Category Archives: Ecological Management

Ecological Economics, Ecological Management, General, Tools

ATEAM: Modelling ecosystem services

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Worldchanging guest writers David Zaks and Chad Monfreda, from Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at the U of Wisconsin, have a post ATEAM: Mr.T takes on ecosystems services on a project to model ecosystem services in Europe.

The ATEAM (Advanced Terrestrial Ecosystem Analysis and Modeling) project (also here and here) is not made up of rogue soldiers of fortune, but academics in Europe. The scientific assessment correlates changes in human well-being with future changes in climate and land-use. Researchers combined global climate models and land-use scenarios using innovative interdisciplinary methods to show how ecosystem goods and services are likely to change through the 21st century in Europe. ATEAM paints a mixed picture of the continent divided into a vulnerable south and adaptive north. The results are freely available online as a downloadable (PC only) mapping tool that displays the vulnerability of six key sectors: agriculture, forestry, carbon storage and energy, water and biodiversity.Stakeholder input helped to quantify regional adaptive capacity, while climate and land-use models estimated potential impacts. Adaptive capacity and potential impacts together define the overall vulnerability of individual ecosystem services. Even when ‘potential impacts’ are fixed, differential vulnerability across Europe indicates an opportunity to boost ‘adaptive capacity’. Emphasis on adaptation certainly doesn’t condone inaction on climate change and environmental degradation. Rather it stresses resilience in a world that must prepare for surprise threats that are increasingly the norm.

ATEAM is a wonderful example of sustainability science that lets people imagine the possible futures being shaped through decisions taken today. Integrated assessments like ATEAM and the MA (also here) have a huge potential to create a sustainable biosphere by offering solutions that are at once technical and social. Combined with many ideas that WC readers are already familiar with—planetary extension of real-time monitoring networks, open source scenario building, and pervasive citizen participation—the next generation of assessments could help tip the meaning of ‘global change’ from gloomy to bright green.

Ecological Management

Adaptive environmental assessment and management: course reading evaluation

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At the end of my adaptive management course at McGill I asked my students evaluate the course readings and suggest which three I should keep and which three I should cut. There was substantial agreement on what to keep, but more disagreement on what to cut.

Keep 

A favourite reading for over half the class was:

The students liked this chapter because it was a real world case from the point of view of an individual that was also well connected to theory.

Students also really liked the Holling readings. Both the summary of the book Panarchy

  • CS Holling. 2001. Understanding the complexity of economic, ecological and social systems. Ecosystems 4: 390–405.

and the pathology of resource management.

  • CS Holling, and G. K. Meffe. 1996. Command and Control and the Pathology of Natural Resource Management. Conservation Biology 10(2): 328-37.

The next favourite was controversial

This paper was popular with about a third of the class but an equal number thought it was one of the readings that should be cut.

Other readings that got more than one vote were readings from Kai Lee’s book, Carl Walters’ book, my scenario planning paper, and the Fazey learning article.

Cut 

The paper most recommended to be cut was:

Students thought it didn’t add a lot to the course. While some students thought it was one of the best papers, more than three times more thought it should be cut than kept.

The second recommendation for cutting was

Students found this paper too technical (I don’t think it is). This rating probably indicates that I need to rework how I discuss about bayesian statistics, learning and experimental design in the class.

The third least popular paper was the Olsson et al paper . mentioned above.
The excerpts from Kai Lee’s book were the only other readings to have more than two recommendations for removal, however an equal number of students thought they were some of the best readings.
Reading Revisions 

What I plan to do reduce the number of core readings, add some supplementary readings, and rethink the quantitative part of the course – I think I need some good in class excercises and homework assignments on bayesian stats and experimental design.  But, I might change my mind after I read the reports from their adaptive management projects.

Ecological Economics, Ecological Management

Wetland Mitigation Banking Shortchanges Urban Areas

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In a study highlighted in the National Wetlands Newsletter, J.B. Ruhl and James Salzman show that wetland mitigation banking redistributes wetlands from urban areas to rural ones, leaving urban residents with less access to important ecological services provided by wetlands, such as water filtration, erosion protection, and flood control.

Ruhl, J.B. and Salzman, James E., “The Effects of Wetland Mitigation Banking on People” (January 2006). FSU College of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 179 Available at SSRN).

Wetland mitigation banking is used to ensure no net loss of wetland area under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Basically, mitigation banking allows developers who damage or destroy wetlands to buy off-site wetlands as compensation. Many studies have examined whether the new wetlands adequately replace wetland values and functions, but few have examined the social impacts of wetland mitigation banking.

Ruhl and Salzman studied 24 wetland mitigation banks in Florida (accounting for 95% of bank activity, and representing over 900 development projects). They show that in 19 of 24 banks, wetlands “migrated” from urban to rural areas.

