Robert A. Holland

Identifying the World's Most Climate Change Vulnerable Species: A Systematic Trait-Based Assessment of all Birds, Amphibians and Corals

Climate change will have far-reaching impacts on biodiversity, including increasing extinction rates. Current approaches to quantifying such impacts focus on measuring exposure to climatic change and largely ignore the biological differences between species that may significantly increase or reduce their vulnerability. To address this, we present a framework for assessing three dimensions of climate change vulnerability, namely sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity; this draws on species’ biological traits and their modeled exposure to projected climatic changes. In the largest such assessment to date, we applied this approach to each of the world’s birds, amphibians and corals (16,857 species). The resulting assessments identify the species with greatest relative vulnerability to climate change and the geographic areas in which they are concentrated, including the Amazon basin for amphibians and birds, and the central Indo-west Pacific (Coral Triangle) for corals. We found that high concentration areas for species with traits conferring highest sensitivity and lowest adaptive capacity differ from those of highly exposed species, and we identify areas where exposure-based assessments alone may over or under-estimate climate change impacts. We found that 608–851 bird (6–9%), 670–933 amphibian (11–15%), and 47–73 coral species (6–9%) are both highly climate change vulnerable and already threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List. The remaining highly climate change vulnerable species represent new priorities for conservation. Fewer species are highly climate change vulnerable under lower IPCC SRES emissions scenarios, indicating that reducing greenhouse emissions will reduce climate change driven extinctions. Our study answers the growing call for a more biologically and ecologically inclusive approach to assessing climate change vulnerability. By facilitating independent assessment of the three dimensions of climate change vulnerability, our approach can be used to devise species and area-specific conservation interventions and indices. The priorities we identify will strengthen global strategies to mitigate climate change impacts.

Effects of methodology and stakeholder disaggregation on ecosystem service valuation

Contingent valuation is one of the most commonly used methodologies utilized in ecosystem service valuation, thereby including a participatory approach to many such assessments. However, inclusion of nonmonetary stakeholder priorities is still uncommon in ecosystem service valuations and disaggregation of stakeholders is all but absent from practice. We look at four site-scale wetland ecosystem service valuations from Asia that used nonmonetary participatory stated preference techniques from a range of stakeholders, and compare these prioritizations to those obtained from the largest monetary assessments available globally, the Ecosystem Service Value Database (ESVD). Stakeholder assessment suggests very different priorities to those from monetary assessments, yet priorities between different sites remained broadly consistent. Disaggregation of beneficiaries in one site showed marked differences in values between stakeholders. Monetary values correlate positively with values held by government officers and business owners, but negatively with fishermen and women who are relying most directly on the wetland ecosystem services. Our findings emphasize that ecosystem service assessment, monetary or otherwise, must capture the diversity of values present across stakeholder groups to incorporate site scale management issues, particularly in relation to poverty alleviation.

Global impacts of energy demand on the freshwater resources of nations

Significance Understanding the role of international trade in driving pressures on freshwater resources is key to meeting challenges at the water–energy nexus. A coupled trade and hydrological model is used to examine pressures on freshwater resources associated with energy production across the global economy. While the electric and gas sectors induce freshwater consumption predominantly within countries where demand originates (91% and 81%, respectively), the petroleum sector exhibits a high international footprint (56%). Critical geographic areas and economic sectors are identified, providing focus for resource-management actions to ensure energy and freshwater security. Our analysis demonstrates the importance of broadening the discourse on energy policy to address issues including freshwater scarcity, the role of international trade, and wider environmental and societal considerations. The growing geographic disconnect between consumption of goods, the extraction and processing of resources, and the environmental impacts associated with production activities makes it crucial to factor global trade into sustainability assessments. Using an empirically validated environmentally extended global trade model, we examine the relationship between two key resources underpinning economies and human well-being—energy and freshwater. A comparison of three energy sectors (petroleum, gas, and electricity) reveals that freshwater consumption associated with gas and electricity production is largely confined within the territorial boundaries where demand originates. This finding contrasts with petroleum, which exhibits a varying ratio of territorial to international freshwater consumption, depending on the origin of demand. For example, although the United States and China have similar demand associated with the petroleum sector, international freshwater consumption is three times higher for the former than the latter. Based on mapping patterns of freshwater consumption associated with energy sectors at subnational scales, our analysis also reveals concordance between pressure on freshwater resources associated with energy production and freshwater scarcity in a number of river basins globally. These energy-driven pressures on freshwater resources in areas distant from the origin of energy demand complicate the design of policy to ensure security of fresh water and energy supply. Although much of the debate around energy is focused on greenhouse gas emissions, our findings highlight the need to consider the full range of consequences of energy production when designing policy.

