Historical influences on the current provision of multiple ecosystem services     

《Global Environmental Change》2015

Ecosystem service provision varies temporally in response to natural and human-induced factors, yet research in this field is dominated by analyses that ignore the time-lags and feedbacks that occur within socio-ecological systems. The implications of this have been unstudied, but are central to understanding how service delivery will alter due to future land-use/cover change. Urban areas are expanding faster than any other land-use, making cities ideal study systems for examining such legacy effects. We assess the extent to which present-day provision of a suite of eight ecosystem services, quantified using field-gathered data, is explained by current and historical (stretching back 150 years) landcover. Five services (above-ground carbon density, recreational use, bird species richness, bird density, and a metric of recreation experience quality (continuity with the past) were more strongly determined by past landcover. Time-lags ranged from 20 (bird species richness and density) to over 100 years (above-ground carbon density). Historical landcover, therefore, can have a strong influence on current service provision. By ignoring such time-lags, we risk drawing incorrect conclusions regarding how the distribution and quality of some ecosystem services may alter in response to land-use/cover change. Although such a finding adds to the complexity of predicting future scenarios, ecologists may find that they can link the biodiversity conservation agenda to the preservation of cultural heritage, and that certain courses of action provide win-win outcomes across multiple environmental and cultural goods.  相似文献   

The PISA grammar decodes diverse human–environment approaches     

《Global Environmental Change》2015

Human–environment interactions are studied by several groups of scholars who have elaborated different approaches to describe, analyze, and explain these interactions, and eventually propose paths for management. The SETER project (Socio-Ecological Theories and Empirical Research) analyzed and compared how “flag-holders” of distinct school of thought in human–environment scholarship approached a number of empirical problems of environmental management. This paper presents the findings from this experiment by concentrating on how representatives of four schools of thought approached one of these case studies: the plant health crisis in greenhouse tomato production in south of France. Our analysis suggests that these approaches share a common conceptual vocabulary composed of four explanatory elements of change (Power, Incentives, System and Adaptation-PISA). We argue that what distinguishes these schools from one another is the syntax—the “rules” by which researchers in each of the sub-disciplines tend to organize the components of this shared conceptual vocabulary. In other words, the schools under scrutiny are differentiated not so much by what they speak of, but rather in what order, or hierarchy, do they tend to rank the importance and/or the sequence of each of these concepts in human–environment explanations. The results of our experiment support the view that communication and cooperation across the diverse human–environment traditions is possible and productive. At the same time, however, we argue that it is the distinctiveness of the claims yielded by these different schools of thought that augment our collective understanding of complex socio-ecological problems. Attempts to integrate these perspectives in one unitary approach would undermine the intellectual wealth necessary to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene.  相似文献   

National indicators for observing ecosystem service change     

《Global Environmental Change》2015

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.  相似文献   

A brief introduction to BNU-HESM1.0 and its earth surface temperature simulations     

Shili Yang  Wenjie Dong  Jieming Chou  Jinming Feng  Xiaodong Yan  Zhigang Wei  Wenping Yuan  Yan Guo  Yanli Tang  Jiacong Hu 《大气科学进展》2015,32(12):1683-1688

Integrated assessment models and coupled earth system models both have their limitations in understanding the interactions between human activity and the physical earth system. In this paper,a new human–earth system model,BNUHESM1.0,constructed by combining the economic and climate damage components of the Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate Change and Economy to the BNU-ESM model,is introduced. The ability of BNU-HESM1.0 in simulating the global CO2 concentration and surface temperature is also evaluated. We find that,compared to observation,BNU-HESM1.0underestimates the global CO2 concentration and its rising trend during 1965–2005,due to the uncertainty in the economic components. However,the surface temperature simulated by BNU-HESM1.0 is much closer to observation,resulting from the overestimates of surface temperature by the original BNU-ESM model. The uncertainty of BNU-ESM falls within the range of present earth system uncertainty,so it is the economic and climate damage component of BNU-HESM1.0 that needs to be improved through further study. However,the main purpose of this paper is to introduce a new approach to investigate the complex relationship between human activity and the earth system. It is hoped that it will inspire further ideas that prove valuable in guiding human activities appropriate for a sustainable future climate.  相似文献   

气候变化对中国农业旱灾损失率的影响及其南北区域差异性   总被引：4，自引：1，他引：3  

张强  韩兰英  郝小翠  韩涛  贾建英  林婧婧 《气象学报》2015,73(6):1092-1103

在全球变暖背景下,干旱灾害对中国农业生产的影响日益严重,然而由于旱灾损失的复杂性及其显著的区域差异,至今对中国农业旱灾损失规律及其影响机制的认识十分有限。文中利用1961年以来中国农业干旱灾害的灾情资料和常规气象资料,系统分析了近50年来中国农业干旱灾害不同受灾强度分布比率和综合损失率等指标的变化趋势及其在北方和南方的区域差异,研究了20世纪90年代的气温突变对农业旱灾损失率的影响特征,探讨了农业旱灾综合损失率对气温和降水等气候要素变化的依赖关系及其在气候空间的分布特征。结果发现,在气候变化背景下,近50年来中国农业旱灾综合损失率平均每10 a约增加0.5%,风险明显增大。而且,北方综合损失率每10 a约增加0.6%,高出南方1倍,风险增大的速度明显比南方快;北方农业旱灾几乎在很宽松的气温条件下就可以发生,而南方更多发生在气温较高的年份。并且,在气温突变后,变化趋势明显加剧,全中国综合损失率约增加了0.9%,风险明显增高;而且北方综合损失率的增值高达1.8%,是南方的4倍还多,气候突变对北方农业旱灾风险的影响明显比南方更凸出。综合损失率在北方对降水变化的响应要更敏感,而在南方对气温变化的响应更敏感。同时,关键影响期降水对综合损失率的影响比全年降水影响更显著;北方的关键影响期作用比南方更凸出。这些新的科学认识对中国农业旱灾防御具有重要意义。  相似文献   

