The Mistra <www.mistra.org> program “Future Forests” invites applicants for a full-time postdoctoral position, one year with the possibility of extending to two years.
The research program Future Forests <www.futureforests.se> started in January 2009 and has funding for four years, with a possibility for another four years. The program directly involves some 30 researchers from several Swedish universities and institutions, and also involve a large number of stakeholders. The program has the ambition to significantly improve the base of knowledge on the provision of ecosystem services from the forest landscape.
The aim of the post-doc position is to contribute to the analyses of resilience and sustainability in large- scale social-ecological forest systems, with a particular focus on the whole of the Swedish forest sector. The work could, for instance, involve literature reviews, modelling, and/or stakeholder interviews, depending on the research profile of the successful candidate. The successful candidate is expected to work closely with colleagues from many disciplines within the program, and also to interact with stakeholders representing many interests.
To qualify for this position you need a PhD degree in environmental sciences, forestry, or social sciences, preferably not more than three years old, and with a research experience in resilience or sustainability issues. Further, you need to show a strong track record of publications and an ability to work independently. The position will start as soon as possible, and will be placed in Umeå.
For more information contact Prof. Jon Moen, Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, Sweden. Phone: +46-(0)90-786 9647, email: <jon.moen@emg.umu.se>.
You application, in English, must include a short summary (max. 1 page) of your previous research experiences, your curriculum vitae, a maximum of three publications from refereed international journals, and names and contact details (telephone and email) of two suitable academic referee persons. Union information is available from SACO, +46- (0)90-786 53 65, SEKO, +46-(0)90-786 52 96 and ST, +46-(0)90-786 54 31.
Documents sent electronically should be in MS Word or PDF format.
Your complete application, marked with reference number 315-1103-09, should be sent to <jobb@umu. se> (state the reference number as subject) or to the Registrar, Umeå University, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden to arrive January 7, 2010 at the latest. We look forward to receiving your application!
Connect: a chaotic sculpture
Andreas Muxel‘s Connect, won the 2009 Share Prize. The prize jury writes:
This mesmerizing installation, with its precarious mixture of bouncing rubber and flying steel, is like a world financial crisis all by itself. With simple but powerful elements, “Connect” generates endless dramatic episodes of comical failure and heroic determination. The vital network of “Connect” won’t stop changing, and we can’t stop looking at it.
CONNECT – feedback-driven sculpture from Andreas Muxel on Vimeo.
You say “transitions”, I say “transformation”…
The need to support transitions, or transformations, towards sustainability has become one of the hottest topics amongst sustainability scientists the last years. A range of theoretical approaches deal with different aspects of transformational system change, including scholars of “transition management” and “resilience theory”. These communities have worked separately for decades, but seem too be converging. But, what is the difference between “transitions” and “transformations”? Really?
Listen to Dr. Derk Loorbach from the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (Drift, Erasmus University Rotterdam), as he explores what he sees as the main similarities and differences between the two schools. Listen also to Dr. Per Olsson at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (Stockholm University), as he responds to Derk’s observations at the Adaptiveness and Innovation in Earth System Governance Blog.
Interview with Dr Derk Loorbach [external link]. What is “transition management”, and how is that different from “transformations”? And which policy interventions support transitions?
Interview with Per Olsson by Eric Paglia at Think Globally Radio. What is a “transformation” in a social-ecological system? How is it different from “transition management” approaches? And how can transformations be supported?
Hydrological impact of biofuels
R. Dominguez-Faus and others analyze the impact of different biofuels on water in the USA in their article in Envir. Science and Technology, The Water Footprint of Biofuels: A Drink or Drive Issue? (doi:10.1021/es802162x). The figure below, from the paper, shows the substantial ecological requirements (and variation) among biofuels.
Figure 1. Evapotranspiration, irrigation, and land requirements to produce 1 L of ethanol (Le) in the U.S. from different crops.
