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I’ve published several links to global maps of coastal hypoxia. Now, NASA has produced a new map of global hypoxic zones, based on Diaz and Rosenberg’s . Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems. in Science, 321(5891), 926-929.  NASA’s EOS Image of the Day writes on  Aquatic Dead Zones.

Red circles on this map show the location and size of many of our planet’s dead zones. Black dots show where dead zones have been observed, but their size is unknown.

It’s no coincidence that dead zones occur downriver of places where human population density is high (darkest brown). Some of the fertilizer we apply to crops is washed into streams and rivers. Fertilizer-laden runoff triggers explosive planktonic algae growth in coastal areas. The algae die and rain down into deep waters, where their remains are like fertilizer for microbes. The microbes decompose the organic matter, using up the oxygen. Mass killing of fish and other sea life often results.

Related posts:

1. Increase in Number of Coastal Dead Zones
2. Mapping anoxic zones – pt 2
3. Anoxic zones – mapping ecosystem tradeoffs (a start)

While there has been substantial agreement that a followup to the MA was needed there has not been agreement on how to do it.  Like the MA, this new panel will be modelled on the IPCC and it will probably meet in 2011.   It is supposed to conduct periodic assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services at global, regional and sub-regional scales that address policy relevant questions, identify research gaps, and build capacity to address these issues.

The MA had a huge impact on the research community, changing the questions that many scientists, including myself decided to address.  Hopefully, this new panel will provide a useful focus for ecosystem service research, however I worry a bit about an over focus on biodiversity, and a lack of attention to agriculture, soils, water, and social change all of which are essential to understand ecosystem services.

Also while there has been ongoing concern about how to create and fund an ecosystem service assessment, and has also been a lot of concern over who would operate it (i.e. that it have a strong scientific foundation), as well as how it will fit with ongoing global change research programs such as IHDP and PECS, as well as DIVERSITAS. These things remain unclear for IPBES.

Nature reports:

In Busan, negotiations stretched late into the night as delegates debated the scope of the proposed IPBES, including the specifics of how it will be funded. “There was concern among the developed countries that this not become a huge bureaucracy,” says Nuttall. “Governments wanted to be reassured that it would be lean and mean and streamlined.”

Another bone of contention was to what extent IPBES would tackle emerging issues or areas of contested science. In the end, it was agreed that the body will draw attention to “new topics” in biodiversity and ecosystem science. “If there had been something like this before, then new results on issues such as ocean acidification, dead zones in the ocean and the biodiversity impacts of biofuels would have been rushed to the inboxes of policymakers, instead of coming to their attention by osmosis,” says Nuttall.

Among the governments who assented to the IPBES’s creation were the European Union, the United States, and Brazil. The plan will come before the general assembly of the United Nations, slated to meet in September, for official approval. Those involved with the process say that that the UN creation of the new body is a virtual certainty.

It will be interesting to see how IPBES evolves. I think it is very important that an excellent team of broad thinking scientists with experience in large scientific assessment are chosen to lead this project.

Related posts:

1. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Wins Environmental Prize
2. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Research Needs
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1) Parks can help local people.  Protected areas reduced poverty in surrounding areas in Costa Rica and Thailand by K.S. Andam and other in PNAS (doi:/10.1073/pnas.0914177107)

2) Evidence for a long Anthropocene.   Pleistocene extinctions of mega-herbivores may have lead to global cooling due to reduction on methane.  Methane emissions from extinct megafauna by Felisa A. Smith and others in Nature Geoscience(doi:/10.1038/ngeo877)

3) Evosystem services, the services of evolution.  By Daniel Faith and others.  Evosystem services: an evolutionary perspective on the links between biodiversity and human well-being (doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2010.04.002).  Evosystem services seem fall into the category of regulating and supporting services to me.  However, an interesting idea.  It would be nice to see it further developed.

