Loss of patch-scale heterogeneity on secondary productivity in the arid shrubland of Western Australia

General models of degradation suggest soil and nutrients are lost and conversion of rainfall into primary productivity is diminished when rangeland is degraded. These models are supported by studies on non-resilient landscapes, where loss of primary productivity also translated into loss of secondary productivity, but have not been tested on resilient landscapes. Elsewhere we showed that loss of chenopod shrubs from a landscape characterized as resilient was associated with declines in plant productivity and efficiency of conversion of rainfall into plant mass. To explore whether these differences in primary productivity translated into differences in secondary productivity, we grazed sheep at five rates of stocking for 10 years on 2000 ha of this landscape. The experiment was necessarily replicated in time not space (i.e. pseudo-replicated), which limits confident extrapolation of results to other landscapes.Productivity of sheep at all except highest rates of stocking varied little between sites where shrubs were abundant or scarce. From an animal production point of view, greater rates of stocking were unsustainable through dry years on the degraded site, but animal performance was generally unaffected on the non-degraded site, where shrubs were abundant. While these results provide evidence of economic penalties associated with degrading a resilient landscape, important ecological penalties were only partially explored.     

Sustainability begins at home? An ecological exploration of sub/urban Australian community-focused housing initiatives

This paper responds to challenges made by Castree [Castree, N., 2004. Environmental issues: signals in the noise? Progress in Human Geography 28 (1), 79-90] and Sneddon [Sneddon, C., 2000. ‘Sustainability’ in ecological economics, ecology and livelihoods: a review. Progress in Human Geography 24 (4), 521-549] for human geography to clarify its contribution to environmental debates and engage with recent formulations of sustainability as informed by the ‘new ecology’. This approach focuses on resilience, functional diversity, flexibility and complexity, here used to examine housing sustainability within an industrialised sub/urban context in terms of design philosophy, ownership, management bases, community engagement and funding mechanisms. This framework highlights areas of concern for enhancing the functional diversity of housing systems, echoing recent assertions that challenges for sustainability arise more from trust and power sharing issues, than from physical design and maintenance issues. It is argued that it is precisely human geography’s place-by-place consideration of power, embeddedness, scale and politics that can lend new ecology the social relevance it requires.     

Fire in Chihuahuan Desert grassland: Short-term effects on vegetation, small mammal populations, and faunal pedoturbation

A prescribed burn resulted in significant decreases in canopy cover of the grasses: Bouteloua eriopoda, Sporobolus flexuosus, and Aristida purpurea. One year post-burn, basal cover of B. eriopoda remained significantly lower in burned patches than in unburned areas but there were no differences in basal cover of the other perennial grasses. Only one species of the 14 summer annual species occurred in both burned and unburned plots. There were six species of spring annuals in burned patches but no spring annuals in the unburned grassland ten months post-burn. Fire killed 100% of the snakeweed shrubs (Gutierrezia sarothrae), 77% of the Ephedra torreyana shrubs, and 36% of the Yucca elata. All mesquite shrubs that were top-killed by fire, resprouted one month post-burn. Fire had no effect on abundance and species richness of rodents. There were fewer wolf spider, Geolycosa spp. burrows in burned areas than in unburned grassland. The area and volume of soil in termite galleries and sheeting were significantly larger in the unburned grassland than in the burned areas.     

Middlemen,a critical social-ecological link in coastal communities of Kenya and Zanzibar

This paper analyzes the middlemen–fishermen link in coastal communities along the coast of southern Kenya and Zanzibar, and explores effects of reciprocal agreements and credit arrangements on social-ecological feedbacks of coastal systems. The existence and generality of such arrangements are mapped and their effect on resource use and ecosystem dynamics is then explored. Data show that credit arrangements are widespread and that fishermen are bound by reciprocal agreements and financial guarantees during periods of lower catches that provide short-term stabilizing social effects. These arrangements create incentives which disconnect resource extraction from ecosystem dynamics and impede development of sustainable use practices. The role of middlemen is seldom accounted for in fisheries governance. Scenarios for the development of small-scale fisheries in the region are outlined and the function of middlemen is discussed considering the influence of external drivers. Policies that incorporate middlemen are recommended to improve the governance of fish stocks and coastal ecosystems in East Africa.     

Making the ecosystem approach operational—Can regime shifts in ecological- and governance systems facilitate the transition?

Effectively reducing cumulative impacts on marine ecosystems requires co-evolution between science, policy and practice. Here, long-term social–ecological changes in the Baltic Sea are described, illustrating how the process of making the ecosystem approach operational in a large marine ecosystem can be stimulated. The existing multi-level governance institutions are specifically set up for dealing with individual sectors, but do not adequately support an operational application of the ecosystem approach. The review of ecosystem services in relation to regime shifts and resilience of the Baltic Sea sub-basins, and their driving forces, points to a number of challenges. There is however a movement towards a new governance regime. Bottom-up pilot initiatives can lead to a diffusion of innovation within the existing governance framework. Top-down, enabling EU legislation, can help stimulating innovations and re-organizing governance structures at drainage basin level to the Baltic Sea catchment as a whole. Experimentation and innovation at local to the regional levels is critical for a transition to ecosystem-based management. Establishing science-based learning platforms at sub-basin scales could facilitate this process.     

