Historical dynamics in ecosystem service bundles Renard, Delphine; Rhemtulla, Jeanine M.; Bennett, Elena M.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
10/2015, Volume:
112, Issue:
43
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Managing multiple ecosystem services (ES), including addressing trade-offs between services and preventing ecological surprises, is among the most pressing areas for sustainability research. These ...challenges require ES research to go beyond the currently common approach of snapshot studies limited to one or two services at a single point in time. We used a spatiotemporal approach to examine changes in nine ES and their relationships from 1971 to 2006 across 131 municipalities in a mixed-use landscape in Quebec, Canada. We show how an approach that incorporates time and space can improve our understanding of ES dynamics. We found an increase in the provision of most services through time; however, provision of ES was not uniformly enhanced at all locations. Instead, each municipality specialized in providing a bundle (set of positively correlated ES) dominated by just a few services. The trajectory of bundle formation was related to changes in agricultural policy and global trends; local biophysical and socioeconomic characteristics explained the bundles’ increasing spatial clustering. Relationships between services varied through time, with some provisioning and cultural services shifting from a trade-off or no relationship in 1971 to an apparent synergistic relationship by 2006. By implementing a spatiotemporal perspective on multiple services, we provide clear evidence of the dynamic nature of ES interactions and contribute to identifying processes and drivers behind these changing relationships. Our study raises questions about using snapshots of ES provision at a single point in time to build our understanding of ES relationships in complex and dynamic social-ecological systems.
How are ecosystem services conceptualized, analyzed, and forecast into the future? How can ecosystem service science be advanced to improve environmental decision-making at all scales? In this paper, ...I focus on three critical challenges in ecosystem service science that must be addressed to better understand, forecast, and manage ecosystem services. These include (1) understanding the role of nonlinearities, feedbacks, and legacies in the sustainable and resilient provision of ecosystem services; (2) understanding the role and interplay of ecological and social components in the provision of ecosystem services; and (3) employing stakeholder knowledge in co-designing research that better addresses decision-makers’ most pressing questions. Addressing these three challenges will advance ecosystem science and improve the use of ecosystem services in understanding and managing ecosystems.
Ecosystem management that attempts to maximize the production of one ecosystem service often results in substantial declines in the provision of other ecosystem services. For this reason, recent ...studies have called for increased attention to development of a theoretical understanding behind the relationships among ecosystem services. Here, we review the literature on ecosystem services and propose a typology of relationships between ecosystem services based on the role of drivers and the interactions between services. We use this typology to develop three propositions to help drive ecological science towards a better understanding of the relationships among multiple ecosystem services. Research which aims to understand the relationships among multiple ecosystem services and the mechanisms behind these relationships will improve our ability to sustainably manage landscapes to provide multiple ecosystem services.
We explore the role of agriculture in destabilizing the Earth system at the planetary scale, through examining nine planetary boundaries, or “safe limits”: land-system change, freshwater use, ...biogeochemical flows, biosphere integrity, climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading, and introduction of novel entities. Two planetary boundaries have been fully transgressed, i.e., are at high risk, biosphere integrity and biogeochemical flows, and agriculture has been the major driver of the transgression. Three are in a zone of uncertainty i.e., at increasing risk, with agriculture the major driver of two of those, land-system change and freshwater use, and a significant contributor to the third, climate change. Agriculture is also a significant or major contributor to change for many of those planetary boundaries still in the safe zone. To reduce the role of agriculture in transgressing planetary boundaries, many interventions will be needed, including those in broader food systems.
Crossing the boundaries in global sustainability
The planetary boundary (PB) concept, introduced in 2009, aimed to define the environmental limits within which humanity can safely operate. This ...approach has proved influential in global sustainability policy development. Steffen
et al.
provide an updated and extended analysis of the PB framework. Of the original nine proposed boundaries, they identify three (including climate change) that might push the Earth system into a new state if crossed and that also have a pervasive influence on the remaining boundaries. They also develop the PB framework so that it can be applied usefully in a regional context.
Science
, this issue
10.1126/science.1259855
Developments in the planetary boundaries concept provide a framework to support global sustainability.
INTRODUCTION
There is an urgent need for a new paradigm that integrates the continued development of human societies and the maintenance of the Earth system (ES) in a resilient and accommodating state. The planetary boundary (PB) framework contributes to such a paradigm by providing a science-based analysis of the risk that human perturbations will destabilize the ES at the planetary scale. Here, the scientific underpinnings of the PB framework are updated and strengthened.
