Category Archives: Ecosystem services

Ecosystem services

Thinking about ecosystem services

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On Faculty of 1000, Elena Bennett identifies an interesting new paper on ecosystem services – Defining and classifying ecosystem services for decision making by Brendan Fisher, RK Turner, and P Morling in Ecological Economics (2009 68:643-653: doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2008.09.014).  Elena writes:

Building on the Millennium Assessment and other ecosystem services literature, the authors of this paper develop a new definition of ecosystem services that strives to bring together the economic and ecological understandings of the concept. What I find interesting is how well the authors are able to integrate the ecological and economic literature on ecosystem services, as well as their discussion of the aspects of ecosystem services that make ecosystem service classification schemes difficult.

Many definitions and classification systems of ecosystem services exist, and there is surprisingly little agreement across the literature about these definitions and classifications. Furthermore, scientists are sometimes not clear about the definitions of or assumptions about ecosystem services on which they base their studies. The authors of this paper move the community closer to what may be an agreeable definition of ecosystem services. They also provide a very useful discussion of the various aspects of ecosystem services that might be important in classification schemes, such as public-private good aspects, spatial and temporal dynamism, joint production, complexity, and interactions.

Ecosystem services

Ecosystem service questions: Whose pollen? Whose pollinators?

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As the world becomes more human dominated and people enclose an increasing number of ecological commons we can probably expect conflicts over ecosystem services to become more common. In California there is currently a new conflict over pollination.  From Associated Press: Tangerine growers tell beekeepers to buzz off.

Is it trespassing when bees do what bees do in California’s tangerine groves?

…

Mega-grower Paramount Citrus has already sent letters to beekeepers near the company’s Kern County clementine groves threatening legal action and promising to seek “compensation for any and all damages caused to its crops, as well as punitive damages” if seeds develop. Company officials did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The new regulations would affect Kern, Tulare, Fresno and Madera counties in the southern San Joaquin Valley, where many orange growers converted to easy-to-peel tangerines. The fruit’s California acreage was expanded from 24,000 in 2005 to 31,392 in 2008 to compete with imports from Spain and the Middle East.

Tangerines and other normally seedless mandarins do not need bees to move pollen from the male to female parts of the flower in the process known as pollination. But if bees cross-pollinate the crop with the pollen of other fruit, mandarins develop undesireable seeds.

Almond trees on the west side of the valley, on the other hand, need lots of bees to pollinate. For the February pollination season, almond growers hire beekeepers from around the country to bring tens of thousands of hives to California, home to 70 percent of the world’s supply.

As almond blossoms drop in late March, citrus growers say, beekeepers relocate hives to make orange blossom honey before heading to the Midwest for spring clover season.

Some growers, who by law must ban spraying for citrus mites and other pests when bees are present, say the bees are an increasing burden.

“We’ve coexisted with them, but we don’t need them,” said Joel Nelson, executive director of California Citrus Mutual, a trade association. “Now we’re trying to adapt to changing consumer demands, and we’re hamstrung.”

I wonder if this means that allergy sufferers will be able to sue people who plant pollen producing plants?

via Agricultural biodiversity weblog

Ecosystem services

USDA establishes office of ecosystem services

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The USA’s Department of Agriculture is establishing an Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets.  The Ecological Society of America’s blog EcoTone writes:

According to their press release, the office will help develop new guidelines and methods to assess ecosystem service benefits and create markets for ecosystem services.  The authorization for this office was approved in this summer’s Farm Bill, which Agriculture Secretary Ed Shafer spoke out against.

Ecosystem services are one way that ecologists can place a currency on the valuable services our environment provides, such as water filtration and air purification, carbon sequestration, pollination and recreation. The new office’s first priority will be carbon sequestration. Says the press release:

“Agriculture producers provide many ecosystem services which have historically been viewed as free benefits to society – clean water and air, wildlife habitat, carbon storage, and scenic landscapes. Lacking a formal structure to market these services, farmers, ranchers and forest landowners are not generally compensated for providing these critical public benefits. Market-based approaches to conservation are proven to be a cost-effective method to achieve environmental goals and sustain working and natural landscapes. Without financial incentives, these ecosystem services may be lost as privately-owned lands are sold or converted to development.”