4)  A bit older, Reflections on how to make global scientific assessments better. From new journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability How to make global assessments more effective: lessons from the assessment community by Dale Rothman and others. (doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.09.002)

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Change in P. falciparum malaria endemicity between 1900 and 2007. Negative values denote a reduction in endemicity, positive values an increase.

From looking at these changes and their causes they find that:

1) widespread claims that rising mean temperatures have already led to increases in worldwide malaria morbidity and mortality are largely at odds with observed decreasing global trends in both its endemicity and geographic extent.

2) the proposed future effects of rising temperatures on endemicity are at least one order of magnitude smaller than changes observed since about 1900 and up to two orders of magnitude smaller than those that can be achieved by the effective scale-up of key control measures.

Predictions of an intensification of malaria in a warmer world, based on extrapolated empirical relationships or biological mechanisms, must be set against a context of a century of warming that has seen marked global declines in the disease and a substantial weakening of the global correlation between malaria endemicity and climate.

SciDev.net has a news article that includes some responses from critics of the study.

Related posts:

1. Global and National Malaria Maps
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3. The non-suprising dynamics of climate change

A new paper by H.E. Jones and colleagues compares cultivars of different ages under organic and non-organic systems, and concludes that modern varieties simply aren’t suited to organic systems.

2) The environmentalism of the poor. The poor want biomass not biodiversity is the unsurprising result on a new literature review from the Nature Conservancy reports SciDev.net.

“People just don’t care about biodiversity,” said Craig Leisher of the US-based Nature Conservancy, at the meeting, ‘Linking biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction: what, why and how?’ held at the UK’s Zoological Society of London.Leisher, who conducted the research with Neil Larsen, also from the Nature Conservancy, gave the example of a poor fisherman, for whom the route out of poverty is to catch more fish — not more kinds of fish. …

But Matt Walpole, head of the UN Environment Programme’s Ecosystem Assessment Programme, and an author of the Science study, warned that the finding that biomass was more important than biodiversity was context-specific.

“If one thinks in terms of consumptive use then amount is important,” he said. But in agriculture, for example, biodiversity is important.

“Variability allows adaptability to variations in the ecosystem … if you’ve got variation then you are more resistant to shocks.”

3) Agriculture vs. Fish. On Nature’s Climate Feedback blog Olive Heffernan reports on PISCES Conference:

Jake Rice and … economist Serge Garcia, are concerned that measures to conserve marine biodiversity are in contradiction with policies to protect food security, with the likely upshot that both will fail to address their respective goals.

The conundrum is straightforward: by mid-century, there’ll be an additional 2 billion people on earth, each of whom will need to eat. In total, they’ll require an extra 3.65*108 of dietary protein. Forecasts suggest that we’ll need an 11% increase in irrigation for grain production just to keep pace with human population growth, not withstanding the impacts of climate change on crops and water availability. Right now, one-third of the world’s population relies on fish and fisheries products for at least one-fifth of their annual protein intake; if that continues to be the case, we’ll need around 70 million metric tonnes more fish protein by 2050, says Rice.

That’s something like 75-100% of current fish protein production. So how can we generate this and manage our fisheries? Rice outlines several possible options, each of which involves a conflict with environmental management. …

The problem, says Rice, is that these clearly conflicting policy goals aren’t being looked at by the same people at a high enough level. Now that the old problem of fisheries governance is being met with the newer problems of climate change and rapid population growth, we need a merger of these discussions, he says. He’d like to see the Convention on Biological Diversity pay more attention to the sustainable food dimension of their mandate and the Food and Agricultural Organization speaking with the CBD at a higher level. Eventually, says Rice, the UN General Assembly should be the forum to look at merging and prioritizing these policies.