They write:
The current and ongoing increase in biofuel production could result in a significant increase in demand for water to irrigate fuel crops, which could worsen local and regional water shortages. A substantial increase in water pollution by fertilizers and pesticides is also likely, with the potential to exacerbate eutrophication and hypoxia in inland waters and coastal areas including Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. This in turn would cause undue financial hardship on the fishing industry as well as negative impacts to these vital, biodiversity-rich, ecosystems. Such threats to water availability and water quality on local and national scales represent a major obstacle to sustainable biofuel production and will require careful assessment of crop selection and management options. It is important to recognize that certain crops such as switchgrass and other lignocelluosic options deliver more potential biofuel energy with lower requirements for agricultural land, agrichemicals, and water.
Climatic factors such as frequency of droughts and floods are beyond human control, but as the wide range of estimated nutrients discharged to surface waters shows, clearly some important variables are within our control. These include crop selection, tillage methods, and location. As more biofuel production is integrated into the agriculture sector it will be important to adopt land-use practices that efficiently utilize nutrients and minimize erosion, such as co-cropping winter grains and summer biomass crops. These land use choices should also focus on establishing riparian buffers and filter strips to serve a dual purpose in erosion control and biomass production. Similarly, a CRP-like program should be considered to promote cellulosic biofuel crop planting in marginal lands to prevent excess erosion and runoff while allowing producers to benefit from historically high commodity prices. CRP-like payments would then help to balance societal goals with ecological benefits and provide financial viability for the farmers making the land use choices. Finally, increasing charges for irrigation water for biofuel crops to market rates should be considered to promote fuel crop agriculture in areas where rainfall can supply the majority of the water requirements and to reflect the true value of water resources in the price of biofuels. Policies and programs should be coordinated to avoid the current situation where some efforts (ethanol subsidies, mandates) bid against other programs (CRP) though both are funded by taxpayers with the common goal of environmental protection.
Three books about planetary transformation
Edward Wolf offers a trio of books reviews about planetary transformation and systems at Worldchanging in Straight Talk for the Planetary Era:
Diplomats from 193 countries prepare to hammer out a global climate treaty in Copenhagen. But few expect this year’s activism, politics, or diplomacy to change the game. The 21st century to-do list keeps growing. What will it take to accelerate change?
Three recent books say that it’s all about thinking. In The End of the Long Summer, Dianne Dumanoski tells how our thinking got us in planet-scale hot water; in Whole Earth Discipline, Stewart Brand advocates heresy to get us out; in Thinking in Systems, the late Donella Meadows teaches a different way of thinking altogether.
While the subject matter of this trio of titles may sound familiar to Worldchanging readers, all three books deserve a careful read. Each of these authors is an elder with wisdom to impart. It’s up to the generation building a bright green future to match that wisdom to new challenges.
…
n The End of the Long Summer, Dumanoski applies the lessons of the ozone story to the challenge she calls “a planetary emergency . . . that involves far more than the pressing problem of climate change.” She examines evolutionary and modern history for clues about our capacity – as a species and as a civilization – to act. Dumanoski’s criterion for success in the coming century is not prosperity, but survival. If she is right, success will boil down to our ability to “shockproof” societies to withstand changes unlike any confronted during the 10,000-year run of the civilization project.
Her storyline is not for the faint of heart. Human activities have destabilized several fundamental flows of the Earth system. The comparative climate stability experienced during the “long summer” of the last 10,700 years is the exception in Earth’s history. Big changes in climate are underway, no matter what actions societies take to control emissions. Abrupt climate changes are possible and growing more likely as carbon emissions rise. The thinking that built a globalized civilization capable of disrupting planetary systems also makes that civilization more vulnerable to the consequences of instability.
Paradoxes of efficient market theory
Complex systems scientist Cosma Shalizi reviews economic journalist Justin Fox‘s book The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street for American Scientist magazine in the article Twilight of the Efficient Markets:
The Myth of the Rational Market, by Justin Fox, is an account—popular but thorough—of the roots, rise, triumph and ongoing fall of the theory of efficient markets in finance. This school of thought is an exemplary specimen of a type of social science that flourished after World War II: It has mathematical models at its center, has supposedly been empirically validated by statistical analyses, is indifferent to history and to institutions, and takes as an axiom that people are intelligent, farsighted and greedy. Unlike many economic theories, the efficient-market school has been influential beyond academia. It helped reshape ideas about how companies should be run, how executives should be paid, and indeed how the economy should be regulated (or not) to promote the general welfare. (In comic-book form: A mild-mannered social science by day, at night efficient-market theory puts on a cloak of ideology and struggles for the Capitalist Way.) The theory contributed, arguably, to setting up the crisis that has gripped the world economy since 2007. Its story is of much more than just scholarly interest.
