A cost–benefit appraisal of coastal managed realignment policy

European coasts are coming under increasing threat as a result of climate change from erosion and flooding. While coastal defences such as sea walls have been constructed since Roman times to protect human settlements from the sea, it is now increasingly recognised that these defences are unsustainable. The security provided by ‘hard’ engineered defences has encouraged development on the coast, and the defences themselves have led to the loss of intertidal habitat and the natural protection it provides.An alternative to maintaining ‘hard’ defences (hold-the-line) to protect land from increasing sea levels is managed realignment, where the engineered defences are deliberately breached. By allowing the coastline to recede to a new line of defence further inland, intertidal habitat is created providing natural protection from flooding and erosion.The study evaluates the economic efficiency—using cost–benefit analysis—of various managed realignment scenarios compared to a strategy of holding-the-line within the Humber estuary in North-east England. The results of this analysis show that managed realignment can be more economically efficient than holding-the-line over a sufficiently long time period—generally greater than 25 years. Sensitivity analysis demonstrates that results are more sensitive to the amount and value of intertidal habitat generated than they are to the amount and value of carbon stored by this habitat. Cost–benefit analysis is viewed as one component of a wider policy appraisal process within integrated coastal management.     

National indicators for observing ecosystem service change

Earth’s life-support systems are in rapid decline, yet we have few metrics or indicators with which to track these changes. The world’s governments are calling for biodiversity and ecosystem-service monitoring to guide and evaluate international conservation policy as well as to incorporate natural capital into their national accounts. The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) has been tasked with setting up this monitoring system. Here we explore the immediate feasibility of creating a global ecosystem-service monitoring platform under the GEO BON framework through combining data from national statistics, global vegetation models, and production function models. We found that nine ecosystem services could be annually reported at a national scale in the short term: carbon sequestration, water supply for hydropower, and non-fisheries marine products, crop, livestock, game meat, fisheries, mariculture, and timber production. Reported changes in service delivery over time reflected ecological shocks (e.g., droughts and disease outbreaks), highlighting the immediate utility of this monitoring system. Our work also identified three opportunities for creating a more comprehensive monitoring system. First, investing in input data for ecological process models (e.g., global land-use maps) would allow many more regulating services to be monitored. Currently, only 1 of 9 services that can be reported is a regulating service. Second, household surveys and censuses could help evaluate how nature affects people and provides non-monetary benefits. Finally, to forecast the sustainability of service delivery, research efforts could focus on calculating the total remaining biophysical stocks of provisioning services. Regardless, we demonstrated that a preliminary ecosystem-service monitoring platform is immediately feasible. With sufficient international investment, the platform could evolve further into a much-needed system to track changes in our planet's life-support systems.     

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) in the face of external biophysical stressors

Economic instruments such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes are increasingly promoted to protect ecosystems (and their associated ecosystem services) that are threatened by processes of local and global change. Biophysical stressors external to a PES site, such as forest fires, pollution, sea level rise, and ocean acidification, may undermine ecosystem stability and sustained ecosystem service provision, yet their threats and impacts are difficult to account for within PES scheme design. We present a typology of external biophysical stressors, characterizing them in terms of stressor origin, spatial domain and temporal scale. We further analyse how external stressors can potentially impinge on key PES parameters, as they (1) threaten ecosystem service provision, additionality and permanence, (2) add challenges to the identification of PES providers and beneficiaries, and (3) add complexity and costs to PES mechanism design. Effective PES implementation under external stressors requires greater emphasis on the evaluation and mitigation of external stressors, and further instruments that can accommodate associated risks and uncertainties. A greater understanding of external stressors will increase our capacity to design multi-scale instruments to conserve important ecosystems in times of environmental change.     

Medium-term responses of rocky bottoms to sewage discharges from a deepwater outfall in the NE Atlantic

An investigation on the effects of deepwater outfall discharges on the status of rocky reef communities was carried out. The sanitation system was found to be an environmentally suitable option for the protection of those habitats situated in high energy coastal environments. Sediments occurring between the predominating rocky substrates showed low values of the fine fraction (<63microm) and organic matter content. In addition, high average concentrations of Cd, Hg and Zn were found in these sediments, though these values were similar to those registered in non-affected sites, far away from the outfall. On the other hand, those assemblages typical of hard substrates that settled near the outfall showed an increase in total richness and abundance of macroinvertebrates. Moreover, the average number of species of each taxonomic group, a good indicator of the maintenance of the previous trophic structure, only varied considerably over time at the rip-rap protection. In a global context, those changes were not directly related to the discharge disturbances, but to the natural variability or the successional processes occurring within those communities. Only communities dwelling in the rip-rap protection area were affected by the proximity of the discharges.     