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1. Jon Foley argues for resilient integration of industrial and organic agriculture
2. Low input agriculture as a tool for poverty alleviation
3. Interaction of agriculture and climate change: opportunties of synergistic policies

Natural Capital Project – Policy and Finance Specialist

World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the global conservation organization, seeks a talented colleague to help lead The Natural Capital Project’s efforts to develop innovative policy and finance approaches for mainstreaming ecosystem services. The Natural Capital Project (NatCap) – a partnership of World Wildlife Fund, Stanford University and The Nature Conservancy – develops tools to quantify ecosystem services and incorporate their value into decisions, and demonstrates these approaches in important, contrasting places around the world. (www.naturalcapitalproject.org ).

The successful candidate will: provide policy and finance technical expertise to NatCap partner sites; lead projects with major external policy institutions who are interested in deploying NatCap’s tools and approaches more widely; lead the development of policy tools that enable the effective integration of ecosystem services into decisions; help to refine and further develop NatCap’s policy and finance strategy; enable lesson sharing among users of NatCap’s tools and approaches, and help with other tasks as required, particularly in the areas of fund-raising, communications, partner coordination and publications. This position has an initial duration of two years, with the possibility of extension based on funding.

Basic requirements include: a Master’s degree or equivalent experience in public policy, international development, environmental/ecological economics, environmental management, law, business or related field. A minimum of two years additional experience working on relevant policy or finance issues in the public or private sector, preferably with significant international experience.  Experience with fundraising, project development and working with multiple partners. Excellent operational, communication and organizational skills. Must be able to work independently and as part of a decentralized, diverse team. Applicants must be available to travel.  Please submit a cover letter and resume by April 9, 2010.

AA/EOE Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.  To apply visit http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/careers/jobs.html, job # 10069

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1) Chinese farmers are acidifying there soil by over applying fertilizer.  Acidic soils impede crop growth and amplify the leaching of toxins.  Since the early 1980s, pH has declined from 0.2 to 0.8 across China, mostly due to overuse of fertilizer.  This is shown in a new Science paper, Significant Acidification in Major Chinese Croplands (DOI: 10.1126/science.1182570) by JH Guo and others.

Topsoil pH changes from 154 paired data over 35 sites in seven Chinese provinces between the 1980s and the 2000s. The line and square within the box represent the median and mean values of all data; the bottom and top edges of the box represent 25 and 75 percentiles of all data, respectively; and the bottom and top bars represent 5 and 95 percentiles, respectively. (From Guo et al)

Reporting on the paper Mara Hvistendahl writes, “Beginning in the 1970s, Chinese farmers applied ever-increasing amounts of fertilizer with the hope that it would lead to bigger harvests. Instead of high yield, however, they got water and air pollution. Today, agricultural experts estimate that in many parts of China fertilizer use can be slashed by up to 60%.”  In another issue of Science she also reports on current Chinese efforts to reduce fertilizer use.  In the Wall Street Journal, Geeta Annad reports on overfertilization in India “Pritam Singh, who farms 30 acres in Punjab, says the more desperate farmers become, the more urea they use. Overuse is stunting yields.”

2) The Washington Post reports on how in the US large feed lots are causing water quality problems in Manure becomes pollutant as its volume grows unmanageable

Animal manure, a byproduct as old as agriculture, has become an unlikely modern pollution problem, scientists and environmentalists say. The country simply has more dung than it can handle: Crowded together at a new breed of megafarms, livestock produce three times as much waste as people, more than can be recycled as fertilizer for nearby fields.

… Despite its impact, manure has not been as strictly regulated as more familiar pollution problems, like human sewage, acid rain or industrial waste. The Obama administration has made moves to change that but already has found itself facing off with farm interests, entangled in the contentious politics of poop.

3) Fertilization of ecosystems can have complex ecological consequences. In a paper in PNAS, John Davis and others show that in a Long-term nutrient enrichment decouples predator and prey production DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0908497107.