Evaluating the economic damage of climate change on global coral reefs     

《Global Environmental Change》2015

This paper evaluates the global economic damage arising from the effects of climate change and associated carbon dioxide concentrations on the loss of coral reefs. We do this by first estimating the effects of sea surface temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations on coral cover. We develop a statistical relationship between coral coverage and sea surface temperature that indicates that the effects are dependent on the temperature range. For example, we find that increasing sea surface temperature causes coral coverage to decrease when sea surface temperature is higher than 26.85 °C, with the estimated reduction being 2.3% when sea surface temperature increases by 1%. In addition, we find that a 1% carbon dioxide increase induces a 0.6% reduction in global coral coverage. We also estimate the resultant loss in economic value based on a meta-analysis of the recreational and commercial value of reef coverage and a crude proportional approach for other value factors. The meta-analysis shows that the coral reef value decreases by 3.8% when coral cover falls by 1%. By combining these two steps we find that the lost value in terms of the global coral reef value under climate change scenarios ranges from US$3.95 to US$23.78 billion annually.  相似文献   

Personal experience with climate change predicts intentions to act     

《Global Environmental Change》2015

The public's willingness to engage in mitigation actions has not received as much attention as the level of belief in Global Warming (GW), especially on the international stage. Research in Western nations indicates that people systematically misunderstand GW and the actions required for mitigation. Important factors that influence judgments about mitigation actions include personal experiences, beliefs, knowledge, values, and worldviews. We present results of an international survey (25 samples from 24 countries) measuring general intentions to act and willingness to engage in specific actions. Our analysis reveals that endorsement of specific actions is (a) lower than general endorsement of mitigation, (b) accompanied by higher intra-individual variance, and (c) more strongly related to personal experiences with GW. This pattern can be attributed to the compatibility between the proximal construal of specific actions and the nature of the personal experience. Lastly we provide recommendations on how these findings can be used to encourage mitigation action.  相似文献   

Comparing future patterns of energy system change in 2 °C scenarios with historically observed rates of change     

《Global Environmental Change》2015

This paper systematically compares modeled rates of change provided by global integrated assessment models aiming for the 2 °C objective to historically observed rates of change. Such a comparison can provide insights into the difficulty of achieving such stringent climate stabilization scenarios. The analysis focuses specifically on the rates of change for technology expansion and diffusion, emissions and energy supply investments. The associated indicators vary in terms of system focus (technology-specific or energy system wide), temporal scale (timescale or lifetime), spatial scale (regional or global) and normalization (accounting for entire system growth or not). Although none of the indicators provide conclusive insights as to the achievability of scenarios, this study finds that indicators that look into absolute change remain within the range of historical growth frontiers for the next decade, but increase to unprecedented levels before mid-century. Indicators that take into account or normalize for overall system growth find future change to be broadly within historical ranges. This is particularly the case for monetary-based normalization metrics like GDP compared to energy-based normalization metrics like primary energy. By applying a diverse set of indicators alternative, complementary insights into how scenarios compare with historical observations are acquired but they do not provide further insights on the possibility of achieving rates of change that are beyond current day practice.  相似文献   

近58a南岳高山站气候变化特征分析     

潘筱龙  叶成志  张剑明  陈德桥 《南京气象学院学报》2015,7(1):68-78

采用1953—2010年南岳高山站逐日气象资料,运用线性回归、突变分析和小波分析方法,对该站平均风速、气温和降水的气候变化特征进行了分析,并对与平均风速变化密切相关的气温和降水进行了年际变化特征比较.结果表明:1)年和四季平均风速均呈明显减小趋势,在20世纪90年代前后风速有由大到小的突变,年平均风速存在显著的准2 a和准4 a周期;2)年平均气温、最低气温、最高气温均呈明显升高趋势,气温存在显著的准2 a和准4 a周期,且于20世纪90年代中期前后气温有由偏低向偏高的突变;3)年降水量呈下降趋势,存在显著的准2 a和准3 a周期;4)风速与平均气温、最高气温和最低气温呈负相关关系,均通过0.01显著性检验,风速与降水的相关性没有通过显著性检验,但风速与降水的变化趋势在20世纪60年代中后期、70年代中期到21世纪初有较好的反相位变化.  相似文献   

1961~2010年黄河中下游地区24节气气候变化特征分析   总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2  

冀翠华  王式功  尚可政 《气候与环境研究》2015,20(2):220-228

24节气是我国古代劳动人民的独特创造。全面掌握"24节气"的气候变化规律,不但有利于指导农事生产,提高气象服务质量和水平,而且在为人类预防和治疗疾病方面也有重要意义。在全球变暖的气候背景下,统计分析了1961~2010年黄河中下游地区24节气的气温、湿度、风速等6个气象要素的变化特征,得到以下结论:黄河中下游地区随节气变换气候变化显著,大暑、小暑节气高温高湿,小寒、大寒节气寒冷干燥,清明节气寒温反复大风将至,霜降节气天气渐凉秋燥加剧等。50年内,春季型节气(平均、最高、最低)气温显著升高,冬季型节气最低气温升高显著。气压随节气变化特征与气温大致相反,夏、秋季节气有升压趋势。相对湿度与降水均呈减少趋势,以秋季型节气减小趋势最明显。春季风速最大,夏、秋季风速最小,所有节气风速均呈减小趋势,冬夏季节气日照时间呈缩短趋势。  相似文献