Eight urgent,fundamental and simultaneous steps needed to restore ocean health,and the consequences for humanity and the planet of inaction or delay     

Dan Laffoley  John M. Baxter  Diva J. Amon  Duncan E.J. Currie  Craig A. Downs  Jason M. Hall‐Spencer  Harriet Harden‐Davies  Richard Page  Chris P. Reid  Callum M. Roberts  Alex Rogers  Thorsten Thiele  Charles R.C. Sheppard  Rashid U. Sumaila  Lucy C. Woodall 《水产资源保护:海洋与淡水生态系统》2020,30(1):194-208

1. The ocean crisis is urgent and central to human wellbeing and life on Earth; past and current activities are damaging the planet's main life support system for future generations. We are witnessing an increase in ocean heat, disturbance, acidification, bio‐invasions and nutrients, and reducing oxygen levels. Several of these act like ratchets: once detrimental or negative changes have occurred, they may lock in place and may not be reversible, especially at gross ecological and ocean process scales.
2. Each change may represent a loss to humanity of resources, ecosystem function, oxygen production and species. The longer we pursue unsuitable actions, the more we close the path to recovery and better ocean health and greater benefits for humanity in the future.
3. We stand at a critical juncture and have identified eight priority issues that need to be addressed in unison to help avert a potential ecological disaster in the global ocean. They form a purposely ambitious agenda for global governance and are aimed at informing decision‐makers at a high level. They should also be of interest to the general public.
4. Of all the themes, the highest priority is to rigorously address global warming and limit surface temperature rise to 1.5°C by 2100, as warming is the pre‐eminent factor driving change in the ocean. The other themes are establishing a robust and comprehensive High Seas Treaty, enforcing existing standards for Marine Protected Areas and expanding their coverage, especially in terms of high levels of protection, adopting a precautionary pause on deep‐sea mining, ending overfishing and destructive fishing practices, radically reducing marine pollution, putting in place a financing mechanism for ocean management and protection, and lastly, scaling up science/data gathering and facilitating data sharing.
5. By implementing all eight measures in unison, as a coordinated strategy, we can build resilience to climate change, help sustain fisheries productivity, particularly for low‐income countries dependent on fisheries, protect coasts (e.g. via soft‐engineering/habitat‐based approaches), promote mitigation (e.g. carbon storage) and enable improved adaptation to rapid global change.

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Hypotheses to explain patterns of population change among breeding bird species in England     

Chris B. Thaxter  Andrew C. Joys  Stephen R. Baillie 《Biological conservation》2010,143(9):2006-2019

Population declines are now evident across many taxa, but within each assemblage there is often considerable variation in constituent population trends. We used bird population trends produced from the BTO/JNCC Common Birds Census (CBC) and the RSPB/BTO/JNCC Breeding Bird Survey (BBS), to test five main hypotheses to explain population changes of 59 breeding species in England (1967-2006): (1) breeding habitat, (2) predation risk to nest sites, (3) species climatic niche, (4) migration strategy, and (5) over-wintering bioclimatic zones of migrants, accounting for additional demographic and ecological traits. In absence of phylogenetic inter-relatedness, farmland species declined more than woodland species, most pronounced prior to 1986, probably reflecting agricultural intensification (1). We found limited support that ground nesters have declined more than above-ground or cavity nesters (2), and there was some indication that species with more northerly European distributions showed larger declines than more southerly-distributed species (3). Larger population declines were recorded for Afro-tropical migrants than species wintering in Europe or in the UK, most notable prior to 1986 (4). However, declines were not uniform across all migrants (5) - species over-wintering in the arid savannah bioclimatic zone of Africa decreased in population between 1967 and 1976, whereas species wintering in humid West African forest and savannah declined more after 1987. These results suggest both breeding and over-wintering factors influenced population trends. European countries signed to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals are required to protect and conserve populations of migrants. Understanding connectivity between breeding and over-wintering populations, and similar environmental pressures experienced within over-wintering areas may be a useful step towards mitigating against further declines in migrants.  相似文献   

