Urban green commons: Insights on urban common property systems

The aim of this paper is to shed new light on urban common property systems. We deal with urban commons in relation to urban green-space management, referring to them as urban green commons. Applying a property-rights analytic perspective, we synthesize information on urban green commons from three case-study regions in Sweden, Germany, and South Africa, and elaborate on their role for biodiversity conservation in urban settings, with a focus on business sites. Cases cover both formally established types of urban green commons and bottom-up emerged community-managed habitats. As our review demonstrates, the right to actively manage urban green space is a key characteristic of urban green commons whether ownership to land is in the private, public, the club realm domain, or constitutes a hybrid of these. We discuss the important linkages among urban common property systems, social–ecological learning, and management of ecosystem services and biodiversity. Several benefits can be associated with urban green commons, such as a reduction of costs for ecosystem management and as designs for reconnecting city-inhabitants to the biosphere. The emergence of urban green commons appears closely linked to dealing with societal crises and for reorganizing cities; hence, they play a key role in transforming cities toward more socially and ecologically benign environments. While a range of political questions circumscribe the feasibility of urban green commons, we discuss their usefulness in management of different types of urban habitats, their political justification and limitation, their potential for improved biodiversity conservation, and conditions for their emergence. We conclude by postulating some general policy advice.     

Diagnostic monitoring of a changing environment: an alternative UK perspective

Adaptive management of the marine environment requires an understanding of the complex interactions within it. Establishing levels of natural variability within and between marine ecosystems is a necessary prerequisite to this process and requires a monitoring programme which takes account of the issues of time, space and scale. In this paper, we argue that an ecosystem approach to managing the marine environment should take direct account of climate change indicators at a regional level if it is to cope with the unprecedented change expected as a result of human impacts on the earth climate system. We discuss the purpose of environmental monitoring and the importance of maintaining long-term time series. Recommendations are made on the use of these data in conjunction with modern extrapolation and integration tools (e.g. ecosystem models, remote sensing) to provide a diagnostic approach to the management of marine ecosystems, based on adaptive indicators and dynamic baselines.     

黄河三角洲海岸带陆海相互作用概念模式

根据陆海相互作用的观点,黄河流域、黄河干流、河口三角洲及其邻近海区的生态环境相互联系,组成了一个有机的生态系统链,可称为黄河-渤海生态系统。黄河流域的降水量、土壤植被条件使黄河干流具有水少沙多、水沙异源和水资源缺乏的特征。干流入海水、沙通量变化影响了黄河三角洲地区的侵蚀、堆积和发育过程。黄河物质入海后在河口及邻近海域形成了具有高生产力的生态环境和著名的渔场。据此绘出了黄河-渤海生态环境内各环节相互联系的概念模式图,并提出了黄河流域大面积水土保持和南水北调工程逐步展开等新环境下,本区陆海相互作用的研究方向。     

The age as a diagnostic of the dynamics of marine ecosystem models

The constituent-oriented age theory (CAT) worked out by Delhez et al. (1999) is a flexible tool that can be applied to diagnose complex models. It is shown here how this can be used to quantify the pace at which an ecosystem model works. At the cost of the introduction of one additional evolution equation for each compartment of the ecosystem model, the mean age of the biological material forming these compartments can be computed. The information obtained in this way complements the information provided by the concentration data; while the latter measures the standing stocks, the former provides an integrated assessment of the interaction rates and matter fluxes. The benefits of the method are demonstrated with a simple Lotka–Volterra system and a one-dimensional vertical model of the nitrogen cycle in the Ligurian Sea. The theory can be used to study the biological compartments individually or the ecosystem as a whole. In particular, the age is a valuable tool to quantify the overall cycling rate of nitrogen in the food web.Responsible Editor: Phil Dyke     

闽江河口湿地自然保护区生态系统服务价值评价

研究运用生态经济学和资源环境经济学等有关理论和研究方法,利用前人已有调查资料,对闽江河口湿地自然保护区生态系统服务价值做了较全面的评价,拟为保护湿地和公共决策提供科学依据。闽江河口湿地自然保护区生态系统服务价值为4966.1万元/a。按照价值量大小排序为:调节气候价值>文化载体价值>保护生物多样性价值>提供产品价值。     

