Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change Howden, S. Mark; Soussana, Jean-François; Tubiello, Francesco N. ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
12/2007, Letnik:
104, Številka:
50
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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The strong trends in climate change already evident, the likelihood of further changes occurring, and the increasing scale of potential climate impacts give urgency to addressing agricultural ...adaptation more coherently. There are many potential adaptation options available for marginal change of existing agricultural systems, often variations of existing climate risk management. We show that implementation of these options is likely to have substantial benefits under moderate climate change for some cropping systems. However, there are limits to their effectiveness under more severe climate changes. Hence, more systemic changes in resource allocation need to be considered, such as targeted diversification of production systems and livelihoods. We argue that achieving increased adaptation action will necessitate integration of climate change-related issues with other risk factors, such as climate variability and market risk, and with other policy domains, such as sustainable development. Dealing with the many barriers to effective adaptation will require a comprehensive and dynamic policy approach covering a range of scales and issues, for example, from the understanding by farmers of change in risk profiles to the establishment of efficient markets that facilitate response strategies. Science, too, has to adapt. Multidisciplinary problems require multidisciplinary solutions, i.e., a focus on integrated rather than disciplinary science and a strengthening of the interface with decision makers. A crucial component of this approach is the implementation of adaptation assessment frameworks that are relevant, robust, and easily operated by all stakeholders, practitioners, policymakers, and scientists.
ObjectivesThe EyeGuide Focus system is a simple, portable, test of visual tracking with potential use for concussion screening. This study investigated the repeatability, reproducibility, ...distribution, and modifiers of EyeGuide Focus measurements in healthy elite Rugby players.DesignCross sectional repeated measures study.Setting2021/2022 United Rugby Championship (URC) elite male Rugby Union competitionParticipantsAdult male elite Rugby playersInterventionsEyeGuide Focus testing was performed in a medical room at rest.Outcome MeasuresTest-retest repeatability (within-subject standard deviation (Sw), coefficient of variation (CV), repeatability coefficient (RC)) and reliability (ICC A,1) of 3 repeated trials were evaluated. The distribution of best score across 3 replicates was then examined using summary statistics, and the influence of subject characteristics investigated. A controlled pre-test post-test sub-study examined the effect of exercise on best EyeGuide focus score using an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).Main ResultsSome 769 elite male Ruby players underwent EyeGuide Focus testing. Test-retest repeatability (Sw 1.96, CV 96.8%, RC 6.54, log transformed data) and reliability (ICC 0.48, log transformed data) were low. However, operationalization as best score across 3 successful replicates revealed favourable between-subject variability, with a median score of 16,312 (IQR 12,433 to 21,665). The distribution of best EyeGuide Focus score was unaffected by previous concussion, eye conditions, or age. No learning or exercise effects were apparent in the controlled pre-test post-test sub-study (ANCOVA, n=89, p=0.83).ConclusionsEyeGuide Focus test-retest repeatability and reliability were low, but comparable with established concussion screening tests. Best score from repeated measurements appears to be a promising metric for future clinical operationalisation.
•Transformative approaches will be needed to address adaptation to global change.•Transformative approaches require new ways to make decisions about adaptation.•The TARA approach (Transformative ...Adaptation Research Alliance) does this.
Transformative adaptation will be increasingly important to effectively address the impacts of climate change and other global drivers on social-ecological systems. Enabling transformative adaptation requires new ways to evaluate and adaptively manage trade-offs between maintaining desirable aspects of current social-ecological systems and adapting to major biophysical changes to those systems. We outline such an approach, based on three elements developed by the Transformative Adaptation Research Alliance (TARA): (1) the benefits of adaptation services; that sub-set of ecosystem services that help people adapt to environmental change; (2) The values-rules-knowledge perspective (vrk) for identifying those aspects of societal decision-making contexts that enable or constrain adaptation and (3) the adaptation pathways approach for implementing adaptation, that builds on and integrates adaptation services and the vrk perspective. Together, these elements provide a future-oriented approach to evaluation and use of ecosystem services, a dynamic, grounded understanding of governance and decision-making and a logical, sequential approach that connects decisions over time. The TARA approach represents a means for achieving changes in institutions and governance needed to support transformative adaptation.
