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.

Related posts:

1. World distribution of income
2. Nitrogen transfer from sea to land via commercial fisheries
3. Predators, shifting subsidies, and regime shifts

1. Biodiversity in a complex world: consolidation and progress in functional biodiversity research
   Helmut Hillebrand and Birte Matthiessen
2. Understanding relationships among multiple ecosystem services
   Elena M. Bennett, Garry D. Peterson and Line J. Gordon
3. The rise of research on futures in ecology: rebalancing scenarios and predictions
   Audrey Coreau, Gilles Pinay, John D. Thompson, Pierre-Olivier Cheptou and Laurent Mermet
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

Related posts:

1. Intensive agriculture’s ecological surprises
2. Thinking about ecosystem services
3. PhD Position at Stockholm Resilience Centre

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.

Related posts:

1. How important are pollination ecosystem services?
2. Holly Gibbs on biofuels and climate change
3. Can Payments to Farmers Expand Agricultural Production and the Supply of other Ecosystem Services

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)

Related posts:

1. Nonlinearity produces management opportunites for ecosystem services
2. Thinking about ecosystem services
3. Ecological Basis for Managing Ecosystem Services

Over the past few years, the media have frequently reported deaths of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Most reports express opinions but little hard science. A recent historical survey pointed out that extensive colony losses are not unusual and have occurred repeatedly over many centuries and locations. Concern for honey bees in the United States has been magnified by their vital role in agriculture. The California almond industry alone is worth $2 billion annually and relies on over 1 million honey bee hives for cross-pollination. So what is killing honey bee colonies worldwide, and what are the implications for agriculture?

In fall 2006 and spring 2007, many U.S. beekeepers encountered hives without adult bees but with abandoned food and brood. It was widely believed that these were symptoms of a new and highly virulent pathogen. In the absence of a known cause, the term “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD) was coined. What have we learned about this condition since then? Are the symptoms really novel?

…

The first annual report of the U.S. Colony Collapse Disorder Steering Committee, published in July 2009 (15), suggests that CCD is unlikely to be caused by a previously unknown pathogen. Rather, it may be caused by many agents in combination—the interaction between known pests and pathogens, poor weather conditions that diminish foraging, lack of forage (16), and management factors such as the use of pesticides and stress caused by long-distance transport of hives to nectar sources or pollination locations. The increasingly technical process of beekeeping itself merits further research as far as its impact on colony health. For example, although pollen substitutes are now widely used, little is known about the interactions between nutrition and disease susceptibility. Further research is also needed to develop effective ways of keeping colonies healthy through good hive management based on appropriate chemical, and other treatments such as “hygienic” bees that remove diseased brood and can be bred using conventional methods. In Europe, the COLOSS (COlony LOSS) network, consisting of 161 members from 40 countries worldwide, is coordinating research efforts and activities by scientists and the beekeeping industry to address these and other issues related to honey bee losses, including CCD (2).

In February 2009, the high pollination fee, combined with a temporary reduction in pollination demand due to drought and reduced almond prices, resulted in a surplus of hives in California available to pollinate almonds. But this leaves no room for complacency. Almond pollinating beekeepers had a poor summer in 2009 in the Dakotas and neighboring states, where hives spend the summer making honey, with heavy rains delaying and reducing the honey crop. This delayed chemical treatments for Varroa mites, and many colonies were probably in worse than usual condition going into winter back in California. It will be interesting to see what happens in February 2010 when the almonds bloom. On a longer time scale, there is a worrying downward trend in U.S. hives, from six million after World War II to 2.4 million today. Is the future of U.S. commercial beekeeping going to be based on pollinating a few high-value crops? If so, what will be the wider economic cost arising from crops that have modest yield increases from honey bee pollination? These crops cannot pay large pollination fees but have hitherto benefited from an abundance of honey bees providing free pollination.

Related posts:

1. A surprising decline of pollination services in USA
2. Ecosystem service questions: Whose pollen? Whose pollinators?
3. More on bee declines

Fig. 4. World map of virtual water exports.
(a) Total virtual water exports (flows exceeding 10 km3 yr−1 are shown);
(b) flows of virtual water exports originating from blue (irrigation) water (flows exceeding 1.0 km3 yr−1 are shown); and
(c) virtual water exports originating from nonrenewable and nonlocal blue water (flows exceeding 0.5 km3 yr−1 are shown).

Figure is from Hanasaki and others paper An estimation of global virtual water flow and sources of water withdrawal for major crops and livestock products using a global hydrological model (2009 Journal of Hydrology) doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2009.09.028.