Relationship between primary consumer and predator secondary production for the reference stream (gray circles), the treatment stream (black circles), and previously published data (open circles). The arrows represent the temporal trajectory of the treatment stream starting with the 2 years of pretreatment (P1 and P2) and ending with the fifth year of enrichment (E5). The data labels correspond to the sampling year for the reference and treatment streams. The previously published data include 5 years of production data from the reference stream (C53) and a similar Coweeta stream (C55) that had experimentally reduced terrestrial leaf inputs during 4 of those years (21). It also includes previously published data from an unmanipulated year that compared our current reference (C53) and treatment (C54) streams (22). AFDM is ash-free dry mass.

Their research showed that there were differences in how predators and prey responded to fertilization, but these only emerged over time.  Increases N and P entering a stream increased populations of both predators and prey, however later on prey populations continued to increase but predator populations declined,because fertilzation shifted the streams prey to larger, predator resistant species, which reduced the efficiency with which energy flowed through the food web.

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1. Biodiversity in a complex world: consolidation and progress in functional biodiversity research
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4. A general framework for neutral models of community dynamics
   Omri Allouche and Ronen Kadmon
5. Leaf hydraulic evolution led a surge in leaf photosynthetic capacity during early angiosperm diversification
   Tim J. Brodribb and Taylor S. Feild

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Vavilov centers of origin (1) Mexico-Guatemala, (2) Peru-Ecuador-Bolivia, (2A) Southern Chile, (2B) Southern Brazil, (3) Mediterranean, (4) Middle East, (5) Ethiopia, (6) Central Asia, (7) Indo-Burma, (7A) Siam-Malaya-Java, (8) China. Figure from Wikipedia.

Russian agricultural geneticist and biogeographer Nikolay Vavilov, is scientically famous for proposing that centres of endemism of crop relatives point to the origin of food crops, and being martyred by Soviet Lysenkoism.  Furthermore, he established the Lenigrad seed bank that was maintained by its staff throughout World War 2’s 28-month Siege of Leningrad, despite their starvation.

American localvore, MacArthur Fellow and ethno-agro-ecologist Gary Paul Nabhan author of Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov’s Quest to End Famine reflects on What is the Relevance of Vavilov in the Year 2010?:

I sit overlooking Saint Isaac’s Square, a few hundred meters where Nikolay Vavilov managed the first and perhaps the most massive effort in human history to document and conserve the world’s food biodiversity. I have had the rare opportunity of seeing the seedbank in the basement of Vavilov’s institute, and of leafing through the herbarium where one can see the master’s hand on collections of plants from the deserts, the steppes and the rain forests. And I have seen the photos there of those who perished while protecting the seeds for the benefit of all of humankind.

…

If any scientist wished to be inspired to a higher cause, perhaps no one was more equipped to do so than Nikolay Vavilov. He was breathtakingly handsome and elegant yet field-worthy; he was visionary, yet articulate and a lover of detail; he was charismatic, tireless and intense, yet approachable. He would listen to farmer, muleskinner, camel drover and evolutionary biologist, and absorb their stories.

And yet, what ultimately inspires us today to continue with such efforts is not Vavilov’s ghost from the past, but the promise of a more equitable and nourishing food community for the future. We hope that our children and their children beyond them will eat well without damaging the very soil and soul of the earth itself.

And we know that in the recent past, some forms of agriculture have done such damage. Since Vavilov’s time, we have lost three-quarters of the former genetic base of our crops and livestock, squandering the diversity of flavors and fragrances by assuming that fossil fuel and fossil groundwater could be consumed without end to produce more food. Today, agriculture is responsible for generating half of the human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases to grow our food and fiber. We can do better. We can wean ourselves from our addictions to fossil fuel and groundwater, but only if we renew our commitment to wisely steward the natural resources and the cultural wisdom that has accumulated in our agricultural landscapes over the last ten millennia.

With rapid global climate change upon us, we need a greater diversity of seeds, breeds, fruits and roots out in our fields, adapting to the dynamic conditions there, more than ever before. Food diversity is no longer a luxury; its careful use and stewardship are once again a necessity if we are to feed future generations so that they can not survive but thrive. Vavilov pointed the way; we must not dwell so much on him as a signpost, but to where he was pointing.

