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Displaying 1246 - 1250 of 2258Accessing and Mobilizing “New” Data to Evaluate Emerging Environmental Impacts on Semi-Aquatic Mammals
This paper describes how knowledge mobilization evolved during a study that assessed a proposed increase in industrial water withdrawals from the Athabasca River in northern Alberta, Canada, and potential impacts on a suite of freshwater semi-aquatic mammals in the broader ecosystem. The oil sands region in northeastern Alberta faces various pressures that require rapid knowledge mobilization and decision making, while still acknowledging ecological sensitivities immediately downstream in the Peace-Athabasca Delta (PAD) in the Wood Buffalo National Park.
Spatial and Ecological Farmer Knowledge and Decision-Making about Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity
Amid climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity, there is the growing need to draw synergies between micro-scale environmental processes and practices, and macro-level ecosystem dynamics to facilitate conservation decision-making. Adopting this synergistic approach can improve crop yields and profitability more sustainably, enhance livelihoods and mitigate climate change.
Impacts of Future Crop Tree Release Treatments on Forest Carbon as REDD+ Mitigation Benefits
Sustainable forest management activities, such as future crop tree (FCT) release treatments, became part of the REDD+ strategy to avoid carbon emissions from forests. FCT release treatments are intended to achieve increased growth of FCTs by removing competitor trees. This initially leads to a reduction of the forest carbon pool and represents a carbon debt. We estimated that the time it takes for FCTs to offset the carbon debt through increased growth on experimental sites of 10 km² in Belize, Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Assessment Method and Scale of Observation Influence Ecosystem Service Bundles
The understanding of relationships between ecosystem services and the appropriate spatial scales for their analysis and characterization represent opportunities for sustainable land management. Bundles have appeared as an integrated method to assess and visualize consistent associations among multiple ecosystem services. Most of the bundle assessments focused on a static framework at a specific spatial scale.
Spatial Variation in Environmental Impacts of Sugarcane Expansion in Brazil
In the past decades, sugarcane production in Brazil has expanded rapidly to meet increasing ethanol demand. The large majority of this expansion occurred in Sao Paulo state. We used an integrated approach considering location-specific biophysical characteristics to determine the environmental impacts of sugarcane expansion and their spatial variation in Sao Paulo state (2004–2015). The included environmental impacts are greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, biodiversity, soil erosion, and water quantity.