Do childhood growth indicators in developing countries cluster? Implications for intervention strategies     

Fenn B  Morris SS  Frost C 《Public health nutrition》2004,7(7):829-834

OBJECTIVE: The effectiveness of geographic targeting in nutrition programmes depends largely on the degree to which malnutrition clusters within particular areas. This study investigates the extent to which the childhood nutrition indicators, stunting (height-for-age Z-score <-2) and wasting (weight-for-height Z-score <-2), are spatially clustered; this information is used to determine the implications of spatial clustering for the effectiveness of geographic targeting. DESIGN: Analysis of data from Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) results. Clustering is assessed by calculating intra-cluster correlation coefficients (ICCs). Estimating the proportion of malnourished children covered by a programme successfully targeting 10% of clusters with the highest malnutrition prevalences allows an assessment of the effectiveness of geographic targeting. SETTING: Fifty-eight DHS III (1992-1997) and DHS IV (1998-2001) reports from 46 developing countries. SUBJECTS: Pre-school children of mothers interviewed by DHS. MAIN RESULTS: The extent of clustering of nutritional status was surprisingly low (median ICC for national samples: stunting=0.054, wasting=0.032) and most countries were characterised by having an ICC <0.1--i.e. low clustering--for childhood undernutrition (91% of countries for wasting and 78% for stunting). Our assessment of the effectiveness of geographic targeting showed that coverage was better for wasting than for stunting; for wasting, 23% of countries would achieve less than 20% coverage, compared with 76% of countries achieving less than 20% coverage for stunting. Coverage is dependent on the overall prevalence of malnutrition and the ICC. CONCLUSIONS: Childhood nutritional status is determined at the household, or even individual, level; nutrition programmes that are geographically targeted may result in high levels of under-coverage and leakage, thereby compromising their cost-effectiveness; the lack of clustering questions the appropriateness of current nutrition interventions.  相似文献   

Bighorn sheep habitat use and selection near an urban environment     

Esther S Rubin  Walter M Boyce  Chris J StermerSteven G Torres 《Biological conservation》2002,104(2):251-263

To further understand the impact of urban development on wildlife populations, we examined habitat use and selection by female bighorn sheep Ovis canadensis in two endangered subpopulations near a metropolitan area in southern California. One subpopulation, which had previously been found to have low reproductive success, selected urban environments while the other did not use urban areas. In the subpopulation that used urban areas, females had smaller core activity areas and selected lower elevations and gentler slopes. These females used urban sources of water but a clear relationship between levels of urban use and periods of increased water need was not evident. Diet quality was higher among females that selected urban areas, and this increase was correlated with the level of urban use. Thus, optimal foraging behavior may have contributed to the selection of urban areas. Urban use was lowest during peak months of parturition, suggesting that reproductive strategies may also have influenced temporal patterns of urban use. Although urban areas provided bighorn sheep with forage and water resources, the use of these areas may have substantial costs. For example, females using urban areas had internal parasites that were not found elsewhere in the Peninsular Ranges.  相似文献   

Identifying, understanding, and describing spatial processes in agricultural landscapes — four case studies     

Ole Wendroth  Peter Jürschik  K. Christian Kersebaum  Hannes Reuter  Chris van Kessel  Donald R. Nielsen 《Soil & Tillage Research》2001,58(3-4):113-127