Ecosystem services are typically valued for their immediate material or cultural benefits to human wellbeing, supported by regulating and supporting services. Under climate change, with more frequent ...stresses and novel shocks, 'climate adaptation services', are defined as the benefits to people from increased social ability to respond to change, provided by the capability of ecosystems to moderate and adapt to climate change and variability. They broaden the ecosystem services framework to assist decision makers in planning for an uncertain future with new choices and options. We present a generic framework for operationalising the adaptation services concept. Four steps guide the identification of intrinsic ecological mechanisms that facilitate the maintenance and emergence of ecosystem services during periods of change, and so materialise as adaptation services. We applied this framework for four contrasted Australian ecosystems. Comparative analyses enabled by the operational framework suggest that adaptation services that emerge during trajectories of ecological change are supported by common mechanisms: vegetation structural diversity, the role of keystone species or functional groups, response diversity and landscape connectivity, which underpin the persistence of function and the reassembly of ecological communities under severe climate change and variability. Such understanding should guide ecosystem management towards adaptation planning.
Despite significant progress in understanding climate risks, adaptation efforts in biodiversity conservation remain limited. Adaptation requires addressing immediate conservation threats while also ...attending to long term, highly uncertain and potentially transformative future changes. To date, conservation research has focused more on projecting climate impacts and identifying possible strategies, rather than understanding how governance enables or constrains adaptation actions. We outline an approach to future-oriented conservation that combines the capacities to anticipate future ecological change; to understand the implications of that change for social, political and ecological values; and the ability to engage with the governance (and politics) of adaptation. Our approach builds on the adaptive management and governance literature, however we explicitly address the (often contested) rules, knowledge and values that enable or constrain adaptation. We call for a broader focus that extends beyond technical approaches to acknowledge the socio-political challenges inherent to adaptation. More importantly, we suggest that conservation policy makers and practitioners can use this approach to facilitate learning and adaptation in the context of complexity, transformational change and uncertainty.
Climate change and its interactions with complex socioeconomic dynamics dictate the need for decision makers to move from incremental adaptation toward transformation as societies try to cope with ...unprecedented and uncertain change. Developing pathways toward transformation is especially difficult in regions with multiple contested resource uses and rights, with diverse decision makers and rules, and where high uncertainty is generated by differences in stakeholders’ values, understanding of climate change, and ways of adapting. Such a region is the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia, from which we provide insights for developing a process to address these constraints. We present criteria for sequencing actions along adaptation pathways: feasibility of the action within the current decision context, its facilitation of other actions, its role in averting exceedance of a critical threshold, its robustness and resilience under diverse and unexpected shocks, its effect on future options, its lead time, and its effects on equity and social cohesion. These criteria could potentially enable development of multiple stakeholder-specific adaptation pathways through a regional collective action process. The actual implementation of these multiple adaptation pathways will be highly uncertain and politically difficult because of fixity of resource-use rights, unequal distribution of power, value conflicts, and the likely redistribution of benefits and costs. We propose that the approach we outline for building resilient pathways to transformation is a flexible and credible way of negotiating these challenges.
Adaptation services are the ecosystem processes and services that benefit people by increasing their ability to adapt to change. Benefits may accrue from existing but newly used services where ...ecosystems persist or from novel services supplied following ecosystem transformation. Ecosystem properties that enable persistence or transformation are important adaptation services because they support future options. The adaptation services approach can be applied to decisions on tradeâoffs between currently valued services and benefits from maintaining future options. For example, ecosystem functions and services of floodplains depend on river flows. In those regions of the world where climate change projections are for hotter, drier conditions, floods will be less frequent and floodplains will either persist, though with modified structure and function, or transform to terrestrial (floodâindependent) ecosystems. Many currently valued ecosystem services will reduce in supply or become unavailable, but new options are provided by adaptation services. We present a case study from the MurrayâDarling Basin, Australia, for operationalizing the adaptation services concept for floodplains and wetlands. We found large changes in flow and flood regimes are likely under a scenario of +1.6°C by 2030, even with additional water restored to rivers under the proposed MurrayâDarling Basin Plan. We predict major changes to floodplain ecosystems, including contraction of riparian forests and woodlands and expansion of terrestrial, droughtâtolerant vegetation communities. Examples of adaptation services under this scenario include substitution of irrigated agriculture with dryland cropping and floodplain grazing; mitigation of damage from rarer, extreme floods; and increased tourism, recreational, and cultural values derived from fewer, smaller wetlands that can be maintained with environmental flows. Management for adaptation services will require decisions on where intervention can enable ecosystem persistence and where transformation is inevitable. New ways of managing water that include consideration of the increasing importance of adaptation services requires major changes to decisionâmaking that better account for landscape heterogeneity and largeâscale change rather than attempting to maintain ecosystems in fixed states.