RATIONALE
The relatively stable, 11,700-year-long Holocene epoch is the only state of the ES that we know for certain can support contemporary human societies. There is increasing evidence that human activities are affecting ES functioning to a degree that threatens the resilience of the ES—its ability to persist in a Holocene-like state in the face of increasing human pressures and shocks. The PB framework is based on critical processes that regulate ES functioning. By combining improved scientific understanding of ES functioning with the precautionary principle, the PB framework identifies levels of anthropogenic perturbations below which the risk of destabilization of the ES is likely to remain low—a “safe operating space” for global societal development. A zone of uncertainty for each PB highlights the area of increasing risk. The current level of anthropogenic impact on the ES, and thus the risk to the stability of the ES, is assessed by comparison with the proposed PB (see the figure).
RESULTS
Three of the PBs (climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, and ocean acidification) remain essentially unchanged from the earlier analysis. Regional-level boundaries as well as globally aggregated PBs have now been developed for biosphere integrity (earlier “biodiversity loss”), biogeochemical flows, land-system change, and freshwater use. At present, only one regional boundary (south Asian monsoon) can be established for atmospheric aerosol loading. Although we cannot identify a single PB for novel entities (here defined as new substances, new forms of existing substances, and modified life forms that have the potential for unwanted geophysical and/or biological effects), they are included in the PB framework, given their potential to change the state of the ES. Two of the PBs—climate change and biosphere integrity—are recognized as “core” PBs based on their fundamental importance for the ES. The climate system is a manifestation of the amount, distribution, and net balance of energy at Earth’s surface; the biosphere regulates material and energy flows in the ES and increases its resilience to abrupt and gradual change. Anthropogenic perturbation levels of four of the ES processes/features (climate change, biosphere integrity, biogeochemical flows, and land-system change) exceed the proposed PB (see the figure).
CONCLUSIONS
PBs are scientifically based levels of human perturbation of the ES beyond which ES functioning may be substantially altered. Transgression of the PBs thus creates substantial risk of destabilizing the Holocene state of the ES in which modern societies have evolved. The PB framework does not dictate how societies should develop. These are political decisions that must include consideration of the human dimensions, including equity, not incorporated in the PB framework. Nevertheless, by identifying a safe operating space for humanity on Earth, the PB framework can make a valuable contribution to decision-makers in charting desirable courses for societal development.
Current status of the control variables for seven of the planetary boundaries.
The green zone is the safe operating space, the yellow represents the zone of uncertainty (increasing risk), and the red is a high-risk zone. The planetary boundary itself lies at the intersection of the green and yellow zones. The control variables have been normalized for the zone of uncertainty; the center of the figure therefore does not represent values of 0 for the control variables. The control variable shown for climate change is atmospheric CO
2
concentration. Processes for which global-level boundaries cannot yet be quantified are represented by gray wedges; these are atmospheric aerosol loading, novel entities, and the functional role of biosphere integrity.
The planetary boundaries framework defines a safe operating space for humanity based on the intrinsic biophysical processes that regulate the stability of the Earth system. Here, we revise and update the planetary boundary framework, with a focus on the underpinning biophysical science, based on targeted input from expert research communities and on more general scientific advances over the past 5 years. Several of the boundaries now have a two-tier approach, reflecting the importance of cross-scale interactions and the regional-level heterogeneity of the processes that underpin the boundaries. Two core boundaries—climate change and biosphere integrity—have been identified, each of which has the potential on its own to drive the Earth system into a new state should they be substantially and persistently transgressed.
Global modeling of nature's contributions to people Chaplin-Kramer, Rebecca; Sharp, Richard P; Weil, Charlotte ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
10/2019, Volume:
366, Issue:
6462
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The magnitude and pace of global change demand rapid assessment of nature and its contributions to people. We present a fine-scale global modeling of current status and future scenarios for several ...contributions: water quality regulation, coastal risk reduction, and crop pollination. We find that where people's needs for nature are now greatest, nature's ability to meet those needs is declining. Up to 5 billion people face higher water pollution and insufficient pollination for nutrition under future scenarios of land use and climate change, particularly in Africa and South Asia. Hundreds of millions of people face heightened coastal risk across Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas. Continued loss of nature poses severe threats, yet these can be reduced 3- to 10-fold under a sustainable development scenario.