To evaluate the quality of the ecosystem and for making resources and land management decisions landscapes have to be assessed quantitatively. For a better understanding of landscape processes and their characterization, the analysis of the inherent variability is a major factor. Four case studies in which problems associated with landscape analysis are discussed. Spatial processes remain a main focus, as their analysis provides information on the relation between relevant state variables in agricultural landscapes. Variogram analysis showed that mineral soil nitrogen (N_min) sampled in a field at different scales, domains, and times is an instationary spatial process. Spatial association of grain yield, soil index and remotely sensed vegetation index may not be identifiable from kriged contour maps as local coincidence may be obscured behind classified areas. Crop yield in subsequent years and remotely sensed information are not related if a unique response is assumed. An alternative data stratification procedure is described here for the identification of different response functions in agricultural ecosystems. Processes of crop yield and underlying variables are described in autoregressive state-space models. This technique incorporates both deterministic and stochastic relations between different variables and is based on relative changes in space.  相似文献   

The simultaneous analysis of mixed discrete and continuous outcomes using nonlinear threshold models     

Todd Coffey  Chris Gennings 《Journal of Agricultural, Biological & Environmental Statistics》2007,12(1):55-77

Mixed discrete and continuous outcomes are commonly measured on each experimental unit in dose-response studies in toxicology. The dose-response relationships for these outcomes often have dose thresholds and nonlinear patterns. In addition, the endpoints are typically correlated, and a statistical analysis that incorporates the association may result in improved precision. We propose an extension of the generalized estimating equation (GEE) methodology to simultaneously analyze binary, count, and continuous outcomes with nonlinear threshold models that incorporates the intra-subject correlation. The methodology uses a quasi-likelihood framework and a working correlation matrix, and is appropriate when the marginal expectation of each outcome is of primary interest and the correlation between endpoints is a nuisance parameter. Because the derivatives of threshold models are not continuous at each point of the parameter space, we describe the necessary modifications that result in asymptotically normal and consistent estimators. Using dose-response data from a neurotoxicity experiment, the methodology is illustrated by analyzing five outcomes of mixed type with nonlinear threshold models. In this example, the incorporation of the intra-subject correlation resulted in decreased standard errors for the threshold parameters.  相似文献   

Effects of habitat characteristics and sedimentation on performance of marine reserves in St. Lucia     

Julie P. Hawkins  Callum M. Roberts  Chris Schelten 《Biological conservation》2006,127(4):487-499

This study examines factors affecting the rate and extent of biomass build-up among commercially important groupers, snappers, grunts, parrotfish and surgeonfish in a network of four marine reserves in southwest St. Lucia, Caribbean. Reserves constituted 35% of the total reef area originally available for fishing. Protection was instigated in 1995 after a baseline survey with annual or biennial censuses performed until 2002. Each survey consisted of 114 fifteen minute fish counts in reserves and 83 in fishing grounds, at depths of 5 m and 15 m in a 10 m diameter counting area. Estimates of number and size (cm) of target species were used to calculate fish family biomass. Data were analysed using three-way ANOVA in a before-after-control-impact pairs (BACIP) design. All families increased significantly in biomass over time at nearly all sites. Increases were greater in reserves than fishing grounds, except for grunts, and responses were strongest in parrotfish and surgeonfish. The combined biomass of families more than quadrupled in reserves and tripled in fishing grounds between 1995 and 2002. During this period coral cover declined by 46% in reserves and 35% in fishing grounds. Multiple regression showed that neither habitat characteristics nor habitat deterioration significantly affected rates of biomass build-up. The key factor was protection from fishing, which explained 44% of the variance in biomass growth. A further 28% of the variance was explained by sedimentation, a process known to stress reef invertebrates, significantly reducing the rate of biomass build-up. St. Lucia’s reserves succeeded in producing significant gains to fish stocks despite coral cover and structural complexity falling steeply over the period of the study.  相似文献   

Longitudinal growth strain as a log and wood quality predictor for plantation-grown <Emphasis Type="Italic">Eucalyptus nitens</Emphasis> sawlogs     

Juan Valencia  Chris Harwood  Russell Washusen  Andrew Morrow  Matthew Wood  Peter Volker 《Wood Science and Technology》2011,45(1):15-34