“The whole point of wetland mitigation banking – what makes its economic incentives work – is that developers get to wipe out wetland patches in the higher priced land markets and bankers get to establish wetlands banks in the less pricey land markets,” Ruhl said. “It’s not surprising then that development projects using wetland mitigation banking often are located in urban areas and the banks they use are located in rural areas.”

The populations of winners and losers in wetland mitigation banking are quite different, as you might expect. The banks (where wetlands are restored) are, on average 10 miles from the projects (where wetlands are damanged). The average income was nearly $12,000 lower in projects compared to banks, and the average minority population was 13% higher projects.

The researchers suggest that further examination of wetlands mitigation banking is needed. ” … wetland mitigation banking has been touted as a “win-win” program, but unless someone keeps score we really can’t know whether it truly fits that billing.” For now, it seems that not actively including the value of ecosystem services means inadequately assessing the true costs and benefits of the program.

Ruhl is the Matthew and Hawkins Professor of Property at the FSU College of Law, and Salzman is a professor at the Duke University School of Law and the Nicholas School of the Environment.

Ecological Management, Tools

Green water efficiency in farming

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Green & Blue water A recent SciDev.net article Improve water efficiency in farming, urges report describes an International Water Management Insitute (IMWI) report – Beyond More Crop per Drop prepared for the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico (March 2006).

The article quotes IWMI director general, Frank Rijsberman, who justifies the need to increase water use efficiency by the statement that it takes “70 times more water to grow the food we eat every day than we need for drinking, cooking, bathing and other domestic needs.”

The report describes how water management usually focuses on runoff, blue water, which is only 40% of rainfall. The other 60% is green water that replenishes soil moisture and evaporates from the soil or is transpired by plants. The report states that three quarters of the world’s poor depend upon rainfed agriculture (90% in sub-Saharan Africa), meaning that improving green water productivity has the potential to improve the well-being of the world’s poor.

The report writes:

Increasing the productivity of green water used in rainfed agriculture has great potential to reduce the area needed for agriculture. Agricultural production of staple crops in Africa, has, over the last 40 years, increased almost exclusively by area expansion, at the cost of large areas of natural ecosystems. To enable sustainable increases in food production in Africa, agricultural intensification is absolutely necessary. Increasing the productivity of green water used in rainfed agriculture – particularly by adding a limited amount of blue water (from rivers or aquifers) through supplemental irrigation has great potential.

Rainwater harvesting in Sri LankaThe report recommends using rainwater harvesting, supplemental and micro irrigation, and using land and water conservation to increasee infiltration and reduce runoff, to increase green water efficiency. It suggests that using these known techniques could double crop yields.

The IMWI report provides examples of water management in stories from two areas the Awash Basin – Ethiopia and the Krishna Basin – India.

See also, my previous post on agricultural modification of green water flows.

Ecological Management, General, Vulnerability

Science, good causes, and bad arguements

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Steve Rayner has an editorial in the Feb 2006 issue of Global Environmental Change – What drives environmental policy? about science and public policy. He writes:

Rather than resolving political debate, science often becomes ammunition in partisan squabbling, mobilized selectively by contending sides to bolster their positions. Because science is highly valued as a source of reliable information, disputants look to science to help legitimate their interests. In such cases, the scientific experts on each side of the controversy effectively cancel each other out, and the more powerful political or economic interests prevail, just as they would have without the science. This scenario has played out in almost every environmental controversy of the past 25 years (Sarewitz 2000).

This phenomenon has led to a widespread pathology: the use of bad arguments for good causes.

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Ecological Management, Regime Shifts, Tools

Resilience Surrogates: a special feature in Ecosystems

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The december isssue of Ecosystems 8(8) 2005 has a special feature on Surrogates for Resilience of Social–Ecological Systems.

In the introductory paper, Surrogates for Resilience of Social–Ecological Systems, Steve Carpenter, Frances Westley and Monica Turner, explain resilience surrogates using a figure.

resilience surrogates

Figure 1. In most cases, resilience of an SES is shrouded by barriers to observation, and can be observed only partially or indirectly. Surrogates are inferred from observations, often with the aid of models. The relationships among observations, surrogates and models should be explicit and transparent. However, the relationship of the surrogate to resilience of the SES is usually uncertain.

The special feature includes the following papers (involving contributors to this blog):

  • Surrogates for Resilience of Social–Ecological Systems by S. R. Carpenter, F. Westley, M. G. Turner
  • A Systems Model Approach to Determining Resilience Surrogates for Case Studies by E. M. Bennett, G. S. Cumming, G. D. Peterson
  • The Use of Discontinuities and Functional Groups to Assess Relative Resilience in Complex Systems by C. R. Allen, L. Gunderson, A. R. Johnson
  • Building Resilience in Lagoon Social–Ecological Systems: A Local-level Perspective by F. Berkes and C. S. Seixas
  • An Exploratory Framework for the Empirical Measurement of Resilience by G. S. Cumming, G. Barnes, S. Perz, M. Schmink, K. E. Sieving, J. Southworth, M. Binford, R. D. Holt, C. Stickler, T. Van Holt
Big Back Loop, Ecological Management, Ideas, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Scenarios

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Reports Released

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ma scenarios coverThe four main reports of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment were released yesterday (Jan 19, 2006). The reports are the detailed scientific assessment (including literature citations) on which the MA synthesis reports are based. These large reports (500-800 page) are the products of the four MA working groups:

  • Current State and Trends
  • Scenarios
  • Policy Responses
  • Multi-Scale Assessments.