Potential impacts on ecosystem services of land use transitions to second-generation bioenergy crops in GB

We present the first assessment of the impact of land use change (LUC) to second‐generation (2G) bioenergy crops on ecosystem services (ES) resolved spatially for Great Britain (GB). A systematic approach was used to assess available evidence on the impacts of LUC from arable, semi‐improved grassland or woodland/forest, to 2G bioenergy crops, for which a quantitative ‘threat matrix’ was developed. The threat matrix was used to estimate potential impacts of transitions to either Miscanthus, short‐rotation coppice (SRC, willow and poplar) or short‐rotation forestry (SRF). The ES effects were found to be largely dependent on previous land uses rather than the choice of 2G crop when assessing the technical potential of available biomass with a transition from arable crops resulting in the most positive effect on ES. Combining these data with constraint masks and available land for SRC and Miscanthus (SRF omitted from this stage due to lack of data), south‐west and north‐west England were identified as areas where Miscanthus and SRC could be grown, respectively, with favourable combinations of economic viability, carbon sequestration, high yield and positive ES benefits. This study also suggests that not all prospective planting of Miscanthus and SRC can be allocated to agricultural land class (ALC) ALC 3 and ALC 4 and suitable areas of ALC 5 are only minimally available. Beneficial impacts were found on 146 583 and 71 890 ha when planting Miscanthus or SRC, respectively, under baseline planting conditions rising to 293 247 and 91 318 ha, respectively, under 2020 planting scenarios. The results provide an insight into the interplay between land availability, original land uses, bioenergy crop type and yield in determining overall positive or negative impacts of bioenergy cropping on ecosystems services and go some way towards developing a framework for quantifying wider ES impacts of this important LUC.

The influence of temporal variation on relationships between ecosystem services

A growing literature aims to identify areas of congruence in the provision of multiple ecosystem goods and services. However, little attention has been paid to the effect that temporal variation in the provision of such services may have on understanding of these relationships. Due to a lack of temporally and spatially replicated monitoring surveys, such relationships are often assessed using data from disparate time periods. Utilising temporally replicated data for indices of freshwater quality and agricultural production we demonstrate that through time the biophysical values of ecosystem services may vary in a spatially non-uniform way. This can lead to differing conclusions being reached about the strength of relationships between services, which in turn has implications for the prioritisation of areas for management of multiple services. We present this first analysis to illustrate the effect that the use of such temporally disparate datasets may have, and to highlight the need for further research to assess under what circumstances temporal variation of this sort will have the greatest impact.