Peripheral longitudinal growth strain (LGS) was measured on a total of 81, 22-year-old pruned Eucalyptus nitens trees from five thinning treatments in a plantation thinning trial in Tasmania. Growth strain data were gathered at breast height on each tree using the CIRAD-Forêt method. The effects of thinning treatment and tree diameter on LGS and its relationships to solid-wood traits determined in a processing trial were examined. LGS was significantly higher in the direction of the prevailing wind and was not significantly affected by either thinning treatment or tree diameter. An index of log end splitting was positively related to tree diameter, sawlog position (upper/lower), and LGS, which explained up to an additional 20% of the variance after tree diameter and log position were accounted for in a linear regression model. High LGS and log end splitting were significant indicators of increased board end splitting.  相似文献   

Effect of boreal forest logging on nectar production of four understory herbs     

Chris J. PengellyRalph V. Cartar 《Forest Ecology and Management》2011,261(11):2068-2074

The rate of floral nectar production, an important trait for supporting populations of pollinators, is known to be affected by local environment. This study examines the effect, 9 years after an anthropogenic disturbance—variable retention logging,—on the rate of daily nectar production of four common herbs (Chamerion angustifolium, Delphinium glaucum, Mertensia paniculata and Vicia americana) in the boreal forest of Alberta, Canada. We measured daily nectar production rates 9 years after experimental logging in three treatments: clear cuts (all merchantable trees removed), 50% of trees retained, and unlogged controls. Per-flower nectar production rate was unaffected by logging for C. angusifolium, D. glaucum, and M. paniculata, and lower in unlogged controls than in the 50% logging treatment for V. americana. Overall, we found a surprising robustness of nectar production of these herbaceous plants to the physical and environmental changes following logging. While other research has shown boreal forest logging to affect the densities of understory herbs, the per-flower nectar production in boreal forest understory herbs appears to be relatively insensitive to this disturbance.  相似文献   

Managing small remnants of native forest to increase biodiversity within plantation landscapes in the south west of Western Australia   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Robert D. Archibald  Michael D. Craig  Katarzyna Bialkowski  Chris Howe  Treena I. Burgess  Giles E.St.J. Hardy 《Forest Ecology and Management》2011,261(7):1254-1264

Recent expansion of industrial-scale plantations into agricultural areas in Australia has the potential to assist biodiversity conservation by rehabilitating ecosystems at the landscape scale and reducing edge effects, isolation and disturbance within remnants of native vegetation. However, the efficient management of remnants for biodiversity within a plantation estate requires knowledge of both the causes and the consequences of remnant degradation. With this in mind, we examined key ecosystem features and processes relating to soil chemistry, decomposition, native tree health and regeneration and vertebrate abundance, within small forest remnants (1-4 ha) embedded within Eucalyptus globulus plantations in south west Western Australia. Soil nutrient enrichment was significantly associated with a scale of vegetation modification in order from: (1) intact forest, (2) remnants with native understorey (UDN), (3) remnants with exotic understorey (UDE), (4) plantation and (5) pasture. We propose that, in this region, UDE remnants will often remain in a degraded state even after plantation establishment and the cessation of stock grazing. This is due, in part, to more rapid rates of nutrient turnover sustaining higher nutrient availability in the soil following the replacement of ligneous understorey plants with annual ones. Cotton strips placed in surface soils were often disintegrated in UDE remnants and largely intact in UDN remnants, indicating that decomposition was accelerated in the former. Continued tree decline and regeneration failure within UDE remnants will also reinforce the UDE condition. There was less canopy seed set and little or no seedling establishment in UDE remnants compared to UDN remnants. Therefore, management interventions to assist native tree regeneration in UDE remnants are needed. Fauna trapping highlighted the desirability of retaining, and preferably restoring, small remnants in plantations. Small native mammals were found exclusively in remnants and fewer introduced Mus musculus were present in UDN remnants. Higher numbers of native lizards were found in UDN remnants, but this result was not significant (marginally).  相似文献