Ecosystem services

How important are pollination ecosystem services?

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Nature News reports on a paper by Aizen, Garibaldi, Cunningham & Klein in Current Biology (doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.08.066) in an article Agriculture unaffected by pollinator declines

Bees and many other insects may be in decline almost everywhere — but agriculture that depends on pollinators has been surprisingly unaffected at the global scale.

That’s the conclusion of a study by Alexandra Klein at the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues. Using a data set of global crop production — maintained by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) — which spanned 1961 to 2006, they compared the yields of crops that require pollinators with those that don’t.

They found that crop yields for both crop types have gone up consistently, seeing average annual growth rates of about 1.5%. There was also no difference when the researchers split the data into crops from developing countries and crops from developed countries.

And when the researchers compared crops that are cultivated almost exclusively in tropical regions, they found no difference between the success of insect-pollinated crops — such as oil palm, cocoa and the Brazil nut — and those crops that need only the breeze to spread their pollen.

An interesting finding, but I expect that data collected at the national level is not able to detect current declines in pollination services.  In the news article Klein states that the data doesn’t show the extent to which farmers may have adapted to a decline, and that the world is becoming increasingly reliant on pollinator dependent crops.  They have grown from 8 % of developed world agricultural production in 1961 to about 15% in 2006.

This study also points out the gap between local level ecological understanding and regional to global assessment needs.

Ecosystem services

Two reflections on agro-ecological research

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Below are two reflections on recent agro-ecological research.  The first is from The World’s Fair and the second the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog.

Benjamin Cohen on The World’s Fair presents a discussion A Scientific Response to Agro-environmental Crises about Agroecology in Action: Extending Alternative Agriculture through Social Networks (MIT Press, 2007), with its author Keith Warner. The book aims uses interdisciplinary science studies and ecology to address current agricultural problems.

WORLD’S FAIR: How did your interest in agrofood issues lead you into the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS)?

KEITH WARNER: I have been interested in alternative agriculture (or sustainable agriculture) for more than a decade. I am a California native, and I have witnessed alarming losses of farmland due to development, and when I decided to pursue doctoral studies, I wanted to study the intersection of sustainable agriculture policy and land use. …

As I began to poke around rural California looking for some way to formulate a study that would interest me, I learned about the “agricultural partnerships” by which a range of social actors were simultaneously addressing environmentally problematic farming practices and the power dynamics in the relationships between scientific experts and farmer-practitioners. I discovered that underneath the discourses of omniscience on the part land grant universities and the farm bureau, a significant portion of the farming community questioned the inevitability of contemporary, polluting practices. This rarely looked like an insurgence, but more like a questioning of the singularity of the science. Farmers (or as we say in California, growers) are a pragmatic lot, always looking for opportunities to cut costs and often, to informally experiment with new technologies and practices. Often, the success of these experiments is determined by local ecological conditions, many of which are invisible to university scientists.

I became interested in these partnerships — and their challenge to conventional wisdom – at the same time that I began reading Bruno Latour, in particular Science in Action, and Pandora’s Hope. These two unwrapped some of the cloaking of the “official story” of science, and inspired me to undertake an effort to explain what was really happening in California agriculture, or at least part of it. Latour contributed a couple of key concepts that I found essential. First, he proposed following scientific actors around to find out what they really do, not just what they say they do. Second, he explained how scientists work in networks, and how technologies, knowledge and resources circulate through networks. Third, he described the essential role of non-scientists in scientific networks. With these ideas rolling around in my head, I set off to do my field work. I interviewed roughly 225 people, plus attended dozens of field days and indoor meetings where growers, scientists and others debated the feasibility and desirability of novel, alternative farming practices. …

WF: How did science and social power intersect in your study?

