Proper sourcing of seed for ecological restoration has never been straightforward, and it is becoming even more challenging and complex as the climate changes. For decades, restoration practitioners have subscribed to the “local is best” tenet, even if the definition of “local” was often widely divergent between projects. However, given our increasing ability to characterize habitats, and rapid climate change, we can no longer assume that locally sourced seeds are always the best or even an appropriate option. We discuss how plants are responding to changing climates through plasticity, adaptation, and migration, and how this may influence seed sourcing decisions. We recommend focusing on developing adequate supplies of “workhorse” species, undertaking more focused collections in both “bad” years and “bad” sites to maximize the potential to be able to adapt to extreme conditions as well as overall genetic diversity, and increasing seed storage capacity to ensure we have seed available as we continue to conduct research to determine how best to deploy it in a changing climate.
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Climate change is recognized as a major threat to the survival of species and integrityof ecosystems world-wide. Although considerable research has focused on climate impacts, relatively little work to date has been conducted on the practical application ofstrategies for adapting to climate change. Adaptation strategies should aim to increasethe flexibility in management of vulnerable ecosystems, enhance the inherent adapta-bility of species and ecosystem processes, and reduce trends in environmental and socialpressures that increase vulnerability to climate variability. 2. Knowledge of the specific attributes of climate change likely to impact on speciesor habitats is central to any adaptive management strategy. Temperature is not the onlyclimate variable likely to change as a result of anthropogenic increases in greenhousegases. In some regions changes in precipitation, relative humidity, radiation, wind speedand/or potential evapotranspiration may be more marked than for temperature. 3. Uncertainty exists in the response of species and ecosystems to a given climatescenario. While climate will have a direct impact on the performance of many species, forothers impacts will be indirect and result from changes in the spatiotemporal availabilityof natural resources. In addition, mutualistic and antagonistic interactions amongspecies will mediate both the indirect and direct effects of climate change. 4. Approaches to predict species’ responses to climate change have tended to addresseither changes in abundance with time or in spatial distribution. While correlativemodels may provide a good indication of climate change impacts on abundance, greaterunderstanding is generated by models incorporating aspects of life history, intra- andinterspecific competition and predation. Models are especially sensitive to the uncer-tainty inherent in future climate predictions, the complexity of species’ interactions andthe difficulties in parameterizing dispersal functions. Model outputs that have not beenappropriately validated with real data should be treated with caution. 5. Synthesis and applications . While climate impacts may be severe, they are oftenexacerbated by current management practices, such as the construction of sea defences,flood management and fire exclusion. In many cases adaptation approaches geared tosafeguard economic interests run contrary to options for biodiversity conservation.Increased environmental variability implies lower sustainable harvest rates andincreased risks of population collapse. Climate change may significantly reduce habitatsuitability and may threaten species with limited dispersal ability. In these cases, well-planned species translocations may prove a better option than management attempts toincrease landscape connectivity. Mathematical models, long-term population studies,natural experiments and the exploitation of natural environmental gradients provide asound basis for further understanding the consequences of climate change.
Recent rapid changes in the Earth’s climate have altered ecological systems around the globe. Global warming has been linked to changes in physiology, phenology, species distributions, interspecific interactions, and disturbance regimes. Projected future climate change will undoubtedly result in even more dramatic shifts in the states of many ecosystems. These shifts will provide one of the largest challenges to natural resource managers and conservation planners. Managing natural resources and ecosystems in the face of uncertain climate requires new approaches. Here, the many adaptation strategies that have been proposed for managing natural systems in a changing climate are reviewed. Most of the recommended approaches are general principles and many are tools that managers are already using. What is new is a turning toward a more agile management perspective. To address climate change, managers will need to act over different spatial and temporal scales. The focus of restoration will need to shift from historic species assemblages to potential future ecosystem services. Active adaptive management based on potential future climate impact scenarios will need to be a part of everyday operations. And triage will likely become a critical option. Although many concepts and tools for addressing climate change have been proposed, key pieces of information are still missing. To successfully manage for climate change, a better understanding will be needed of which species and systems will likely be most affected by climate change, how to preserve and enhance the evolutionary capacity of species, how to implement effective adaptive management in new systems, and perhaps most importantly, in which situations and systems will the general adaptation strategies that have been proposed work and how can they be effectively applied.
As a consequence of global climate-driven changes, marine ecosystems are experiencing polewards redistributions of species – or range shifts – across taxa and throughout latitudes worldwide. Research on these range shifts largely focuses on understanding and predicting changes in the distribution of individual species. The ecological effects of marine range shifts on ecosystem structure and functioning, as well as human coastal communities, can be large, yet remain difficult to anticipate and manage. Here, we use qualitative modelling of system feedback to understand the cumulative impacts of multiple species shifts in south-eastern Australia, a global hotspot for ocean warming. We identify range-shifting species that can induce trophic cascades and affect ecosystem dynamics and productivity, and evaluate the potential effectiveness of alternative management interventions to mitigate these impacts. Our results suggest that the negative ecological impacts of multiple simultaneous range shifts generally add up. Thus, implementing whole-of-ecosystem management strategies and regular monitoring of range-shifting species of ecological concern are necessary to effectively intervene against undesirable consequences of marine range shifts at the regional scale. Our study illustrates how modelling system feedback with only limited qualitative information about ecosystem structure and range-shifting species can predict ecological consequences of multiple co-occurring range shifts, guide ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change and help prioritise future research and monitoring.