They explain the figure:

The estimated flows of virtual water exports and imports in 2000 by nation were aggregated into 22 regions worldwide (Table 9; Fig. 4) to show net exports between regions.

Fig. 4a shows the virtual water export flows for all water sources. The figure indicates that North and South America were major regions from which virtual water export flows originate; East Asia, Europe, Central America, and West Asia were the major destinations. This pattern of flows agrees with the studies of (Oki and Kanae, 2004), (Yang et al., 2006) and (Hoekstra and Hung, 2005).

Fig. 4b shows the virtual water exports of blue water (withdrawn from streamflow, medium-size reservoirs, and NNBW sources), and

Fig. 4c shows the virtual water exports of NNBW. Most major flows of blue water and NNBW originated from North America and South Asia.

Interestingly, South America was the major total virtual water exporter but a minor blue water exporter because less cropland is irrigated on this continent.

Notably, South Asia, which is densely populated and where demand results in water scarcity (Oki and Kanae, 2006 and Hanasaki et al., 2008b), showed blue and NNBW virtual water export flows. [note: NNBW - is non-renewable and non-local blue water.]

Related posts:

1. Mapping global flows of virtual green and blue water
2. Anthropogenic Modification of Vapours Flows and Tipping Points in the Earth System
3. Mapping global fires

• ecosystem services
• measuring and monitoring carbon stocks in forests
• climate change impacts on and adaptation of freshwater resources

Fuller Doctoral Fellows receive either $15,000 or $20,000 allocated over a period of up to 2 years to cover research expenses.

Fuller Postdoctoral Fellows receive $140,000 to cover a stipend and research expenses over a period of up to two years as well as $17,500 to cover indirect costs at the host institution over the two-year fellowship period.

Citizens of any nation may apply. Applicants for Fuller Doctoral Fellowships must be currently enrolled in a PhD program. WWF staff, directors, and their relatives as well as current Russell E. Train Fellows are ineligible to receive Fuller Fellowships.

Deadline for applications is January 31, 2010.

For more information on complete eligibility requirements, selection criteria, and how to apply, please visit the Fuller Fellowship webpage.

No related posts.

To encourage decision makers to account for the environmental costs of growth, we propose the following four strategies:

1. Internalize externalities

Environmental impacts and resource shortages caused by economic activities often affect people far removed in space and time from those whose actions produced these problems. This separation of cause from consequence represents what economists refer to as externalities. Agribusiness, for example, benefits from using nitrogen fertilizers but does not bear the costs associated with oxygen-depleted “dead zones” that agrochemical runoff produces in aquatic ecosystems. Because the adverse environmental impacts of fertilizer use are not reflected in fertilizer prices, they do not affect decisions about how much fertilizer to use.

Resolving this disparity would drive more environmentally and socially sustainable investments, but only following significant changes to our existing economic framework. Environmental economists advocate a range of measures to internalize externalities. Examples include property rights for environmental assets, payments for ecosystem services, and liabilities for environmental damage. Developing effective incentives requires an in-depth understanding of the ecological implications of externalities.

2. Create mechanisms for sustaining ecosystem services

Environmental economists have long recommended creating markets for ecosystem services such as pest control and carbon sequestration. Such markets would provide incentives for environmentally sound investments, while allowing communities to be compensated for actions that benefit others. Whether this means clean air in Beijing, China or safe drinking water in Central Valley, California, people would be able to invest in their welfare and the welfare of their children, just as they are currently able to invest in more material forms of security.

Markets must often be coupled with other strategies in order to be effective. In the emerging market for carbon sequestration, for example, if sequestration is priced while other services like freshwater provisioning remain unpriced, negative ecological outcomes may ensue. Carbon markets need to be paired with other strategies, such as the regulation of land use, the direct protection of biodiversity, and the development of “green standards” to which projects must adhere.
3. Enhance decision makers’ capacity to predict environmental impacts

Society is growing increasingly aware of the economic repercussions of environmental change. Still, this linkage often only becomes apparent after the environment has been damaged, sometimes irreversibly. Routine assessments of environmental risks, such as environmental impact statements, play an important role in identifying short-term environmental damage, but they rarely account for impacts that take decades to emerge. For example, DDT, a synthetic pesticide, was widely used for almost 20 years before its harmful effects on human and bird populations were recognized. The resulting US ban on DDT led to marked recoveries in bald eagles and other impacted species, but not all environmental impacts can be reversed with such success. Similarly, deforestation in Panama displaced mosquito populations in the canopy, causing a dramatic increase in Yellow Fever cases. Such outbreaks of zoonotic diseases are rarely foreseen in routine environmental risk assessments but can quickly escalate to unmanageable proportions, leading to the loss of countless human lives as well as billions of dollars in damages, lost output, and livestock mortality.

