Participation in payments for ecosystem services: Case studies from the Lacandon rainforest, Mexico

Understanding people’s willingness to participate in projects and programmes of payments for ecosystem services (PES) has not been a key analytical concern of the scholarly literature around this new field of environmental policy and practice. This paper analyses participation in four communities benefiting from payments for biodiversity and carbon fixation in Mexico, and contrasts the results for each case with neighbouring communities that do not receive payments. We take a holistic approach that accounts for procedural rules, actors’ interactions, institutions and values, and individuals’ characteristics. We show that the nature of PES rules and the effectiveness of communication with government officers and NGOs influence resource managers’ ability and willingness to participate. We highlight community size, resource managers’ ability to diversify livelihood activities and local perspectives on the conservation of common forests, particularly sacred values and intergenerational concerns on forest conservation, as critical participation drivers. This analysis provides insights on why and how these new institutions may be attractive for some resource managers and permits to draw some recommendations for the future design of PES projects and programmes.     

Ecophysiology of the saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea) in the Saguaro National Monument: relationship to symptoms of decline

The purpose of this study was to examine physiological correlates to the phenomenon of epidermal browning and saguaro decline in Saguaro National Monument. Gas exchange characteristics, surface temperatures, and the extent of epidermal browning in tissues of both healthy and declining saguaro cacti (Carnegiea gigantea) at different solar orientations were examined in eight long-term monitoring plots in the Rincon Mountain District of the Saguaro National Monument near Tucson, Arizona during both wet and dry seasons and years.Daily maximum surface temperatures were greatest on west-oriented tissues, as predicted by a simple model. However, south- and south-west-oriented tissues showed the highest browning indices, suggesting that browning may be more related to cumulative thermal loading than to extreme late afternoon temperature events. During the wet season, maximum nocturnal CO₂uptake rates and total nocturnal CO₂uptake were negatively correlated with browning index. Uptake rates during dry seasons and dry years was minimal, and not related to browning indices. However, healthy tissues of saguaros that also had tissues with high browning indices had wet-season maximum CO₂uptake rates as high as saguaros without damaged tissues, suggesting that the browning is not systemic but rather is tissue- and angle-specific. Instantaneous measures of water-use efficiency did not vary significantly or predictably by angle, but rather were greatest during night-time and in tissues when CO₂uptake was greatest. We suggest that browning symptoms on cacti are most likely due to natural abiotic stress, and are unrelated to systemic pollution stress or increased UV-B radiation.     

Discourse,representation and urban planning: How a critical approach to discourse helps reveal the spatial re-ordering of street sex work1

This paper shows how a critical approach to discourse sheds light on processes of spatial re-orderings. It uses a case study of urban planning in an area of street sex work to explore the ways in which various representations of prostitution can be used to inform planning decisions. Representations of sex worker identity also expose complex spatial and social geographies and evolving processes of marginalisation and exclusion.     

Early Permian climate change in the Falkland Islands

An Early Permian glacial diamictite forms a distinctive unit within the Falkland Islands sedimentary succession and two aspects of its significance have recently been serendipitously enhanced. Fossil discoveries in exotic limestone clasts bear on palaeogeography, whilst a series of mineral‐exploration borehole cores have allowed a detailed study of the sedimentary record of deglaciation that followed deposition of the diamictite. Statistical analysis of reflectance and XRF core‐scanning data has identified likely Milankovitch periodicities and enabled tentative time‐scale modelling. The ‘icehouse to greenhouse’ transition appears to have spanned approximately 1.2 million years, with waning cycles of re‐advance superimposed on overall glacial retreat. The new results play into a long‐debated geological paradox: although the Falkland Islands are now proximal to the South Atlantic coastline of South America, their geology bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the Cape Fold Belt and Karoo Basin in South Africa. This puzzled the geological pioneers, but became readily explicable when first continental drift and then plate tectonics were invoked to reconstruct the break‐up of the Gondwana supercontinent—although the details remain controversial. One of the key stratigraphical correlation levels throughout the major fragments of southern Gondwana—South Africa, South America, Antarctica and Australia—is the glacigenic deposit left behind by the extensive, Late Carboniferous to Early Permian regional glaciation; in the Falkland Islands it is designated the Fitzroy Tillite Formation.     

Cenozoic landscape evolution of the Kruger National Park as derived from cosmogenic nuclide analyses

In contrast to active tectonic settings, little is known about the potential feedback between surface processes and climate change in tectonically inactive cratonic regions. Here, we studied the driving forces of erosion and landscape evolution in the Kruger National Park in South Africa using cosmogenic nuclide dating. ¹⁰Be‐derived catchment‐wide erosion rates (~2 and ~10 mm ka^?1) are similar in magnitude to erosion and rock uplift elsewhere in South Africa, suggesting that (1) rock uplift is solely the isostatic response to erosion and (2) the first‐order topography is likely of Cretaceous age. The topographic maturity is promoted by widespread exposure of rocks resistant to erosion. Our data, however, suggest that local variations in rock resistance lead to transient landscape changes, with local increases in relief and erosion rates.