Natural peatlands support rich biological diversity at the genetic, species, ecosystem and landscape levels. However, because the character of this diversity differs from that of other ecosystem types, the value of peatlands for biodiversity has often been overlooked. Fundamentally, this arises because peatland ecosystems direct part of the energy captured by primary production into long-term storage within a peat layer, and thus establish a structural and functional basis for biodiversity maintenance that is not found elsewhere. This article examines the far-reaching implications for the assessment of peatland biodiversity as well as for the drivers, methods and targets of peatland conservation and restoration initiatives. It becomes clear that a robust framework for the management and restoration of peatland biodiversity must be founded in structural functional ecosystem analysis, and such a framework is developed. The authors draw on a broad base of historical and contemporary literature and experience, including important Russian contributions that have previously had little international exposure.
Bowalization is a particular form of land degradation and leads to lateral expansion of ferricrete horizons. The process occurs only in tropical regions. In this study, the most adapted and resistant species towards climate change were identified on bowé. The 15 most common bowé species of the subhumid and semi-arid climate zones of Benin were submitted together with significant environmental variables (elevation, current bioclimatic variables, soil types) to three ecological niche modelling programmes (Maxent, Domain and GARP). For future prediction (2050), IPCC4/CIAT and IPCC5/CMIP5 climate data were applied. Asparagus africanus, Andropogon pseudapricus and Combretum nigricans were identified as the most resistant species for ecological restoration of bowé in the semi-arid climate zone and Asparagus africanus, Detarium microcarpumand Lannea microcarpa in the subhumid climate zone. The ‘Pull’ strategies were identified as appropriate for ecological restoration of bowé in Benin.
Contemporary climate change is characterized both by increasing mean temperature and increasing climate variability such as heat waves, storms, and floods. How populations and communities cope with such climatic extremes is a question central to contemporary ecology and biodiversity conservation. Previous work has shown that species diversity can affect ecosystem functioning and resilience. Here, we show that genotypic diversity can replace the role of species diversity in a species-poor coastal ecosystem, and it may buffer against extreme climatic events. In a manipulative field experiment, increasing the genotypic diversity of the cosmopolitan seagrass Zostera marina enhanced biomass production, plant density, and faunal abundance, despite near-lethal water temperatures due to extreme warming across Europe. Net biodiversity effects were explained by genotypic complementarity rather than by selection of particularly robust genotypes. Positive effects on invertebrate fauna suggest that genetic diversity has second-order effects reaching higher trophic levels. Our results highlight the importance of maintaining genetic as well as species diversity to enhance ecosystem resilience in a world of increasing uncertainty.
In the 1980s, Professor Akira Miyawaki introduced a new and innovative reforestation approach in Japan with the challenge to restore indigenous ecosystems, and maintaining global environments, including disaster prevention and carbon dioxide (CO2) mitigation. Here, natural vegetation successional stages (from bare soil to mature forest) are practically forced and reproduced, accelerating natural successional times. The Miyawaki method has been applied in the Far East, Malaysia, and South America; results have been very impressive, allowing quick environmental restorations of strongly degraded areas. However, these applications have always been made on sites characterized by high precipitation. The same method has never been used in a Mediterranean context distinguished by summer aridity and risk of desertification. A first test was carried out by the University of Tuscia, Department of Forest and Environment (DAF), 11 years ago in Sardinia (Italy) on an area where traditional reforestation methods had failed. For an appropriate Miyawaki application on this site, the original method was modified while maintaining its theoretical principles. Results obtained 2 and 11 years after planting are positive: having compared the traditional reforestation techniques, plant biodiversity using the Miyawaki method appears very high, and the new coenosis (plant community) was able to evolve without further operative support after planting. Therefore, the implementation of supplementary technique along with cost reduction might provide a new and innovative tool to foresters and ecological engineering experts for Mediterranean environmental reforestation program.
Many US forest managers have used historical ecology information to assist in the development of desired conditions. While there are many important lessons to learn from the past, we believe that we cannot rely on past forest conditions to provide us with blueprints for future management. To respond to this uncertainty, managers will be challenged to integrate adaptation strategies into plans in response to changing climates. Adaptive strategies include resistance options, resilience options, response options, and realignment options. Our objectives are to present ideas that could be useful in developing plans under changing climates that could be applicable to forests with Mediterranean climates. We believe that managing for species persistence at the broad ecoregion scale is the most appropriate goal when considering the effects of changing climates. Such a goal relaxes expectations that current species ranges will remain constant, or that population abundances, distribution, species compositions and dominances should remain stable. Allowing fundamental ecosystem processes to operate within forested landscapes will be critical. Management and political institutions will have to acknowledge and embrace uncertainty in the future since we are moving into a time period with few analogs and inevitably, there will be surprises.