Recognizing that environmental impacts are often highly uncertain, it is important to develop models better able to project the consequences of anthropogenic environmental change. Equally important are new monitoring systems to detect problematic trends before they surpass society’s ability to address them.

4. Manage for resilient ecosystems

When ecosystem thresholds are breached, undesirable and often irreversible change can occur. For instance, grassy savannas capable of supporting grazing and rural livelihoods can suddenly “flip” to woody systems with lower productive capacity. Many common management strategies move ecosystems closer to these thresholds. Ecosystem management strategies need to leave a “margin of error”, trading some short-term yield for long-term resilience that sustains a suite of services.

Related posts:

1. USDA establishes office of ecosystem services
2. Scenarios for Ecosystem Services a Special Feature in Ecology and Society
3. Ecological Basis for Managing Ecosystem Services

On whether he’s trying to rally a movement in time to avert disaster, or just prepare us for the inevitable mess caused by scarcer oil, degrading ecologies, and global warming:

“It’s more the latter. We need to have these alternatives around and available when the shit hits the fan, basically.

“One of the reasons we need to nurture several different ways of feeding ourselves — local, organic, pasture-based meats, and so on – is that we don’t know what we’re going to need and we don’t know what is going to work. To the extent that we diversify the food economy, we will be that much more resilient. Because there will be shocks. We know that. We saw that last summer with the shock of high oil prices. There will be other shocks. We may have the shock of the collapsing honey bee population. We may have the shock of epidemic diseases coming off of feed lots. We’re going to need alternatives around.

“When we say the food system is unsustainable we mean that there is something about it, an internal contradiction, that means it can’t go on the way it is without it breaking up. And I firmly believe there will be a breakdown.”

Related posts:

1. Interview with Michael Pollan
2. Jon Foley argues for resilient integration of industrial and organic agriculture
3. Brian Walker’s Research Areas for Resilience Science

You might think that technology could provide a simulacrum of nature with all the bad parts scrubbed out. But attempts to do so have turned out to be interesting failures. There is a fortune to be made, for instance, by building a robot that children would respond to as if it were an animal. There have been many attempts, but they don’t evoke anywhere near the same responses as puppies, kittens or even hamsters. They are toys, not companions. Or consider a recent study by the University of Washington psychologist Peter H. Kahn Jr. and his colleagues. They put 50-inch high-definition televisions in the windowless offices of faculty and staff members to provide a live view of a natural scene. People liked this, but in another study that measured heart-rate recovery from stress, the HDTVs were shown to be worthless, no better than staring at a blank wall. What did help with stress was giving people an actual plate-glass window looking out upon actual greenery.

All of this provides a different sort of argument for the preservation of nature. Put aside for the moment practical considerations like the need for clean air and water, and ignore as well spiritual worries about the sanctity of Mother Earth or religious claims that we are the stewards of creation. Look at it from the coldblooded standpoint of the enhancement of the happiness of our everyday lives. Real natural habitats provide significant sources of pleasure for modern humans. We intuitively grasp this, and this knowledge underlies the anxiety that we feel about nature’s loss. It might be that one day we will be able to replace the experience of nature with “Star Trek” holodecks and robotic animals. But until then, this basic fact about human pleasure is an excellent argument for keeping the real thing.

Related posts:

1. Enhancing ecosystem services in agricultural lands
2. How important are pollination ecosystem services?
3. Trends in Ecology and Ecosystem Services

While the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment found that nonlinearity in the provision of ecosystem services was likely to be an important factor complicating ecosystem management, there have been few quantitative examples of this nonlinearity in the literature. Consequently, scientists and managers often assume that ecosystem services are provided unvaryingly at a steady rate. This article provides quantitative evidence for seasonal and spatial nonlinearity in the provision of wave attenuation and coastal protection, an ecosystem service provided by marshes, mangroves, seagrasses, and coral reefs.

There is a great deal of interest in the literature right now in ecosystem services as a justification for conservation and as a tool for ecosystem management. Assumptions about linearity or nonlinearity of ecosystem service provision could have a huge impact on the success of this management. I found this paper interesting because it provides quantitative evidence for nonlinearity in space and time in the provision of key ecosystem services.

Related posts:

1. Thinking about ecosystem services
2. Special Ecosystem Services Issue of Frontiers
3. Ecological Basis for Managing Ecosystem Services