local populations and the effects of conservation on local livelihoods and perceptions remain poorly understood. We assessed population changes from 1990 to 2010 in 9 villages located between 2 PAs with different management policies (access to natural resources or not). We conducted semi‐directive interviews at the household level (n =217) to document reasons for settlement in the area and villager's attitudes toward the PAs. We examined drivers of these attitudes relative to household typology, feelings about conservation, and concerns for the future with mixed linear models. Population increased by 61% from 2000 to 2010, a period of political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe. Forty‐seven percent of immigrants were attracted by the area; others had been resettled from other villages or were returning to family lands. Attitudes toward PAs were generally positive, but immigrants attracted by the area and who used resources within the PA with fewer restrictions expressed more negative attitudes toward PAs. Household location, losses due to wild animals, and restrictions on access to natural resources were the main drivers of this negative attitude. Profit‐seeking migrants did not expect these constraints and were particularly concerned with local overpopulation and access to natural resources. To avoid socio‐ecological traps near PAs (i.e., unforeseen reduced adaptive capacity) integrated conservation should address mismatches between management policy and local expectations. This requires accounting for endogenous processes, for example, local socio‐ecological dynamics and values that shape the coexistence between humans and wildlife. Percepciones para Conservación Integrada a Partir de las Actitudes de las Personas hacia Áreas Protegidas cerca del Parque Nacional Hwangem Zimbabwe     

Design trade-offs in rights-based management of small-scale fisheries

Small-scale fisheries collectively have a large ecological footprint and are key sources of food security, especially in developing countries. Many of the data-intensive approaches to fishery management are infeasible in these fisheries, but a strategy that has emerged to overcome these challenges is the establishment of territorial user rights for fisheries (TURFs). In this approach, exclusive fishing zones are established for groups of stakeholders, which eliminates the race to fish with other groups. A key challenge, however, is setting the size of TURFs—too large and the number of stakeholders sharing them impedes collective action, and too small and the movement of target fish species in and out of the TURFs effectively removes the community's exclusive access. We assessed the size of 137 TURFs from across the globe relative to this design challenge by applying theoretical models that predict their performance. We estimated that roughly two-thirds of these TURFs were sized ideally to overcome the challenges posed by resource movement and fisher group size. However, for most of the remaining TURFs, all possible sizes were either too small to overcome the resource-movement challenge or too large to overcome the collective action challenge. Our results suggest these fisheries, which target mobile species in densely populated regions, may need additional interventions to be successful.     

“绿色流域建设”的湖泊富营养化防治思路及其在洱海的应用

虽然经过“十一五”阶段的治理,但我国湖泊富营养化形势依然严峻,湖泊富营养化治理仍然是目前我国水环境领域最为艰巨的任务之一. 根据长期在湖泊富营养化治理领域的研究与实践经验,提出我国应“立足流域进行统筹规划和治理,建设湖泊绿色流域”的湖泊富营养化防治思路. 通过梳理和提炼,提出了湖泊绿色流域构建的六大体系,即“产业结构调整控污减排、污染源工程治理与控制、低污染水处理与净化、清水产流机制修复、湖泊水体生境改善、流域系统管理与生态文明建设”. 同时,将“湖泊绿色流域建设”思路应用在洱海水污染防治工作中,针对洱海水污染特征与治理定位,提出了洱海水污染防治的技术路线,构建了洱海绿色流域建设的六大体系.      

河湖水系连通分类体系探讨

河湖水系连通是保障国家水安全的治水新方略,科学的分类体系是开展河湖水系连通研究和生产实践的必然要求。论文结合河湖水系连通特点和内涵,提出五项分类原则:科学性、系统性、主导性、区域性和可操作性。综合考虑河湖水系连通的自然属性和经济社会属性,遵循五项分类原则,从连通性质、连通功能、连通区域、连通尺度、连通对象、连通时效、空间格局和连通方向等方面进行分类,初步构建了河湖水系连通分类体系,并对国内典型案例进行了归类;选择基于连通性质的分类、基于连通功能的分类和基于地区水资源特征的分类等三个主要分类展开分析,探讨了三种类型的连通特性、连通目标等主要问题。     

Development of a framework for fire risk assessment using remote sensing and geographic information system technologies