These reports are published by Island Press or chapters can be downloaded from the MA web site.
The press coverage of the release of the technical reports has been more balanced than the press coverage of the synthesis volumes. The Christian Science Monitor reports, quoting Steve Carpenter (his post on the scenarios):

When researchers scan the global horizon, overfishing, loss of species habitat, nutrient run-off, climate change, and invasive species look to be the biggest threats to the ability of land, oceans, and water to support human well-being.

Yet “there is significant reason for hope. We have the tools we need” to chart a course that safeguards the planet’s ecological foundation, says Stephen Carpenter, a zoologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “We don’t have to accept the doom-and-gloom trends.”

That’s the general take-home message in an assessment of the state of the globe’s ecosystems and the impact Earth’s ecological condition has on humans.

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Ecological Management, Ideas, Tools

Adaptive environmental assessment and management course readings

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During the winter semester at McGill I teach Adaptive Environmental Management (GEOG 380) to upper level undergraduates from a mixed science/arts background. This is the second year that I have taught this course at McGill. In the course I try to bridge the more technical approaches to adaptive environmental assessment and management described by Buzz Holling et al (1978) and Carl Walters (1986) with more recent efforts by Fikret Berkes and Carl Folke that better integrate social dimensions, such as trust building, bridging knowledge systems, and instititutional fit.

I define four pillar of adaptive management, based upon Berkes, Colding and Folke (2003): building resilience, bridging knowledge systems for learning, practice of experimental management, and navigating context.

Below are the papers and book chapters that I am planning to use in my course this semester.

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Ecological Management, General

Alternative Strategies of Ecosystem Managmenet and Institutional Interplay

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Henry Regier explaining conflict over management of the Great Lakes, when he recieved a life time achievement award for important and continued contributions to the field of Great Lakes research. (From Post-normal Times):

Two strategies have been used within our Great Lakes Basin’s governance institutions in recent decades to cope with adverse interrelationships between humans and the rest of nature. Important features of each strategy can be traced back to different emphases within Darwinism a century ago. T. H. Huxley emphasized the role of agonistic or combative interactions within natural selection while P. Kropotkin emphasized mutualistic or cooperative interactions. Capitalists invoked Huxley’s Mutual Harm version for legitimation of their practices while communitarians invoked Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid version. Implicitly the more legalistic regulatory strategies that now dominate within governance in our Basin presuppose Mutual Harm dynamics and seek to temper such harm through pre-cast technocratic capabilities. Participatory democratic programs, now sub-dominant, seek to foster Mutual Aid dynamics less formally. Old Rational Management tries to Temper Mutual Harm Technocratically, TMHT. Drama-of-the-Commons Governance tries to Foster Mutual Aid Democratically, FMAD. Currently, the higher the level of governance in which action on some environmental issue is centred, the more likely that TMHT will dominate, and vice versa. This asymmetry creates problems in hybrid cross-level Adaptive Co-Management and vertical inter-agency partnerships.

Ecological Management, General, New Orleans, Vulnerability

New Orleans and the ecology of the Mississippi River

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Richard Sparks writes about the ecological/geological context in which New Orleans exists, how people have changed them, and what rebuilders should consider. His article is Rethinking, Then Rebuilding New Orleans, in the Winter 2006 Issues in Science and Technology.

His article focusses on the natural forces that have shaped the Mississippi and how humans have shaped those forces. One of the most interesting points he raises is how land cover change, and river management have radically changed the sediment load of the Mississippi, shifting the balance between land building and subsidence in the delta. In other words flood protection higher in the river has made lower portions of the river more vulnerable to flooding.

sediment loads carried by the Mississippi River 1700 & 1980-1990Figure: The sediment loads carried by the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico have decreased by half since 1700, so less sediment is available to build up the Delta and counteract subsidence and sea level rise. The greatest decrease occurred after 1950, when large reservoirs constructed trapped most of the sediment entering them. Part of the water and sediment from the Mississippi River below Vicksburg is now diverted through the Corps of Engineers’ Old River Outflow Channel and the Atchafalaya River. Without the controlling works, the Mississippi would have shifted most of its water and sediment from its present course to the Atchafalaya, as part of the natural delta switching process. The widths of the rivers in the diagram are proportional to the estimated (1700) or measured (1980–1990) suspended sediment loads (in millions of metric tons per year).

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