KW: A particularly salient feature of my field work was the divergent assumptions held by actors about the evaluation of novel practices in farming. Many advocates of alternative agriculture argue for a systems-based approach to selecting and managing technology in farming systems, and critique dominant forms of agriculture as reductionistic (or simply narrow minded). Ironically, many of the university researchers, even those in favor of “sustainability,” insist on being able to “prove” the scientific advantage of new practices or technology, but use reductionistic approaches to do so. One of the reasons I used “agroecology” in my title is because ecology asserts the need to take a systems approach to evaluating the relationship between the biotic and abiotic. Many small to mid-sized growers take a whole-system approach to evaluating a reduction in the use of pesticides, or an alternative practice of cultivation. Some of them are skeptical of what they perceive to be narrow scientific criteria used by research to establish viability in farming. Leaders of several partnerships critiqued the “transfer of technology” pipeline approach to extension (or field education) as well as the expert-lay imbalance of social power.

On the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, geographer Jacob van Etten reflects on some of Harold Brookfield‘s in his article Combining intervention and research:

Harold Brookfield and Edwin A. Gyasi now write in Geoforum about geographical action research. They argue it is time for geographers to get their hands and boots dirty. PLEC and the Wageningen-led Convergence of Sciences (CoS) project illustrate that research and service can and should go hand in hand. Geographers are late to recognize this, and in sister-discipline anthropology there is a far longer tradition of activism.

PLEC started by making inventories of farmers’ practices and knowledge in the areas they worked. As a result, the researchers got to know the most knowledgeable and innovative farmers. These farmers, they write, are likely to be hiding in the corners.

They cite Kojo Amanor’s poetic comment that “rather than sitting under the fig tree at the chief’s palace with dignitaries, [indigenous environmental knowledge] is best explored by taking off along the winding paths and discovering the extremities of the village, the chop bars with their bush-meat soup, the drinking spots, the jokers, the old women with their pithy comments, and the young women carrying water.”

The contacts with innovative farmers helped to set up networks in which knowledge was exchanged and new things were tried. Projects like this demonstrate how much academic scientists have to offer to the people among whom they work, and how research interests can be both broadened and deepened in so doing. There is profit in combining a measure of intervention with research.

Ecological Economics, Ecosystem services

Creating new forest commons

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From Northern Woodlands Magazine an article about a forest commons movement the Vermont Town Forest Project – A Forest for Every Town:

Food is one of our basic needs, so it makes sense that many of these movements focus on it. No less essential to society, however, are other goods and services, which small groups of people in communities across the nation are trying to encourage with “buy local” campaigns. It makes sense that our other basic needs – water and shelter – can also be met locally.

That’s the basic premise behind the Vermont Town Forest Project, which was founded by the Northern Forest Alliance in 2004 “to help communities across Vermont maximize the community benefits derived from their town forests and to help support the creation of new town forests statewide.”

These benefits include everything from watershed protection, forest products, and wildlife habitat to public recreation and community rallying points. They function in the same way town commons have for centuries in New England and New York. Every community member is responsible for their stewardship, and every member also benefits from their presence.

The concept of town commons, and even town forests, is not a new one. In fact, the enabling legislation for creating town forests in Vermont was enacted in 1915. But these forests haven’t been on the top of everyone’s mind. At least until lately. Now, thanks to projects such as the Vermont Town Forest Project, they are experiencing an exciting revival.

… Hinesburg is fortunate to own not one but two town forests: the
“older” (it dates to 1940), composed of 837 acres of mixed woodlands,
and the “newer” (just purchased), with 301 acres boasting extensive
wetlands and calcium-rich soils.

Hinesburg’s forests exemplify town forest potential. They have
recreation: world-class mountain biking trails, along with skiing,
hiking, and horseback riding. They also serve as outdoor classrooms,
both for local teachers and for the University of Vermont, whose
students have conducted dozens of projects there.

And the older forest also has active forest management: one recent
harvest took out white ash, which was then milled and kiln-dried
locally and installed to replace the floor of the Hinesburg Town Hall,
which had been sanded so many times that the tongue of each
tongue-and-groove board was exposed. All this at a total cost of $2.48
per square foot, about what you’d pay commercially.

Ecosystem services

Agriculture unaffected by pollinator declines?