地球系统动力学模式和模拟研究的进展

概述地球系统动力学模式的由来及国内外目前的研究和模拟进展。地球系统动力学模式是描述全球气候以及生态和环境系统的整体耦合演变的数学表达。利用他作大规模数值模拟,以便认识和预测全球和区域的气候和生态环境变化,有效应对防灾减灾和规划可持续发展等。目前国内外尚未完全研制出可供实用的地球系统模式,还须二三年时间。     

Performance of a northwestern Mediterranean bottom trawl fleet: How the integration of landings and VMS data can contribute to the implementation of ecosystem-based fisheries management

The European Union has established a framework to achieve or maintain good environmental status in the marine environment by 2020. The Marine Strategy Framework Directive requires the application of the ecosystem approach to the management of human activities, covering all sectors having an impact on the marine environment. However, fisheries in the Mediterranean are far from a systematic implementation of an ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM). Aiming to address this issue, this study explores the potential of the relationship between daily yield by vessel (landings and income by species) and vessel position (known via vessel monitoring system) as a tool for fleet management. This approach is possible due to the current dynamics of Mediterranean fleets, with vessels returning daily to the harbour where landings are registered as weight and income by vessel. Moreover, vessels of >15 m total length have been compulsory monitored by VMS since 2005. A bottom trawl fleet that operates in the northwestern Mediterranean was chosen to develop this approach. Different groups of trawlers were identified, which could be linked to the strategies displayed by the fishermen that were mainly driven by the target species dynamics. Accurate knowledge of the fishing targets driving the fleet dynamics and of the fishing strategies at the vessel level (i.e. fishing ground habitat where the fishing pressure is exerted and corresponding landings) are shown to be a feasible tool for fleet management.     

Outstanding challenges for urban conservation research and action

Researchers, advocates and policymakers have proposed urban conservation as an emerging, integrative discipline that can contribute to sustainable cities by delivering co-benefits to human and non-human components of biodiversity. Given the recent growth in biodiversity-friendly designs and management schemes, there is an urgent need for a synthesis of this fragmented research base to inform planners and decision-makers. We conducted a systematic multidisciplinary literature review (787 papers) and found that the importance of urban areas for general conservation is not convincingly supported by empirical research. Only few studies demonstrated that cities can directly contribute to conservation efforts, by hosting viable populations of rare or endangered species, or by providing green corridors for the passage of natural populations. From a social perspective, while several studies demonstrated that green infrastructure could provide services for people (notably cultural services), only few studies explored the role of species diversity per se. Our review also shows strong geographical, location and taxonomic biases in urban biodiversity conservation research that make generalisations difficult. It is a disturbing paradox that while research in urban biodiversity conservation is rising exponentially, the main motivations for conserving urban biodiversity remain largely untested and unproven. We thus propose a framework for promoting integrative urban conservation research to bridge those gaps. Together, these findings warn against expanding cities under green planning and call for enhancing biodiversity experience by improving the quality of existing green spaces throughout the entire urban matrix. We provide a set of recommendations for practitioners and decision-makers to continue action.     

Exploring the factors affecting urban ecological risk: A case from an Indian mega metropolitan region

Assessment of ecological risk (ER) is a key approach to adapting and mitigating ecological deterioration in cities of developing countries. In developing countries, the ecological landscapes such as vegetation cover, water bodies, and wetlands are highly vulnerable due to rapid urban expansion. Therefore, urban ER (UER) assessment and its drivers are crucial to guide ecological protection as well as restoration. This study aims to explore the spatiotemporal pattern of UER and the impact of urban spatial form on UER in the Kolkata Megacity Region (KMR), India. This study developed a UER index and used spatial regression models across the urban centres. The ER has been assessed at city scale as well as grid-scale (2 km × 2 km and 5 km × 5 km) from 2000 to 2020. The results showed that ER has substantially increased over the last 20 years. The urban centres with very high and high ER substantially increased, i.e. from 21.95% in 2000 to 31.70% in 2020. Kolkata and its surrounding urban centres were mostly characterized by very high and high ER. ER was influenced by spatial variables (such as land use and landscapes pattern). However, remote sensing parameters were weakly related to ER. The spatial lag model (SLM) (R² = 0.8686) was found to be better fit model than spatial error model (SEM) (R² = 0.8661) and ordinary linear regression model (OLS) (R² = 0.8641). Thus, the findings of the study can improve research and a comprehensive framework for urban ecological resources and provide a scientific basis for urban ecosystem planning and restoration. In addition to this, it will guarantee the sustainable utilization of urban ecosystems.     

Satellite monitoring of urbanization and environmental impacts—A comparison of Stockholm and Shanghai

This study investigates urbanization and its potential environmental consequences in Shanghai and Stockholm metropolitan areas over two decades. Changes in land use/land cover are estimated from support vector machine classifications of Landsat mosaics with grey-level co-occurrence matrix features. Landscape metrics are used to investigate changes in landscape composition and configuration and to draw preliminary conclusions about environmental impacts. Speed and magnitude of urbanization is calculated by urbanization indices and the resulting impacts on the environment are quantified by ecosystem services. Growth of urban areas and urban green spaces occurred at the expense of cropland in both regions. Alongside a decrease in natural land cover, urban areas increased by approximately 120% in Shanghai, nearly ten times as much as in Stockholm, where the most significant land cover change was a 12% urban expansion that mostly replaced agricultural areas. From the landscape metrics results, it appears that fragmentation in both study regions occurred mainly due to the growth of high density built-up areas in previously more natural/agricultural environments, while the expansion of low density built-up areas was for the most part in conjunction with pre-existing patches. Urban growth resulted in ecosystem service value losses of approximately 445 million US dollars in Shanghai, mostly due to the decrease in natural coastal wetlands while in Stockholm the value of ecosystem services changed very little. Total urban growth in Shanghai was 1768 km² and 100 km² in Stockholm. The developed methodology is considered a straight-forward low-cost globally applicable approach to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate urban growth patterns that could help to address spatial, economic and ecological questions in urban and regional planning.