Forest fires play a critical role in landscape transformation, vegetation succession, soil degradation and air quality. Improvements in fire risk estimation are vital to reduce the negative impacts of fire, either by lessen burn severity or intensity through fuel management, or by aiding the natural vegetation recovery using post-fire treatments. This paper presents the methods to generate the input variables and the risk integration developed within the Firemap project (funded under the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology) to map wildland fire risk for several regions of Spain. After defining the conceptual scheme for fire risk assessment, the paper describes the methods used to generate the risk parameters, and presents proposals for their integration into synthetic risk indices. The generation of the input variables was based on an extensive use of geographic information system and remote sensing technologies, since the project was intended to provide a spatial and temporal assessment of risk conditions. All variables were mapped at 1 km² spatial resolution, and were integrated into a web-mapping service system. This service was active in the summer of 2007 for semi-operational testing of end-users. The paper also presents the first validation results of the danger index, by comparing temporal trends of different danger components and fire occurrence in the different study regions.     

Obscuring Ecosystem Function with Application of the Ecosystem Services Concept

Abstract: Conservationists commonly have framed ecological concerns in economic terms to garner political support for conservation and to increase public interest in preserving global biodiversity. Beginning in the early 1980s, conservation biologists adapted neoliberal economics to reframe ecosystem functions and related biodiversity as ecosystem services to humanity. Despite the economic success of programs such as the Catskill/Delaware watershed management plan in the United States and the creation of global carbon exchanges, today's marketplace often fails to adequately protect biodiversity. We used a Marxist critique to explain one reason for this failure and to suggest a possible, if partial, response. Reframing ecosystem functions as economic services does not address the political problem of commodification. Just as it obscures the labor of human workers, commodification obscures the importance of the biota (ecosystem workers) and related abiotic factors that contribute to ecosystem functions. This erasure of work done by ecosystems impedes public understanding of biodiversity. Odum and Odum's radical suggestion to use the language of ecosystems (i.e., emergy or energy memory) to describe economies, rather than using the language of economics (i.e., services) to describe ecosystems, reverses this erasure of the ecosystem worker. Considering the current dominance of economic forces, however, implementing such solutions would require social changes similar in magnitude to those that occurred during the 1960s. Niklas Luhmann argues that such substantive, yet rapid, social change requires synergy among multiple societal function systems (i.e., economy, education, law, politics, religion, science), rather than reliance on a single social sphere, such as the economy. Explicitly presenting ecosystem services as discreet and incomplete aspects of ecosystem functions not only allows potential economic and environmental benefits associated with ecosystem services, but also enables the social and political changes required to ensure valuation of ecosystem functions and related biodiversity in ways beyond their measurement on an economic scale.     

生草栽培对三种岭南水果种植系统的生态经济影响评价

综合运用能值、经济与土壤生态学分析方法,以传统清耕模式为对照,定量研究了生草栽培对荔枝（LitchichinensisSonn）、龙眼（DimocarpuslonganLour）和番荔枝（AnnonasquamosaLinn）三种岭南水果种植系统的生态经济影响。整合系统物质流、能量流和货币流,综合分析其自然资源基础、经济发展状况及可持续发展程度,并将土壤有机质的消耗纳入不可更新自然资源能值投入分析,为岭南水果业生草栽培与否提供科学依据。结果表明,生草栽培可以将荔枝和龙眼种植系统的能值可持续性从传统清耕模式的0．16和0．46分别提升到0．17和0．47;而使番荔枝种植系统的能值可持续性从传统清耕模式的0．59降至0．45。同时,生草栽培可提高荔枝和番荔枝种植系统的经济效益,而降低龙眼种植系统的经济效益。所有案例结果均表明,生草栽培可降低果园土壤有机质的消耗。     

Strategic directions for agent-based modeling: avoiding the YAAWN syndrome

In this short communication, we examine how agent-based modeling has become common in land change science and is increasingly used to develop case studies for particular times and places. There is a danger that the research community is missing a prime opportunity to learn broader lessons from the use of agent-based modeling (ABM), or at the very least not sharing these lessons more widely. How do we find an appropriate balance between empirically rich, realistic models and simpler theoretically grounded models? What are appropriate and effective approaches to model evaluation in light of uncertainties not only in model parameters but also in model structure? How can we best explore hybrid model structures that enable us to better understand the dynamics of the systems under study, recognizing that no single approach is best suited to this task? Under what circumstances – in terms of model complexity, model evaluation, and model structure – can ABMs be used most effectively to lead to new insight for stakeholders? We explore these questions in the hope of helping the growing community of land change scientists using models in their research to move from ‘yet another model’ to doing better science with models.