Advancing Environmental Flow Science: Developing Frameworks for Altered Landscapes and Integrating Efforts Across Disciplines.

Environmental flows represent a legal mechanism to balance existing and future water uses and sustain non-use values. Here, we identify current challenges, provide examples where they are important, and suggest research advances that would benefit environmental flow science. Specifically, environmental flow science would benefit by (1) developing approaches to address streamflow needs in highly modified landscapes where historic flows do not provide reasonable comparisons, (2) integrating water quality needs where interactions are apparent with quantity but not necessarily the proximate factor of the ecological degradation, especially as frequency and magnitudes of inflows to bays and estuaries, (3) providing a better understanding of the ecological needs of native species to offset the often unintended consequences of benefiting non-native species or their impact on flows, (4) improving our understanding of the non-use economic value to balance consumptive economic values, and (5) increasing our understanding of the stakeholder socioeconomic spatial distribution of attitudes and perceptions across the landscape. Environmental flow science is still an emerging interdisciplinary field and by integrating socioeconomic disciplines and developing new frameworks to accommodate our altered landscapes, we should help advance environmental flow science and likely increase successful implementation of flow standards.

Incorporating permaculture and strategic management for sustainable ecological resource management.

Utilization of natural assets to the best efficient level without changing natural balance has become a critical issue for researchers as awareness on climate change takes central position in global debate. Conventional sustainable resource management systems are based on neoclassical economic approach that ignores the nature's pattern and therefore are not actually capable of sustainable management of resources. Environmentalists are lately advocating incorporation of Permaculture as holistic approach based on ethics, equitable interaction with eco-systems to obtain sustainability. The paper integrates philosophy of permaculture with strategic management frameworks to develop a pragmatic tool for policy development. The policy design tool augments management tasks by integrating recording of natural assets, monitoring of key performance indicators and integration of sectorial policies in real time, bringing out policy as a truly live document. The tool enhances the edifice process, balancing short term viewpoints and long term development to secure renewability of natural resources.

Setting the bar: Standards for ecosystem services.

Progress in ecosystem service science has been rapid, and there is now a healthy appetite among key public and private sector decision makers for this science. However, changing policy and management is a long-term project, one that raises a number of specific practical challenges. One impediment to broad adoption of ecosystem service information is the lack of standards that define terminology, acceptable data and methods, and reporting requirements. Ecosystem service standards should be tailored to specific use contexts, such as national income and wealth accounts, corporate sustainability reporting, land-use planning, and environmental impact assessments. Many standard-setting organizations already exist, and the research community will make the most headway toward rapid uptake of ecosystem service science by working directly with these organizations. Progress has been made in aligning with existing organizations in areas such as product certification and sustainability reporting, but a major challenge remains in mainstreaming ecosystem service information into core public and private use contexts, such as agricultural and energy subsidy design, national income accounts, and corporate accounts.

Reconciliacion y responsabilidad: acciones de sinergia para la construcción de un pensamiento ecologizante desde la escuela. “incertidumbres semilla.” / Reconciliation and responsibility: actions of synergy for the construction of a green thought from school. “uncertainty seed

Esta artículo, derivado de las discusiones fruto de varias investigaciones realizadas,tiene como objetivo proponer una acción de ruptura respecto a la dinámicadevastadora de la humanidad ante los recursos ambientales y ecosistemas, para lo cual se propone la generación de “incertidumbres semilla” que actúan a modo de acciones pedagógicas de cambio instauradas desde la infancia como registros de acción, retroacción e interretroacción pedagógica-social. Para ello se plantea que la responsabilidad medioambiental y la reconciliación de la humanidad con los ecosistemas, emergen como constructos dialógicos de sentido ecologizante, por lo que deben ser apuntalados en el proceso educativo y (de)construidos en quienes alteran la organización de los sistemas vivos.

This article, derived from the product of several investigations carried out discussions, aims to propose an action of rupture on the devastating dynamics of humanity to environmental resources and ecosystems, which proposes the generation of “uncertainty seeds” that act as a pedagogical actions of change, installed from childhood as records of pedagogical and social action, feedback and inter-feedback. This raises the environmental liability and the reconciliation of humanity with theecosystems, to emerge as dialogic constructs of greening sense, so that it must be underpinned in the educational process and (de) built on those who disrupt the organization of living systems.

[Assessment of ecosystem and its services conservation: indicators and methods].