The founding principles of efficient-market theory are easily described. The assumption on which all else rests is that, unless one has private knowledge, there is no way to profit from financial markets without risk. …
… Therefore, says efficient-market theory, securities prices are unpredictable. Current prices are supposed to be optimal forecasts, on the basis of currently available data, of the present value of future returns, because changes in optimal forecasts are, themselves, unpredictable. (If you know that tomorrow your forecast of next year’s gasoline price will be higher than today’s forecast by $1, you should raise your current forecast.) As Paul Samuelson put it, “properly anticipated prices fluctuate randomly.” The efficient-market hypothesis, as a technical term, is the claim that market prices cannot be predicted, either from past prices alone or from past prices combined with other publicly available information. One of the early triumphs of the school was the demonstration that stock prices look very much indeed like random walks.
… A vast superstructure was erected on these foundations, beginning in the 1950s and really taking off in the 1960s and 1970s. Particularly impressive wings of that edifice were devoted to the design of portfolios to balance risk against return and to the valuation of derivative securities (“contingent claims” or bets on the value of other securities), especially options to buy or sell stocks at given prices by given dates. As Fox notes, scholars of finance achieved acclaim, and were awarded substantial consulting fees, for solving pricing problems that by hypothesis were already being solved by the markets themselves! (Donald Mackenzie’s An Engine, Not a Camera explores this paradox in depth.)By the 1980s and 1990s, these ideas had led to changes in the way the investment industry worked, new concepts of corporate governance and new kinds of financial firms, which aimed to systematically identify arbitrage opportunities—deviations from what the theory said prices should be—and to earn a profit even as they eliminated those opportunities. More diffusely, the academic prestige of efficient-market theory provided, at the least, rhetorical support for deregulating markets, especially financial markets, and delegating more and more authority to them. This was aided by a conflation—subscribed to by many scholars—between those markets having informationally efficient prices (that is, unpredictable ones) and those markets allocating capital efficiently (directing savings to where the money can be used most profitably). The latter is the more usual economic notion of efficiency, but informationally efficient prices are neither necessary nor sufficient for efficient allocation.
The whole edifice, however, has turned out to be built, if not on sand, then at best on loose fill. More rigorous testing on larger data sets has shown that the capital asset pricing model does not fit the data; beta in particular does not predict returns at all. The response has been to identify variables that do predict returns and presume that they must be risk factors, although the extra risk has never been demonstrated. Prices are hard to predict, although not impossible, especially with high-frequency data (arriving minute-by-minute or faster). One reason markets are hard to predict is that they change much more than forecasts of future earnings should, and often they change on no detectable information at all. (Defenders claim that this just shows scholars aren’t smart enough to grasp information known to everyone in the market.) Economists taking a behavioral approach have shown that actual investors don’t act like the cool, farsighted calculators that efficient-market theory demands; worse, it turns out that having a handful of smart arbitrageurs around is actually not enough to swamp the “noise traders”—it really is the case that, as the saying goes, “markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”
This leaves us at an impasse. Efficient-market theory ought, with any methodological justice, to be relegated to the Museum of Nice Tries. But there is no unified replacement theory, and developing one will be arduous, involving empirical and theoretical work on all scales, from the experimental psychology of individual investors, through the institutional constraints under which money managers work, to solving for the aggregated effects of market participants’ interactions. In the meantime, efficient-market theory provides a ready basis for precise calculations, and one that is moreover now built into the academic field of finance and into the practice and even infrastructure of the markets.
Peatlands as complex adaptive systems
Shifting states. (Left) Hummock-hollow pattern at Rygmossen, a small raised bog near Uppsala, Sweden. (Right) "Ladder" system of ridges and pools, Inverewe Bogs, Scotland. Persistent environmental change, such as a long-term increase in climate wetness, can trigger a shift from one such peatland type to another.