灾害恢复力研究进展综述

自20世纪以来,随着人口、资源与环境矛盾的日益加深,全球各区域的自然灾害成灾次数、经济损失和受灾人口明显增多,自然灾害灾情不断上升,灾害风险已经成为可持续发展的最大障碍。风险、脆弱性、恢复力和适应性相关的灾害综合管理和减灾作为实施可持续发展的重要途径,已被学术界、经济与社会界予以高度重视。在国际减灾十年（IDNDR）活动、国际减灾战略（ISDR）的相继实施的大背景下,国内外学者兴起了研究灾害脆弱性和恢复力的新一轮热潮。目前国内外对承灾体脆弱性的研究较多,但对于灾害恢复力的恢复力研究才刚刚起步,虽然承灾体的恢复力建设近年来也逐渐被认识到是减灾行动中的一个重要环节。20世纪70年代开始,恢复力这一概念首先从力学被引入生态领域,目前,它已经成为生态、灾害和气候变化等多个学科共同关注的对象。对恢复力的概念发展和国内外目前的研究动态进行了较全面的综述,论述了灾害恢复力的科学价值和重要性,分析了灾害脆弱性与灾害恢复力的关系,总结了恢复力评估的主要方法、特点和难点,并在此基础上对灾害恢复力未来研究进行了展望,提出了研究的关键问题并建议进行更深入的研究。     

Disaster experiences of women with disabilities: Barriers and opportunities for disability inclusive disaster risk reduction in Cambodia

Despite increased international commitment to disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction (DiDRR) people with disabilities remain largely unseen, unheard and unaccounted for in DRR processes and planning. This is most marked amongst women with disabilities who experience specific gender, disability and poverty-based disadvantages, which disasters exacerbate. Our research found that women with disabilities are disproportionally impacted by disasters and are the least able to access institutional support across the preparedness, response and recovery phases of disaster events. Furthermore, the increased threat of violence following disasters heightens their risk of additional harm. In the absence of formal supports women with disabilities have few choices but to rely upon the social capital of their households and neighbours for assistance. They ‘recover’ in whatever ways they can – through short-term loans, reduced food consumption and/or migration – each carry significant costs to their longer-term resilience. This paper unpacks the root causes of women with disabilities’ marginalisation in disaster contexts, many of which are extensions of exclusionary processes that play out in their daily lives. We also present steps to position women at the centre of DRR discourse, which will benefit all.     

Principles for operationalizing climate change adaptation strategies to support the resilience of estuarine and coastal ecosystems: An Australian perspective

Effective publicly developed adaptation strategies are crucial in managing the impacts of Climate Change. Adaptation strategy development is particularly complex in estuarine and coastal marine ecosystems because of their diverse environmental values, extensive human utilisation and the complex socio-ecological systems they support. Although many generic adaptation frameworks are available they cannot provide specific guidance for locally relevant strategy development. In contrast, situation-specific tools work well for their intended purpose but are usually unsuitable for a different situation. The gap between generic frameworks and situation-specific tools is addressed in this study by developing a set of general principles to provide guidance for the efficient and robust development of adaptation strategies. The nine principles comprise a conceptualisation of the various factors that are likely to have an effect on the success or otherwise of an adaptation strategy and they apply in any situation. An example ‘adaptation checklist’ that serves as a guide to practitioners in the field, will help ensure that all critical components are covered during the development of an adaptation strategy.     

Resilience for disaster risk management in a changing climate: Practitioners’ frames and practices

There is a growing use of resilience ideas within the disaster risk management literature and policy domain. However, few empirical studies have focused on how resilience ideas are conceptualized by practitioners, as they implement them in practice. Using Hajer's ‘social-interactive discourse theory’ this research contributes to the understanding of how practitioners frame, construct and make sense of resilience ideas in the context of changes in institutional arrangements for disaster risk management that explicitly include the resilience approach and climate change considerations. The case study involved the roll out of the Natural Disaster Resilience Program in Queensland, Australia, and the study involved three sites in Queensland. The methods used were observation of different activities and the physical sites, revision of documents related to the Natural Disaster Resilience Program and in-depth semi-structured interviews with key informants, all practitioners who had direct interaction with the program. The research findings show that practitioners construct the meaning of disaster resilience differently, and these are embedded in diverse storylines. Within these storylines, practitioners gave different interpretations and emphasis to the seven discourse categories that characterized their resilience discourse. Self-reliance emerged as one of the paramount discourse categories but we argue that caution needs to be used when promoting values of self-reliance. If the policy impetus is a focus on learning, research findings indicate it is also pertinent to move from experiential learning toward social learning. The results presented in this study provide helpful insights to inform policy design and implementation of resilience ideas in disaster risk management and climate change, and to inform theory.     

Public perception of climate change and disaster preparedness: Evidence from the Philippines

The Philippines is highly susceptible to both geophysical and climate-related disasters. This article explores Filipinos knowledge and perception of climate change and their association with what action Filipinos take to prepare for rapid onset natural hazards such as typhoons. Data for this study were collected from a nationally representative random survey of 5,184 adults conducted between March and April of 2017. Filipinos self-report relatively low levels of knowledge of climate change and cited increased temperatures, shifts in seasons, and heavier rains as the most likely consequences. Levels of disaster preparedness in the Philippines differ widely by region. Although most Filipinos perceive that natural hazards are a risk to them, only a third of Filipinos undertake measures to prepare for disasters. Filipinos who perceive climate-related changes directly impacting their households report taking greater action to prepare for disasters. Filipinos who believe they have been directly impacted by climate-related changes are also more likely to prepare for disasters, take planning actions, and undertake material actions to prepare, such as dwelling improvements. Other factors associated with disaster preparedness include gender, membership in an association, wealth, risk perception, and prior exposure to and losses due to disasters. The findings imply that, while posing different challenges and requiring different responses, adaptation to climate change and disaster preparedness are inherently associated and potentially mutually reinforcing. Policies and programs would arguably benefit from a more unified intervention framework that links climate change adaptation and disaster preparedness.