To conserve ecosystem and its services is a frontier and hot topic in the researches of conservation ecology. This paper reviewed the newest concepts and methods in the assessment of ecosystem and its services conservation, with the focus on the indicators and criteria for assessing the conservation status and the endangerment level of ecosystem as well as the main methods of ecosystem services assessment and conservation (including benefit transfer, systematic modeling, and quantitative indicator-based estimation). With the consideration of the research progress and the demands of ecological conservation in China, some issues to be urgently solved were put forward: 1) formulating the indicators, criteria, and methods suitable for the assessment of ecosystem conservation in China, 2) developing the methodologies for the quantitative assessment of ecosystem services, 3) determining the demands and optimal spatial arrangement of ecosystem and its services conservation in China, and 4) establishing the policies and incentive mechanisms for ecosystem and its services conservation. The resolution of these issues would supply important guarantee to the development of ecological civilization in China.

[An integrated assessment method of ecological quality status in coastal waters: taking Tong'an Bay as a case].

Based on the integrated assessment methods of ecological quality status (EcoQS) in coastal waters abroad as well as the domestic related research status, 11 indices were selected from the biotic and physicochemical elements of water and sediment to built an integrated EcoQS assessment index system, and, with the comprehensive consideration of domestic and international evaluation standards, 5 levels of EcoQS classified as "high, good, moderate, poor, and bad" were determined. Then, an integrated assessment method of EcoQS in coastal waters was established by using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy mathematics method, and tested by the analysis of the correlations between the EcoQS grade and the major anthropogenic disturbances and pollutant concentrations of Tong' an Bay. The EcoQS of Tong' an Bay was assessed as moderate, i.e., the Bay was moderately disturbed and in transitional to poor status. The established integrated assessment method could not only reflect the major anthropogenic environmental pressure and risk factors, but also give an early warning of the pollutants satisfied by law in the study area.

[Ecosystem health assessment of economic zone on the west side of Taiwan Strait, China].

Based on the standards of regional ecosystem health, including vigor, organizational structure, resilience, ecological function, and public health, and in considering of anthropogenic pressure and response countermeasures, an index system for the ecosystem health assessment of the economic zone on the west side of the Taiwan Strait (Haixi Zone) was built, and, aiming at the characteristics of nature and humanity of regional ecosystem health, the weights of the indices were given by analytic hierarchy process and mean square difference method. Fuzzy comprehensive assessment was utilized to establish the ecosystem health assessment model of Haixi Zone. The assessment showed that in 2008, the ecosystem health state of Haixi Zone was superior, and the anthropogenic pressure was relatively gentle. Overall, the regional ecosystem health status was good, but had spatial difference. Owing to the restriction of response countermeasures such as fixed assets investment and education expenditure. The regional ecosystem health status of Longyan, Quanzhou, Wenzhou, Chaozhou and Jieyang was worse than the health state of these cities in 2008. The overall ecosystem health status of the Zone in 2000 and 2008 was better than that in 1992, and the main driving factors were mainly economic vigor, organizational structure, human health, population pressure, and investment. However, the overall ecosystem health status of Haixi Zone in 2008 was worse than that in 2000, due to the expansion of built-up land, the decrease in natural landscape, and the enhancement of human disturbances.

[Ecological compensation criterion in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture based on minimum-data method].

Quantitatively setting ecological compensation criterion is a focus and a difficulty in establishing ecological compensation mechanism. Based on the 1987-2007 meteorological data and the 2007 social survey data of Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Region, the supply curves of grassland ecosystem services in the Region were simulated by the methods of minimum-data, social survey, and precipitation storage estimation. The opportunity cost of implementing ecological compensation in the Region in 2007 was 503.6 yuan x hm(-2), per unit water conservation volume supplied by grassland ecosystem was 1110.7 m3 x hm(-2), and ecological compensation criterion was 788.6 yuan x hm(-2). The total water conservation volume supplied by grassland ecosystem was 2.56 x 10(9) m3.

Ecological risk assessment in the United States environmental protection agency: a historical overview.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is 1 of 4 papers from the US Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board's Ecological Processes and Effects Committee workshop on the current and future practice of ecological risk assessment. The workshop was held in Washington, DC in February 2006. Risk assessment originated with the insurance industry and spread to the estimation of risks to people and property in other contexts, including the regulation of environmental contamination. Ecological assessment became an important component of environmental management in the United States with the legal mandate for environmental impact assessment in 1970. Risk assessment and ecological assessment merged in the 1980s to form ecological risk assessment (ERA). Since then, ERA has been institutionalized with the development of the US Environmental Protection Agency's (hereafter, USEPA or Agency) framework and guidance documents. Ecological risk assessment has been adapted by the Agency's program offices to fit their legal and policy contexts. The future of ERA will inevitably include the incorporation of more complex and demanding methods. However, the biggest challenge for future risk assessors will be to make ecological risks more compelling to decision makers.