In a Perspective in Science, Nancy Dise reviews how the response of peatlands to global change will be complex (doi:10.1126/science.1174268). She writes:
Research from a variety of areas and approaches is converging upon the concept of peatlands as complex adaptive systems: self-regulating to some degree, but capable of rapid change and reorganization in response to internal developmental changes or to external forcing (4). It has long been known, for instance, that the surface of a peatland can rise and fall, sometimes dramatically, in response to rainfall or mild drought, while maintaining a fairly constant water level relative to the surface. This “Mooratmung” (“bog-breathing”) is related to the sponge-like nature of Sphagnum, which can adsorb water and trap gases. Recent studies have shown that the carbon balance of peatlands can in turn be surprisingly resilient to perturbations, even fairly severe ones. For example, subjecting peat cores (5) or a peatland field site (6) to a water table drawdown similar to a prolonged drought initially led to a respiration-driven loss of soil carbon. But both carbon loss and subsidence (6) lowered the peat surface, decreasing its height above the water table, and effectively shifted the system back toward its starting state. Conversely, a rising water table stimulated growth of Sphagnum and other vegetation, which increased carbon accumulation, raised the surface of the peat and, in effect, lowered the local water table (5). Thus, an environmental perturbation may trigger an initial gain or loss of carbon, but recovery in the direction of the initial state can moderate the impact.
…
Long-term global changes—particularly warming, drought, and elevated nitrogen deposition—are likely to ultimately induce shifts in some existing peat-forming areas to new ecosystems such as grassland or shrubland (10, 11), and the increase in biomass from vascular plants could in part compensate for carbon losses from soil oxidation during the transition. However, even if some net carbon accumulation returns, the gains are short-lived: The key peatland quality of slowly removing and storing carbon for hundreds or thousands of years is lost.Considering peatlands as complex adaptive systems characterized by quasistable equilibrium states—resilient to change at some level of perturbation but shifting to new states at higher levels of disturbance—provides a meaningful framework for understanding and modeling their response to environmental change. Ignoring the strong feedbacks inherent in peatlands may lead to substantial under- or overestimates of their response to global change. The challenge is to forecast both the future environmental conditions that peatlands will experience and the internal feedbacks and state changes that may be triggered by these conditions. To meet this challenge it is vital to continue and expand long-term monitoring networks to characterize the present, paleo-environment research to reconstruct the past, and manipulation experiments in the field and laboratory to build our understanding of these unique and valuable ecosystems.
Nitrogen deposition making lakes more regulated by phosphorus
Nitrogen deposition is increased the extent to which lake algal populations are regulated by phosphorus, shifting lake food webs. Because, the patterns of human amplification of nitrogen and phosphorus trasport are different this should drive different patterns in lakes in different regions.
James Elser and other write in Science Shifts in Lake N:P Stoichiometry and Nutrient Limitation Driven by Atmospheric Nitrogen Deposition (2009 326 (5954):835). From the abstract:
Human activities have more than doubled the amount of nitrogen (N) circulating in the biosphere. One major pathway of this anthropogenic N input into ecosystems has been increased regional deposition from the atmosphere. Here we show that atmospheric N deposition increased the stoichiometric ratio of N and phosphorus (P) in lakes in Norway, Sweden, and Colorado, United States, and, as a result, patterns of ecological nutrient limitation were shifted. Under low N deposition, phytoplankton growth is generally N-limited; however, in high–N deposition lakes, phytoplankton growth is consistently P-limited.
They conclude:
Our findings show that, despite the potential of watershed vegetation uptake and sediment denitrification to buffer lakes against elevated N loading, increased inputs of anthropogenic N have accumulated in receiving waters. As a result, shifts in lake N:P stoichiometry have altered ecological nutrient limitation of phytoplankton growth. Phytoplankton in lakes that are less influenced by anthropogenic inputs experience relatively balanced or N-deficient nutrient supplies, but enhanced N inputs from the atmosphere during the past several decades of human industrialization and population expansion appear to have produced regional phytoplankton P limitation.
Producer diversity is likely to be low when resource supply ratios are skewed in favor of one particular nutrient relative to others (11, 18). Thus, increased N loading from the atmosphere may reduce lake phytoplankton biodiversity, similar to anticipated effects of N deposition on plant diversity in terrestrial ecosystems (19, 20), by possibly favoring those relatively few species that are best able to compete for the limiting P.