We provide a quantitative assessment of the prospects for current and future biomass feedstocks for bioenergy in Australia, and associated estimates of the greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation resulting ...from their use for production of biofuels or bioelectricity. National statistics were used to estimate current annual production from agricultural and forest production systems. Crop residues were estimated from grain production and harvest index. Wood production statistics and spatial modelling of forest growth were used to estimate quantities of pulpwood, in‐forest residues, and wood processing residues. Possible new production systems for oil from algae and the oil‐seed tree Pongamia pinnata, and of lignocellulosic biomass production from short‐rotation coppiced eucalypt crops were also examined. The following constraints were applied to biomass production and use: avoiding clearing of native vegetation; minimizing impacts on domestic food security; retaining a portion of agricultural and forest residues to protect soil; and minimizing the impact on local processing industries by diverting only the export fraction of grains or pulpwood to bioenergy. We estimated that it would be physically possible to produce 9.6 GL yr−1 of first generation ethanol from current production systems, replacing 6.5 GL yr−1 of gasoline or 34% of current gasoline usage. Current production systems for waste oil, tallow and canola seed could produce 0.9 GL yr−1 of biodiesel, or 4% of current diesel usage. Cellulosic biomass from current agricultural and forestry production systems (including biomass from hardwood plantations maturing by 2030) could produce 9.5 GL yr−1 of ethanol, replacing 6.4 GL yr−1 of gasoline, or ca. 34% of current consumption. The same lignocellulosic sources could instead provide 35 TWh yr−1, or ca. 15% of current electricity production. New production systems using algae and P. pinnata could produce ca. 3.96 and 0.9 GL biodiesel yr−1, respectively. In combination, they could replace 4.2 GL yr−1 of fossil diesel, or 23% of current usage. Short‐rotation coppiced eucalypt crops could provide 4.3 GL yr−1 of ethanol (2.9 GL yr−1 replacement, or 15% of current gasoline use) or 20.2 TWh yr−1 of electricity (9% of current generation). In total, first and second generation fuels from current and new production systems could mitigate 26 Mt CO2‐e, which is 38% of road transport emissions and 5% of the national emissions. Second generation fuels from current and new production systems could mitigate 13 Mt CO2‐e, which is 19% of road transport emissions and 2.4% of the national emissions lignocellulose from current and new production systems could mitigate 48 Mt CO2‐e, which is 28% of electricity emissions and 9% of the national emissions. There are challenging sustainability issues to consider in the production of large amounts of feedstock for bioenergy in Australia. Bioenergy production can have either positive or negative impacts. Although only the export fraction of grains and sugar was used to estimate first generation biofuels so that domestic food security was not affected, it would have an impact on food supply elsewhere. Environmental impacts on soil, water and biodiversity can be significant because of the large land base involved, and the likely use of intensive harvest regimes. These require careful management. Social impacts could be significant if there were to be large‐scale change in land use or management. In addition, although the economic considerations of feedstock production were not covered in this article, they will be the ultimate drivers of industry development. They are uncertain and are highly dependent on government policies (e.g. the price on carbon, GHG mitigation and renewable energy targets, mandates for renewable fuels), the price of fossil oil, and the scale of the industry.
This reissue, first published in 1980, is based on the experiences of the International Extension College in developing distance teaching. The volume begins by reviewing the world problems of ...educational quality and quantity, and then examines the ways in which print, broadcasts and group study have been used to train teachers, to improve classroom education, to teach by correspondence out of school, and to support rural development. It then considers how that experience can be used, perhaps by creating a network of radio colleges, to supplement and extend existing schools and colleges. Finally, the book includes a descriptive and annotated bibliography of over 100 distance teaching projects in 65 third world countries.
College students use both formal and informal processes when making decisions related to course selection. They often get course-registration advice through formal on-campus "institutional" resources ...and off-campus "non-institutional" resources. In April 2016, Michael Dunlop and a student in his Data and Decisions Analysis course at Suffolk University reviewed these practices from higher education institutional academic advising centers, as well as professional organizations whose mission is focused on excellence in academic advising. More specifically, they examined the website Rate My Professors (RMP) (https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/About.jsp), analyzing data from 50 students who use RMP. The results provide evidence of the popularity of RMP as a resource that college students use in making course-selection decisions. In addition, more recent anecdotal evidence suggests that RMP remains a source of information students use in making course decisions. College students employ a variety of techniques during the course-selection and registration process. This article highlights some of the many formal and informal systems of advising, including RMP, available to students to guide them during the course-selection and registration process and the implications of those systems.
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