Glyn Jones

Socio-economic impact classification of alien taxa (SEICAT)

Many alien taxa are known to cause socio-economic impacts by affecting the different constituents of human well-being (security; material and non-material assets; health; social, spiritual and cultural relations; freedom of choice and action). Attempts to quantify socio-economic impacts in monetary terms are unlikely to provide a useful basis for evaluating and comparing impacts of alien taxa because they are notoriously difficult to measure and important aspects of human well-being are ignored. nHere, we propose a novel standardised method for classifying alien taxa in terms of the magnitude of their impacts on human well-being, based on the capability approach from welfare economics. The core characteristic of this approach is that it uses changes in peoples activities as a common metric for evaluating impacts on well-being. nImpacts are assigned to one of five levels, from Minimal Concern to Massive, according to semi-quantitative scenarios that describe the severity of the impacts. Taxa are then classified according to the highest level of deleterious impact that they have been recorded to cause on any constituent of human well-being. The scheme also includes categories for taxa that are not evaluated, have no alien population, or are data deficient, and a method for assigning uncertainty to all the classifications. To demonstrate the utility of the system, we classified impacts of amphibians globally. These showed a variety of impacts on human well-being, with the cane toad (Rhinella marina) scoring Major impacts. For most species, however, no studies reporting impacts on human well-being were found, i.e. these species were data deficient. nThe classification provides a consistent procedure for translating the broad range of measures and types of impact into ranked levels of socio-economic impact, assigns alien taxa on the basis of the best available evidence of their documented deleterious impacts, and is applicable across taxa and at a range of spatial scales. The system was designed to align closely with the Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT) and the Red List, both of which have been adopted by the International Union of Nature Conservation (IUCN), and could therefore be readily integrated into international practices and policies.

Plant health challenges for a sustainable land use and rural economy

Plant health is a key condition for a sustainable land use and rural economy. Drawing on a Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU)-funded project on the growing risk of plant diseases in the UK, current and future challenges to plant health are discussed. It is well recognized that farmers have an important role in shaping plant health policies at a time of major structural changes in agricultural industries. However, the role of consumers has also much potential to improve sustainability of plant disease management options. The phytosanitary legislation is catching up with the many recent developments in plant health, but needs to be integrated with policies aimed at achieving animal and human health. Interdisciplinary approaches in research on plant health, as well as an increasing involvement of stakeholders in the management of plant epidemics, are to be welcomed. Plant diseases also influence (and are influenced by) land use and environmental regulations in general. Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and magnitude of new plant disease outbreaks, particularly when combined with globalization of trade, intensification of land use and structural evolution of the agricultural sector. To tackle the many challenges to plant health, it is mandatory to ensure long-term funding for interdisciplinary plant health research and management

Forecasting the 2001 Foot-and-Mouth Disease Epidemic in the UK

AbstractNear real-time epidemic forecasting approaches are needed to respond to the increasing number of infectious disease outbreaks. In this paper, we retrospectively assess the performance of simple phenomenological models that incorporate early sub-exponential growth dynamics to generate short-term forecasts of the 2001 foot-and-mouth disease epidemic in the UK. For this purpose, we employed the generalized-growth model (GGM) for pre-peak predictions and the generalized-Richards model (GRM) for post-peak predictions. The epidemic exhibits a growth-decelerating pattern as the relative growth rate declines inversely with time. The uncertainty of the parameter estimates

Public value at risk from Phytophthora ramorum and Phytophthora kernoviae spread in England and Wales

(r{text{ and }}p)

