Ecosystem Services – Theories and Applications: Opportunities for Humanity to Regain Paradise

Ecosystem services, the benefits humans derive from nature, represents a radical departure in our perception of linked environmental and social problems and the actions we need to undertake to address those urgent challenges. Due to its increasingly widespread policy prominence, understanding and appraising its conceptual and practical benefits whilst at the same time acknowledging its potential pitfalls represents an important endeavour. Comprising seven parts and sixteen chapters, the first five parts of the thesis outline the main environmental and social challenges we face, presenting the core foundations, contemporary debates and developments in ecosystem services scholarship, whilst also underlining its increasing coalescence with sustainability discourse. In Part 6 we focus on a key application of ecosystem services with respect to its translation into incentive-based environmental management schemes, namely: payment for ecosystem service programmes and agri-environment schemes. We present a systematic global analysis of payment for ecosystem services programmes, highlighting the successes and challenges they face, whilst also providing an approach to improve their design and evaluation as a route to maximise their effectiveness. Turning our attention to a globally significant ecosystem, the thesis assesses the prospects for jointly developing seagrass Blue Carbon initiatives and payment for ecosystem service schemes, arguing that complementing these activities would produce significant climate, conservation and livelihood benefits. Switching contexts, from focusing on incentive schemes primarily in operation in developing countries to those designed to balance productivity and conservation matters in the agricultural sector of developed countries – the thesis explores the stakeholder and institutional factors affecting agri-environment scheme operation and implementation through the eyes of key operatives. Finally, in Part 7, I argue that a landscape framing and approach to ecosystem services provides an effective route to improve environmental management decision-making and policy as well as comprehensively addressing the linkages between ecosystem services and human-wellbeing

Modeling of spatial variations of growth within apical domes by means of the growth tensor. Pt. 1. Growth specified on dome axis

By using the growth tensor and a natural curvilinear coordinate system for description of the distribution of growth in plant organs, three geometrie types of shoot apical domes (parabolic, clliptical and hyperbolic) were modcled. It was assumed that apical dome geometry remains unchanged during growth and that the natural coordinate systems are paraboloidal and prolate spheroidal. Two variants of the displacement yelocity fields V were considered. One yariant is specified by a constant relative elemental ratę of growth along the axis of the dome. The second is specified by a ratę inereasing proportionally with distance from the geometrie focus of the coordinate systems (and the apical dome). The growth tensor was used to calculate spatial yariations of growth rates for each yariant of each dome type. There is in both yariants a elear tendency toward lower growth rates in the distal region of the dome. A basie condition for the existence of a tunica is met

Trajectories of principal directions of growth, natural coordinate system in growing plant organ

In symplasticly growing organs the principal directions of growth, which are indicated by the eigenvectors of the symmetric part of the growth tensor, can be associated with each positional point and joined up to form a network of orthogonal trajectories, uolcss the growth is isotropic. The trajectories represent a natura( coordinate system suitable for description of growing orgaos. These trajectories often can be recognized in patterns of nonrandom aligoments in the cell wali network: these alignmeots are norma\ to anticlinal and periclinal walls. Coordioate systems that fit the trajectories in different types of growiog organ are listed

Strategies to enhance the resilience of the world's seagrass meadows

Seagrass meadows provide a nursery for the fish we eat on a daily basis, they store the carbon that we pump into the atmosphere, and they keep our coasts and beaches clean. But there is now increasing evidence that these globally important work horses of the oceans are disappearing fast. What actions can conservationists and environmental managers take to reverse this loss? This perspectives paper provides a succinct list of 11 clear actions that can be used at local and regional scales to help reverse that loss and ensure that baby fish really do have a home in the future

Occurrence of circular vessels above axillary buds in stems of woody plants

The circular vcsscls gencrally occur in intact wood stems just above the axillary buds. In this region the cell arrangement with vortices occurs. We interprete the circular vessels as the result or circular polarity in the cambial zone or the region above the axillary bud. The stability or circular polarity in this region is based on the vorticity or the cambium cells arrangement

Evaluating Outside the Box: Evaluation’s Transformational Potential

The call for transformation is a response to the dire global emergency; it is a call for radical innovation at multiple levels if humanity is to survive into the next Century.How can evaluation, a profession in the business of assessment and advising, inform and hasten transformation? As a field that straddles both theory and practice, evaluation is uniquely positioned to support transformational learning and change, but this potential depends on its ability to transform from within.This articleidentifies four interrelated “boxes” that confineevaluation’s transformational potential: a project fixation, a short-term temporal fixation, a quantitative fixation, and an accountability fixation. Italso examinesthe uptake and influence of complex systems analysis in the field of evaluation as a means to “breakout” of these boxes and nudge evaluation towards the inner transformation required for it to contribute totransformational change

Perception of gravity expressed by production of cambial callus in ash (Fraxinus excelsior l.) internodes

In ash internodes isolated from vertical stems during winter dormancy, cambial activity was stimulated by applying an aqueous solution of auxin to the apical end and water to the basal end. The internodes maintained nearly horizontally produced cambial callus at the apical cut surface with more callus on the upper half although both halves were in contact with the same concentration of auxin. A differential response to auxin of the cambium in the upper and lower halves of the horizontally oriented internodes is postulated

Environmental policy design and implementation : toward a sustainable society

We acknowledge funding by The Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus, a UK Economic and Social Research Council large centre (project number: ES/N012550/1) and the UK Research Innovation’s Global Challenges Research Fund (UKRI GCRF) Living Deltas Hub. Plus, the UK Research and Innovation’s Global Challenges Research Fund (UKRI GCRF) through the Development Corridors Partnership project (project number: ES/P011500/1).Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Foundational guiding principles for a flourishing Earth System

In this perspectives article, we maintain that the current local to global sustainable development predicaments we face are the result of humanity's impact on the Earth System (ES)—that is to say, on the very systemic fabric of the ES (i.e., its functioning and configuration), combined with an insufficiently coherent application of sustainable development policy to address and resolve this systemic problem. In response to what is an urgent crisis, we propose four foundational guiding principles, which we contend provide an overarching framing that, if implemented, would offer an approach to steer global sustainable development policy in a manner that would be to the benefit of the ES and the securing of a flourishing future for all. Our principles are applicable at the levels from a local business ecosystem, national-regional networks, to global policy

Evaluating Outside the Box: Evaluation’s Transformational Potential

The call for transformation is a response to the dire global emergency; it is a call for radical innovation at multiple levels if humanity is to survive into the next Century.How can evaluation, a profession in the business of assessment and advising, inform and hasten transformation? As a field that straddles both theory and practice, evaluation is uniquely positioned to support transformational learning and change, but this potential depends on its ability to transform from within.This articleidentifies four interrelated “boxes” that confineevaluation’s transformational potential: a project fixation, a short-term temporal fixation, a quantitative fixation, and an accountability fixation. Italso examinesthe uptake and influence of complex systems analysis in the field of evaluation as a means to “breakout” of these boxes and nudge evaluation towards the inner transformation required for it to contribute totransformational change