Search results for "1172 Environmental sciences"
showing 10 items of 89 documents
Plant trait‐environment relationships in tundra are consistent across spatial scales
2023
Patterns and processes shaping ecosystems vary across spatiotemporal scales. As plant functional traits reflect ecosystem properties, investigating their relationships with environment provides an important tool to understand and predict ecosystem structure and functioning. This is particularly important in the tundra where a changing climate may trigger severe alterations in plant communities as both summer and winter conditions are changing. Here, we investigate the relationships between key environmental drivers including summer temperature, snow persistence, topographic position and soil pH, and species height, specific leaf area (SLA) and seed mass as plant traits. The study is carried…
Transitioning towards a Sustainable Wellbeing Economy—Implications for Rural–Urban Relations
2021
This article focuses on the question of how a shift from a narrow economic perspective to a wider sustainable wellbeing focus in regional development strategies and actions might change rural–urban relations. A brief review of relevant research and discourses about economic development models provides the foundation for the analysis. The review leads to the development of an analytical framework that puts the notion of sustainable wellbeing at its center. The criteria included in the analytical framework are then used to assess the current situation, challenges and perceived ways forward based on data and analyses from 11 European regions. The focus of the analysis is on different exp…
Regional climate model simulations for Europe at 6 and 0.2 k BP: sensitivity to changes in anthropogenic deforestation
2014
International audience; This study aims to evaluate the direct effects of anthropogenic deforestation on simulated climate at two contrasting periods in the Holocene, ∼ 6 and ∼ 0.2 k BP in Eu-rope. We apply the Rossby Centre regional climate model RCA3, a regional climate model with 50 km spatial resolution, for both time periods, considering three alternative descriptions of the past vegetation: (i) potential natural vegetation (V) simulated by the dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS, (ii) potential vegetation with anthro-pogenic land use (deforestation) from the HYDE3.1 (History Database of the Global Environment) scenario (V + H3.1), and (iii) potential vegetation with anthropogenic land …
Harnessing the biodiversity value of Central and Eastern European farmland
2015
A large proportion of European biodiversity today depends on habitat provided by low‐intensity farming practices, yet this resource is declining as European agriculture intensifies. Within the European Union, particularly the central and eastern new member states have retained relatively large areas of species‐rich farmland, but despite increased investment in nature conservation here in recent years, farmland biodiversity trends appear to be worsening. Although the high biodiversity value of Central and Eastern European farmland has long been reported, the amount of research in the international literature focused on farmland biodiversity in this region remains comparatively ti…
Assessing preferences and motivations for owning exotic pets : Care matters
2023
Understanding drivers of demand for exotic pets may help inform adequate conservation strategies to address unsustainable trade. Here, we used a best-worst scaling approach to understand the variety of preferences and motivations for owning exotic pets. Respondents (316 from 33 countries) preferred exotic pets that were captive-bred, had rare aesthetic features, and were common in the wild and abundant in the market. Species that were at risk of extinction, in short supply, sourced from the wild, and under trade restrictions were the least favoured by respondents. Feelings of care, such as attachment, affection, nurture, as well as curiosity and being passionate about the species, were domi…
Changing forest stakeholders’ perception of ecosystem services with linguistic nudging
2019
This paper explores whether the perceptions of forest owners and professionals could be nudged towards more sustainable management practices by adjusting a policy text's metaphorical content. Recent research has demonstrated a link between information interventions and preference change, but there is a need to further explore individuals' reactions to information on forest-based ecosystem services and to link these to the design of policy instruments. We contribute to narrowing this gap by nudging the content of a policy text comparing rotation forest management (RFM) and continuous cover forestry (CCF), and exposing it to forest stakeholders. The research is carried out in Finland, the so-…
Distance decay 2.0. A global synthesis of taxonomic and functional turnover in ecological communities
2022
Caio Graco-Roza was funded by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), the Carlos Chagas Filho Research Support Foundation (FAPERJ) and the Ella and Georg Erhnrooth Foundation; Jan Altman by research grants INTER-EXCELLENCE LTAUSA19137 provided by Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, 20-05840Y of the Czech Science Foundation, and long-term research development project no. RVO 67985939 of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Otso Ovaskainen was funded by Academy of Finland (grant no. 309581), Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence Funding Scheme (223257), and the European Research Council (ERC) unde…
Applicability and consequences of the integration of alternative models for CO2 transfer velocity into a process-based lake model
2019
Freshwater lakes are important in carbon cycling, especially in the boreal zone where many lakes are supersaturated with the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) and emit it to the atmosphere, thus ventilating carbon originally fixed by the terrestrial system. The exchange of CO2 between water and the atmosphere is commonly estimated using simple wind-based parameterizations or models of gas transfer velocity (k). More complex surface renewal models, however, have been shown to yield more correct estimates of k in comparison with direct CO2 flux measurements. We incorporated four gas exchange models with different complexity into a vertical process-based physico-biochemical lake model, MyLak…
Up with ecology, down with economy? : The consolidation of the idea of climate change mitigation in the global public sphere
2018
Building on theories of valuation and evaluation, we develop an analytical framework that outlines six elements of the process of consolidation of an idea in the public sphere. We then use the framework to analyse the process of consolidation of the idea of climate change mitigation between 1997 and 2013, focusing on the interplay between ecological and economic evaluations. Our content analysis of 1274 articles in leading newspapers in five countries around the globe shows that (1) ecological arguments increase over time, (2) economic arguments decrease over time, (3) the visibility of environmental nongovernmental organizations as carriers of ecological ideas increases over time, (4) the …
Using the centre-periphery framework to explore human-carnivore relations
2023
Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M Living alongside carnivores can incur both costs and benefits on people's lifeways. While positive outcomes of carnivore presence can foster coexistence, negative relations with carnivores can trigger carnivores' killing and undermine their conservation. In response to this, conservation efforts increasingly focus on promoting positive human-carnivore relations, most often through improvements in the flow of economic benefits from carnivores to local communities. However, there is a question mark over the effectiveness and potential consequences of market-based instruments for carnivore conservation. To understand the opportunities and p…