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Nature News reports Agriculture unaffected by pollinator declines. A new paper in Long-Term Global Trends in Crop Yield and Production Reveal No Current Pollination Shortage but Increasing Pollinator Dependency from Current Biology (doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.08.066) shows that:

Bees and many other insects may be in decline almost everywhere — but agriculture that depends on pollinators has been surprisingly unaffected at the global scale.

That’s the conclusion of a study by Alexandra Klein at the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues. Using a data set of global crop production — maintained by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) — which spanned 1961 to 2006, they compared the yields of crops that require pollinators with those that don’t.

They found that crop yields for both crop types have gone up consistently, seeing average annual growth rates of about 1.5%. There was also no difference when the researchers split the data into crops from developing countries and crops from developed countries.

And when the researchers compared crops that are cultivated almost exclusively in tropical regions, they found no difference between the success of insect-pollinated crops — such as oil palm, cocoa and the Brazil nut — and those crops that need only the breeze to spread their pollen.

Ecosystem services

European biodiversity and ecosystem scientists merge

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From European Science Foundation: European biodiversity and ecosystem scientists merge and gear up for long term research

Measures to tackle the human impact on biodiversity require long term research and collaboration between many countries working with common goals and frameworks. This emerged from a recent workshop organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF), which moved towards establishing an ESF Research Networking Programme (RNP) for ecosystem and biodiversity analysis on the back of existing initiatives.

Before finding conservation solutions, the big challenge is to understand how human activities and their possible consequences, such as climate and land use change, interact with ecosystems and alter biodiversity, according to Markus Fischer, convenor of the ESF workshop. The big first step will be to bring key researchers within Europe into a single “big tent” focusing on the whole field of biodiversity and associated ecosystem processes, from the molecular to the ecosystem level and across all groups of organisms. Until now, research into biodiversity and research into ecosystems have tended to be conducted separately even though the issues and underlying science are closely related. Thus, “the most important result of the workshop was the rapid consensus that the two previously separated fields – biodiversity and ecosystem research – should team up and integrate their results more intensively,” said Fischer. “The best way to arrive at a better integration is by harmonising methodological protocols and agreeing on a sampling design for joint investigations on diversity and ecosystem processes.” The workshop has laid the ground for such harmonisation.

The workshop identified the need to understand what features enable some species to benefit from changes and others to be driven out following various kinds of human activities, over both the short and long term.”We can learn a lot about functional consequences of changes in biodiversity by comparing ecological traits of rare and endangered species with those from increasing or invasive species, or by comparing how these two groups of species respond to changes in the environment,” said Fischer. “However, biodiversity research cannot be successful if it limits itself to the species level. Clearly, evolutionary biology must be integrated within innovative biodiversity research. Moreover, biological interactions need to be considered, including pollination, seed dispersal, predation, and decomposition, all constituting integral elements of ecosystem functioning.”

All these objectives can only be met through a common approach linking suitable local projects on the ground across the whole of Europe. “It was generally agreed that functional biodiversity research requires a network of field sites distributed across Europe to cover different types of habitats, landscapes and land-uses,” said Fischer. “Furthermore it was recognised that all facilities must allow the conduction of long-term research because of the non-linear, slow and often delayed response of ecological systems.” In the long run, an integration of the network into currently emerging European research initiatives such as ANAAE and LIFEWATCH will allow the full potential for synergy to be realised.

For more information please click here

Ecological Economics, Ecosystem services

Losses from destruction of Nature dwarf losses from financial crisis

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At the IUCN meeting in Barcelona, the BBC interviews Pavan Sukhdev leader of the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity an EU project intending to provide an economic assessment of global ecosystem governance in much the same way that the Stern review did for climate governance:

The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.

…The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.

…Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev emphasised that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the financial markets.

“It’s not only greater but it’s also continuous, it’s been happening every year, year after year,” he told BBC News.

“So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today’s rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year.”

…The first phase concluded in May when the team released its finding that forest decline could be costing about 7% of global GDP. The second phase will expand the scope to other natural systems.