基于PSR模型的九段沙湿地生态系统健康评价

以长江口九段沙湿地为例,运用湿地生态系统健康理论和压力-状态-响应(PSR)模型对湿地生态系统的健康进行了诊断评价。首先从湿地面临的压力、生态系统现状以及相应的管理对策等3个层面选取了30个评价指标,构建了九段沙湿地生态系统健康的评价体系。然后通过定量与定性相结合将指标分为5个等级,最后运用综合指数法对九段沙湿地生态系统健康综合指数进行计算。结果表明,九段沙湿地健康综合评价指数为0.77,处于健康状态。同时,九段沙湿地目前所面临压力的评价值为0.707,尚处于能够承受的范围,其主要压力来自于渔业资源无序过度捕捞、外来物种入侵、环境污染、长江来沙量锐减等方面。     

Monitoring directions and rates of change in trees outside forests through multitemporal analysis of map sequences

This study explores the potential of historical maps to detect, measure and monitor changes of trees outside forests. The main goal is to assess local-level changes of scattered trees and orchards and their land-use determinants in two areas in Southern Germany between 1901/1905 and 2009. Firstly, overall landscape changes are recorded. Secondly, the spatial-temporal trajectories of scattered trees and their land-use determinants are identified. Thirdly, changes in quantity and fragmentation patterns of traditional orchards are analyzed in their relationship to overall land-cover change. The results confirm major losses in scattered trees, mainly due to urbanization, agricultural intensification, and land abandonment. They further reveal that, while orchards have persisted in total area, they have undergone critical changes toward a simplified landscape structure and loss of the traditional land-use mosaic, which is a characterizing feature of high nature value landscapes. Multi-temporal assessment showed that most trends have been continuous and did not change directions over time, but rather accelerated during periods of rapid change (most dramatically in the 1950-1990 period). The case of orchards and scattered trees illustrates a major problem of cultural landscapes in Europe: Semi-natural landscape features of high nature value are threatened by both intensification and abandonment of land uses. This makes their conservation a potentially costly enterprise, as both opportunity costs for lost alternative land uses and for conservation management costs arise.     

Conceptualizing food systems for global environmental change research

This paper outlines a framework for studying the multiple interactions of broadly defined food systems with global environmental change and evaluating the major societal outcomes affected by these interactions: food security, ecosystem services and social welfare. In building the framework the paper explores and synthesizes disparate literature on food systems food security and global environmental change, bridging social science and natural science perspectives. This collected evidence justifies a representation of food systems, which can be used to identify key processes and determinants of food security in a given place or time, particularly the impacts of environmental change. It also enables analysis of the feedbacks from food system outcomes to drivers of environmental and social change, as well as tradeoffs among the food system outcomes themselves. In food systems these tradeoffs are often between different scales or levels of decision-making or management, so solutions to manage them must be context-specific. With sufficient empirical evidence, the framework could be used to build a database of typologies of food system interactions useful for different management or analytical purposes.     

Dealing with drought: The challenge of using water system technologies to break dryland poverty traps

We explore strategies among farmers in semi-arid Tanzania to cope with drought, and investigate if access to a local supplemental irrigation system (the Ndiva system) can improve coping capacity. Results show high dependency on local ecosystem services when harvests fail, and indicate that farmers commonly exhaust asset holdings during droughts. Ndiva access did not have any direct effects on coping capacity, but seemed to have some indirect effects. Drawing on our findings we discuss the complexity of escaping persistent dryland poverty, and outline the circumstances under which small-scale water system technologies, such as Ndiva irrigation, may help.     

Assessment of the management of organizations supplying ecosystem services from tropical forests

Global environmental change leads to degradation of tropical forests in many countries. In response to this pressure, programs for payments for ecosystem services (PES) are developing and organizations are emerging which manage forests in order to supply ecosystem services, rather than only harvest timber. Typically such services are carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, pollination, and watershed protection. Public or private actors interested to invest in or donate money for the provisioning of such services are faced with the problem of choosing the appropriate organization supplying ecosystem services. The goal of this paper was to develop an assessment framework based on the balanced scorecard concept including drivers, impact, performance and context variables. Results of a survey of international market actors were used to determine assessment criteria and their weights. Putting the focus of this paper on drivers and impacts, we assessed Latin American organizations that “sell” ecosystem services from tropical forests in terms of their general management, marketing, forest management, client and stakeholder satisfaction, and forest ecosystem status. We found that supplying organizations vary widely with respect to their achievements in these areas. However, the variance of assessment results is influenced even more by the variance in weights the international market actors allocate to the assessment criteria. The insights of this study can contribute to the continuous improvement of management processes in supplying organizations and can support investors and donors in their decision-making with respect to organization supplying ecosystem services.