The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly spread around the world with extensive social and economic effects. This editorial focuses specifically on the implications of the pandemic for small-scale fishers, ...including marketing and processing aspects of the sector, and coastal fishing communities, drawing from news and reports from around the world. Negative consequences to date have included complete shut-downs of some fisheries, knock-on economic effects from market disruptions, increased health risks for fishers, processors and communities, additional implications for marginalized groups, exacerbated vulnerabilities to other social and environmental stressors, and increased Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing. Though much of the news is dire, there have been some positive outcomes such as food sharing, the revival of local food networks, increases in local sales through direct marketing and deliveries, collective actions to safeguard rights, collaborations between communities and governments, and reduced fishing pressure in some places. While the crisis is still unfolding, there is an urgent need to coordinate, plan and implement effective short- and long-term responses. Thus, we urge governments, development organizations, NGOs, donors, the private sector, and researchers to rapidly mobilize in support of small-scale fishers, coastal fishing communities, and associated civil society organizations, and suggest actions that can be taken by each to help these groups respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Until recently, there was no approved treatment for a retinal degenerative disease. Subretinal injection of a recombinant adeno-associated virus (AAV) delivering the normal copy of the human RPE65 ...cDNA led to reversal of blindness first in animal models and then in humans. This led to the first US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved gene therapy product for a genetic disease, voretigene neparvovec-rzyl (Luxturna). Luxturna was then approved by the European Medicines Association and is now available in the US through Spark Therapeutics and worldwide through Novartis. Not only has treatment with Luxturna changed the lives of people previously destined to live a life of blindness, but it has fueled interest in developing additional gene therapy reagents targeting numerous other genetic forms of inherited retinal disease. This review describes many of the considerations for administration of Luxturna and describes how lessons from experience with Luxturna could lead to additional gene-based treatments of blindness.
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Until recently, there was no treatment for inherited retinal blindness. Late in 2017, Luxturna became the first approved gene therapy product for a genetic disease in the US and in the European Union, changing the situation. This article presents current considerations regarding the administration of this treatment in the clinic.
Groundwater is an important source of water supply and ecosystem resilience. However, limited information on spatio-temporal dynamics makes a complete assessment of available groundwater resources ...difficult, impairing sustainable water management. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission (GRACE) has recently made this possible. In this study, we used the Yellow River Basin (YRB) as a model system to explore the use of spatio-temporal dynamics information about groundwater change derived from the GRACE datasets for regional groundwater management. While there was an overall decreasing trend (R2 = 0.57) during the last 14 year, the groundwater storage over the whole basin decreased significantly (p < 0.0001, slope changed from −0.0137 cm/month to −0.0684 cm/month) since 2010 (2010–2016) and showed stronger fluctuations than the time before (2003–2009). The range and the standard deviation of groundwater storage change also increased in recent years especially after 2010. At the basin scale, locations which exhibited higher variabilities (large standard deviation) over time generally showed radical decrease of groundwater storage. The results indicated that groundwater depletion may reduce the aquifers’ function for ecosystem resilience, thus posing risks to the ecosystem of the YRB and threatening its people to climate change and extreme events. Despite the overall trend, the changes were heterogeneous if looking at finer scales: spatially, there was a gradual decline of storage from west to east (e.g. the change in December 2016 was −3.6, −9.1 and −25.8 cm for the upper, middle and lower reach, respectively); and temporally, the timeseries among the reaches were significantly different (p = 0.023). Our hotspot analysis also indicated the heterogeneity in groundwater decline across the basin and through the time. Additionally, it showed that human factors (e.g. groundwater consumption) become dominant in determining the groundwater change pattern over climatic variations. We therefore call for more attention to groundwater in developing sustainable water management strategies and suggest a closer cooperation of neighboring provinces in the YRB to have a reciprocal strategic plan for water regulation, protection, and management.
•We quantified spatio-temporal dynamics of GRACE-based groundwater storage in the YRB.•We analyzed groundwater (GW) dynamics and their potential causes at multiple scales.•GW showed declining pattern at all scales: provincial, reaches and basin.•Stronger GW declines after 2010 at all scales indicated critical need for management.•The change in hot-spots of groundwater decline was related to human footprint.
With limited phosphorus (P) supplies, increasing P demand, and issues with P runoff and pollution, developing an ability to reuse the large amounts of residual P stored in agricultural soils is ...increasingly important. In this study, we investigated the potential for residual soil P to maintain crop yields while reducing P applications and losses in Canada. Using a P cycling model coupled with a soil P dynamics model, we analyzed soil P dynamics over 110 years across Canada's provinces. We found that using soil residual P may reduce mineral P demand as large as 132 Gg P year−1 (29%) in Canada, with the highest potential for reducing P applications in the Atlantic provinces, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia. Using residual soil P would result in a 21% increase in Canada's cropland P use efficiency. We expected that the Atlantic provinces and Quebec would have the greatest runoff P loss reduction with use of residual soil P, with the average P loss rate decreasing from 4.24 and 1.69 kg ha−1 to 3.45 and 1.38 kg ha−1, respectively. Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia would experience relatively lower reductions in P loss through use of residual soil P, with the average runoff P loss rate decreasing from 0.44, 0.36, and 4.33 kg ha−1 to 0.19, 0.26, and 4.14 kg ha−1, respectively. Our study highlights the importance of considering residual soil P as a valuable resource and its potential for reducing P pollution.
Our study evaluates the spatial and temporal changes in residual soil P across Canada's agricultural landscape. We highlight that the Atlantic provinces, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia have the greatest potential to reduce P applications, with the greatest reduction in soil P loss projected in the Atlantic provinces and Quebec.
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