… Thus, sustained N deposition that generates stoichiometric imbalance between P-limited, low-P phytoplankton and their P-rich zooplankton consumers (12) may result in reduced production of higher trophic levels, such as fish. Projected increases in global atmospheric N transport during the coming decades (24) are likely to substantially influence the ecology of lake food webs, even in lakes far from direct human disturbance.
Huarango and coastal Peruvian resilience
Following up on a previous post about the resilience of the Nasca, the New York Times reports on the continued destruction of the huarango in the present day.
The huarango, a giant relative of the mesquite tree of the American Southwest, survived the rise and fall of Pre-Hispanic civilizations, and plunder by Spanish conquistadors, whose chroniclers were astounded by the abundance of huarango forests and the strange Andean camelids, like guanacos and llamas, that flourished there.
Today, though, Peruvians pose what might be a final challenge to the fragile ecosystem supported by the huarango near the southwestern coast of Peru. Villagers are cutting down the remnants of these once vast forests. They covet the tree as a source of charcoal and firewood.
The depletion of the huarango is raising alarm among ecologists and fostering a nascent effort to save it.
… many Peruvians view the huarango as prime wood for charcoal to cook a signature chicken dish called “pollo broaster.” The long-burning huarango, a hardwood rivaling teak, outlasts other forms of charcoal. Villagers react to a prohibition by regional authorities on cutting down huarango with a shrug.
…That the huarango survives at all to be harvested may be something of a miracle. Following centuries of systematic deforestation, only about 1 percent of the original huarango woodlands that once existed in the Peruvian desert remain, according to archaeologists and ecologists.Few trees are as well suited to the hyperarid ecosystem of the Atacama-Sechura Desert, nestled between the Andes and the Pacific. The huarango captures moisture coming from the west as sea mist. Its roots are among the longest of any tree, extending more than 150 feet to tap subterranean water channels.
…
“Peru needs a massive rethink about its development trajectory,” said Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a paleoecologist with the French Institute of Andean Studies who worked on the Nazca study with Mr. Beresford-Jones, the Cambridge University archaeologist, analyzing pollen that showed the transformation of Nazca lands from rich in huarango to fields of maize and cotton to the virtually lifeless desert that exists today.
“With Peru’s glaciers predicted to disappear by 2050, the Andes need trees to capture the moisture coming from Amazonia, which is also the source of water going down to the coast,” said Mr. Chepstow-Lusty in an interview from Cuzco, in Peru’s highlands. “Hence a major program of reforestation is required, both in the Andes and on the coast.”
Nothing on this scale is happening around Ica. Instead, the growth that one sees in poor villages are of shantytowns called pueblos jóvenes, where residents eke out a living as farmhands or in mining camps.
Outside one village, Santa Luisa, the buzz of a chainsaw interrupted the silence of the desert next to an oven preparing charcoal.
The chainsaw’s owner, a woodcutter from the highlands named Rolando Dávila, 48, swore that he no longer cut down huarango but focused instead on the espino, another hardy tree known as acacia macarantha. “But we all know huarango is the prize of the desert,” he said. “For many of us, the wood of the huarango is the only way to survive.”
The UK’s Kew Gardens has a few pages about their huarango restoration project. The BBC also has an article about this project.
Oil Prices and the Financial Crisis
The Financial Times suggests that the IEA agrees with Herman Daly (at least a little bit), in Did oil cause the latest recession? IEA weighs into the debate:
A feature in the draft executive summary of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, which will be published tomorrow, revisits this argument and comes to a rather worrying conclusion.
It starts out keeping in line with the prevailing view: the run-up in oil prices from 2003 to mid-2008 played “an important, albeit secondary” role in the global economic downturn that took hold last year. Higher oil prices made oil-importing countries more vulnerable to the financial crisis, it says.
The feature concludes, however, on a somewhat stronger note.
The IEA points out that it had warned in 2006 that the effect of high oil prices from the preceding four years had not yet worked their way through the world economy, and that further increases in prices would “pose a significant threat to the world economy, by causing a worsening of current account imbalances and by triggering abrupt exchange rate realignments, a rise in interest rates and a slump in house and other asset prices”.