The Economic Analysis of Plant Health and the Needs of Policy Makers

(randp) narrows down and becomes more precise using an increasing amount of data of the epidemic growth phase. Indeed, using only the first 10–15xa0days of the epidemic, the scaling of growth parameter (p) displays wide uncertainty with the confidence interval for p ranging from values ~xa00.5 to 1.0, indicating that less than 15 epidemic days of data are not sufficient to discriminate between sub-exponential (i.e., pxa0<xa01) and exponential growth dynamics (i.e., pxa0=xa01). By contrast, using 20, 25, or 30xa0days of epidemic data, it is possible to recover estimates of p around 0.6 and the confidence interval is substantially below the exponential growth regime. Local and national bans on the movement of livestock and a nationwide cull of infected and contiguous premises likely contributed to the decelerating trajectory of the epidemic. The GGM and GRM provided useful 10-day forecasts of the epidemic before and after the peak of the epidemic, respectively. Short-term forecasts improved as the model was calibrated with an increasing length of the epidemic growth phase. Phenomenological models incorporating generalized-growth dynamics are useful tools to generate short-term forecasts of epidemic growth in near real time, particularly in the context of limited epidemiological data as well as information about transmission mechanisms and the effects of control interventions.n

User-Generated Content: What Can the Forest Health Sector Learn?

Abstract Valuing amenity trees is important for calculating loss of amenity and replacement value following wilful or negligent damage, and for several aspects of urban forest management: planning, budget setting and decision-making. Capital Asset Value for Amenity Trees (CAVAT) is a tool for valuing amenity trees; it was first presented publicly in 2003. It includes two methods: the Full Method, which is used to provide a compensation replacement value for single trees; and the Quick Method, which is used to determine the value of a population of trees as an asset, for asset management purposes. CAVAT is widely adopted across the UK within local authority tree departments, and by major land-holding and transport organisations. It is also incorporated into the Joint Mitigation Protocol for use in the assessment of subsidence cases. This paper presents CAVAT for the first time in a formal publication. It describes the uses for which it has been designed, it comprehensively describes the methodology and shows where this deviates from similar valuation tools. Five case studies are presented as examples of its application and demonstration of its suitability-for-use. Finally, future potential developments that would facilitate wider use of CAVAT are also presented.

Livestock Disease Management for Trading Across Different Regulatory Regimes

Heritage gardens, heathland and woodland are increasingly under threat from the non-native tree and plant diseases Phytophthora ramorum and Phytophthora kernoviae. However, there exist only limited literature that estimates the public non-market value that may be lost from a continued spread of Phytophthora ramorum and Phytophthora kernoviae into these habitats. This paper therefore uses a contingent valuation survey to assess the non-extractive public use and non-use values at risk from an uncontrolled spread of these diseases in England and Wales. Results estimate that £1.446bn of public value is at risk in England and Wales per year from an uncontrolled spread of Phytophthora ramorum and Phytophthora kernoviae. The greatest public value at risk, of £578xa0xa0m/year, is from an uncontrolled spread of these diseases to heritage gardens, while the lowest public value at risk, of £386xa0xa0m/year, is from disease spread to heathland. The findings of this paper should help policymakers make informed decisions as to the public resources to dedicate towards Phytophthora ramorum and Phytophthora kernoviae control in England and Wales. In this regard, the current control programme to contain these diseases appears cost-effective in light of the public value at risk estimates produced by this paper.

Three methods for integration of environmental risk into the benefit-risk assessment of veterinary medicinal products

Invasive pests in agricultural settings may have severe consequences for agricultural production, reducing yields and the value of crops. Once an invader population has established, controlling it tends to be very expensive. Therefore, when the potential impacts on production may be great, protection against initial establishment is often perceived to be the most cost-effective measure. Increasing attention in the ecological literature is being given to the possibility of curbing invasion processes by manipulating the field and cropping patterns in agricultural landscapes, so that they are less conducive to the spread of pests. However, the economic implications of such interventions have received far less attention. This paper uses a stochastic spatial model to identify the key processes that influence the vulnerability of a fragmented agricultural landscape to pests. We explore the interaction between the divergent forces of ecological invasion pressure and economic returns to scale, in relation to the level of clustering of crop fields. Results show that the most cost-effective distances between crop fields in terms of reducing food production impacts from an invasive pest are determined by a delicate balance of these two forces and depend on the values of the ecological and economic parameters involved. If agricultural productivity declines slowly with increasing distance between fields and the dispersal range of the potential invader is high, manipulation of cropping structure has the potential to protect against invasion outbreaks and the farmer can gain benefit overall from maintaining greater distances between fields of similar crops.