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You’re right that there has been significant growth in number of publications about ecosystem services, and that is a noteworthy trend. Although it does not directly map onto the assessment you did, Elizabeth Corley and I recently conducted a study of recent trends in ecology based upon an analysis of ecology publications,

Neff, M. W., & Corley, E. (2009). 35 years and 160,000 articles: A bibliometric exploration of the evolution of ecology. Scientometrics, 80(3), 657-682. (DOI: 10.1007/s11192-008-2099-3)

so I felt compelled to offer my insights. The way you and I did our searches differed, but perhaps you’ll be interested in our findings.

The field of ecology (as defined by the ISI ‘ecology’ journal classification, which includes your top five ‘ecosystem service journals with the exception of PNAS) has grown significantly over the past couple of decades, from 914 articles in 1970 to 10,488 in 2005. Assuming you searched for those terms in the ‘Topic’ field of the ISI WOS database, the results identify all articles with those terms in the title, abstract, author keyword, and indexer assigned keywords. You would have to normalize by the total number of words in all of those things in indexed publications to identify an increase relative to the number and length of indexed publications generally (and the number of journals, publications per journal, and number of words in titles and abstracts are all increasing).

Just to give you an idea, the total number of words in titles of articles in ecology journals – which takes into account the increased number of articles and increased title length – grew over 300% between 1990 and 2005. Also, what ISI indexes (keywords, abstracts, etc) has changed over time and is not consistent across journals. All of these things really complicate attempts to see trends in ecology over time.

The most reliable way I found to analyze trends in the discipline using the publication record is to limit your search to article titles because ISI has been consistent in the way it indexes them (of course, this introduces a suite of problems itself). Then, you have to normalize by the total number of words in titles to get an idea of the relative growth in that area compared to the rest of ecology.

If you search only in titles and normalize for the total number of title words each year, the graph of trends for ‘ecosystem’ and ‘services is unremarkable compared to others. Most notable is the increase in molecular genetic terms and topics like climate change, tropical forestry, and biodiversity. I’ve included one graph comparing the normalized trends in ‘ecosystem’ and ‘services’ to molecular genetic terms show you how the growth in that topic compares.

Note that the y axis is not a number of publications, but rather is a ratio of title words to the total number of title words that year, with a multiplier to ease comparison of the various graphs in our study to one another.

Our 2009 paper  contains more graphs of recent trends in ecology.

Perhaps the biggest trend is the sheer growth in the field, but I have no idea how that compares to the growth of the scientific enterprise writ large.

Related posts:

1. Growth of ecosystem services concept
2. Scenarios for Ecosystem Services a Special Feature in Ecology and Society
3. Nonlinearity produces management opportunites for ecosystem services

Growth in number of papers on ecosystem services since 1990

The graph shows increases in the number of papers following publications of Daily’s Nature’s services in 1997 and the MA in 2005.

Note: the graph is based on searching ISI web of science using the terms ecological or ecosystem service(s). It includes many papers that mention ecosystem services, but don’t substantially address them.

The top five journals in which these papers are published (and the number of papers) are:

1. ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS (161)
2. PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (50)
3. ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS (43)
4. FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT (43)
5. ECOLOGY AND SOCIETY (42)

With more than 1 500 citations, the most cited paper on ecosystem services is the controversial 1997 Nature paper by Bob Costanza et al The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital.

The most cited paper published between 2000-2004, with over 400 citations, was David Tilman et al’s 2001 Science paper Forecasting agriculturally driven global environmental change.

While the most cited paper published between 2005-2009, with more than 300 citations, was the controversial paper (but not for its ecosystem service part) was the Boris Worm et al Science paper Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services.

Overall the people who have published the most papers related to ecosystem services are:

1. Robert Costanza (30)
2. Carl Folke (30)
3. Claire Kremen (22)
4. Gretchen Daily (20)
5. Teja Tscharntke (20)

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