Global evidence of positive impacts of freshwater biodiversity on fishery yields

Abstract Aim An often‐invoked benefit of high biodiversity is the provision of ecosystem services. However, evidence for this is largely based on data from small‐scale experimental studies of relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem function that may have little relevance to real‐world systems. Here, large‐scale biodiversity datasets are used to test the relationship between the yield of inland capture fisheries and species richness from 100 countries. Location Inland waters of Africa, Europe and parts of Asia. Methods A multimodel inference approach was used to assess inland fishery yields at the country level against species richness, waterside human population, area, elevation and various climatic variables, to determine the relative importance of species richness to fisheries yields compared with other major large‐scale drivers. Secondly, the mean decadal variation in fishery yields at the country level for 1981–2010 was regressed against species richness to assess if greater diversity reduces the variability in yields over time. Results Despite a widespread reliance on targeting just a few species of fish, freshwater fish species richness is highly correlated with yield (R 2 = 0.55) and remains an important and statistically significant predictor of yield once other macroecological drivers are controlled for. Freshwater richness also has a significant negative relationship with variability of yield over time in Africa (R 2 = 0.16) but no effect in Europe. Main conclusions The management of inland waters should incorporate the protection of freshwater biodiversity, particularly in countries with the highest‐yielding inland fisheries as these also tend to have high freshwater biodiversity. As these results suggest a link between biodiversity and stable, high‐yielding fisheries, an important win–win outcome may be possible for food security and conservation of freshwater ecosystems. However, findings also highlight the urgent need for more data to fully understand and monitor the contribution of biodiversity to inland fisheries globally.

Grassland futures in Great Britain – Productivity assessment and scenarios for land use change opportunities

To optimise trade-offs provided by future changes in grassland use intensity, spatially and temporally explicit estimates of respective grassland productivities are required at the systems level. Here, we benchmark the potential national availability of grassland biomass, identify optimal strategies for its management, and investigate the relative importance of intensification over reversion (prioritising productivity versus environmental ecosystem services). Process-conservative meta-models for different grasslands were used to calculate the baseline dry matter yields (DMY; 1961-1990) at 1km2 resolution for the whole UK. The effects of climate change, rising atmospheric [CO2] and technological progress on baseline DMYs were used to estimate future grassland productivities (up to 2050) for low and medium CO2 emission scenarios of UKCP09. UK benchmark productivities of 12.5, 8.7 and 2.8t/ha on temporary, permanent and rough-grazing grassland, respectively, accounted for productivity gains by 2010. By 2050, productivities under medium emission scenario are predicted to increase to 15.5 and 9.8t/ha on temporary and permanent grassland, respectively, but not on rough grassland. Based on surveyed grassland distributions for Great Britain in 2010 the annual availability of grassland biomass is likely to rise from 64 to 72milliontonnes by 2050. Assuming optimal N application could close existing productivity gaps of ca. 40% a range of management options could deliver additional 21∗106tonnes of biomass available for bioenergy. Scenarios of changes in grassland use intensity demonstrated considerable scope for maintaining or further increasing grassland production and sparing some grassland for the provision of environmental ecosystem services.

External validation of a collar-mounted triaxial accelerometer for second-by-second monitoring of eight behavioural states in dogs

Early detection of disease by an animal owner may motivate them to seek early veterinary advice. Presentation before a more advanced clinical manifestation is evident could lead to more effective treatment and thus benefit the animal’s health and welfare. Accelerometers are able to detect changes in specific activities or behaviours, thus indicating early signs of possible adverse health events. The objective of this validation study was to determine whether the detection of eight behavioural states: walk, trot, canter/gallop, sleep, static/inactive, eat, drink, and headshake, by an accelerometer device was sufficiently accurate to be useful in a clinical setting. This fully independent external validation estimated the accuracy of a specific triaxial, collar-mounted accelerometer on a second-by second basis in 51 healthy dogs of different breeds, aged between 6 months and 13 years, weighing >10 kg. The overall diagnostic effectiveness was estimated as: % record correctly classified of > 95% in walk, trot, canter/gallop, eat, drink and headshake and >90% in sleep and static/inactive. The positive predictive values ranged from 93–100%, while the negative predictive values ranged from 96–100%, with exception of static/inactive (86%).This was probably because dogs were placed in unfamiliar kennels where they did not exhibit their typical resting behaviour. The device is worn on a collar, making its use feasible for anyone wanting to monitor their dog’s behaviour. The high accuracy in detecting various kinds of behaviour appears promising in assessing canine health and welfare states.