Ecological restoration is widely practiced as a means of rehabilitating ecosystems and habitats that have been degraded or impaired through human use or other causes. Restoration practices now are confronted by climate change, which has the potential to influence long-term restoration outcomes. Concepts and attributes from the resilience literature can help improve restoration and monitoring efforts under changing climate conditions. We systematically examined the published literature on ecological resilience to identify biological, chemical, and physical attributes that confer resilience to climate change. We identified 45 attributes explicitly related to climate change and classified them as individual- (9), population- (6), community- (7), ecosystem- (7), or process-level attributes (16). Individual studies defined resilience as resistance to change or recovery from disturbance, and only a few studies explicitly included both concepts in their definition of resilience. We found that individual and population attributes generally are suited to species- or habitat-specific restoration actions and applicable at the population scale. Community attributes are better suited to habitat-specific restoration at the site scale, or system-wide restoration at the ecosystem scale. Ecosystem and process attributes vary considerably in their type and applicability. We summarize these relationships in a decision support table and provide three example applications to illustrate how these classifications can be used to prioritize climate change resilience attributes for specific restoration actions. We suggest that (1) including resilience as an explicit planning objective could increase the success of restoration projects, (2) considering the ecological context and focal scale of a restoration action is essential in choosing appropriate resilience attributes, and (3) certain ecological attributes, such as diversity and connectivity, are more commonly considered to confer resilience because they apply to a wide variety of species and ecosystems. We propose that identifying sources of ecological resilience is a critical step in restoring ecosystems in a changing climate.
Increasing the amount of green infrastructure, defined as small-scale natural landscape elements, has been named as a climate adaptation measure for biodiversity. While green infrastructure strengthened ecological networks in some studies, it is not known whether this effect also holds under climate change, and how it compares to other landscape adaptation options. We assessed landscape adaptation options under scenarios of climate change for a dispersal-limited and climate-sensitive species: great crested newt, Triturus cristatus. A spatially-explicit modelling framework was used to simulate newt metapopulation dynamics in a case study area in the Netherlands, under alternative spatial configurations of 500 ha to-be-restored habitat. The framework incorporated weather-related effects on newt recruitment, following current and changing climate conditions. Mild climate change resulted in slightly higher metapopulation viability, while more severe climate change (i.e. more frequent mild winters and summer droughts) had detrimental effects on metapopulation viability. The modelling framework revealed interactions between climate and landscape configuration on newt viability. Restoration of ponds and terrestrial habitat may reduce the negative effects of climate change, but only when certain spatial requirements (habitat density, connectivity) as well as abiotic requirements (high ground water level) are met.
Climate change is contributing to the severity and rate of stream degradation by changing the timing of peak flows, altering flow regimes, creating more frequent and intense disturbances, and increasing stream temperatures. Herein we describe three case studies of trout stream adaptation that address existing and climate-driven causes of degradation through habitat restoration. The case studies vary in geography and complexity, but all include restoration efforts intended to address multiple causes of stream degradation and improve the resilience of these streams to floods, droughts, and wildfires. Four elements of successful climate adaptation projects emerge: (1) habitat assessments that help drive project location and design, (2) projects that directly address climate change impacts and increase habitat resilience, (3) projects that combine to achieve watershed-scale impacts, and (4) projects that include sufficient monitoring to determine their effectiveness. We describe solutions to common challenges in conducting climate change adaptation, including how to balance scientific assessments with opportunities when choosing projects, how smaller projects can be aggregated to achieve watershed-scale benefits, and how citizen science efforts can augment monitoring programs.
To address pasture degradation on the Tibetan Plateau, the Chinese government has launched the ecological restoration project Grazing Withdrawal Program (GWP) since 2004. However, few studies have evaluated the impact of the GWP on grassland recovery. Based on monthly remote-sensed vegetation index and meteorological data from 2000 to 2012, we assessed the dynamics of annual net primary productivity (NPP) in alpine grasslands and quantified the effects of climatic factors and anthropogenic activities on NPP change by using the climate-driven NPP and the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach (CASA) models. We found that there existed two distinct periods with an accelerating trend in NPP increase before and after 2004. The area percentage of NPP change induced by climatic factors increased from 41.55% to 83.75%, but that percentage caused by human activities decreased from 58.45% to 16.25% in the two periods of 2000–2004 and 2004–2012. Between 2000 and 2004, overgrazing reduced the positive effect of climate change on NPP variability, resulting in wide-scale grassland degradation. Between 2004 and 2012, grassland ecosystems gradually recovered from heavy grazing pressure, and the human induced degradation was reversed after the implementation of the GWP. Thus, temperature and solar radiation became dominant factors in driving NPP change. Our results indicated that the GWP produces a significant positive effect on the restoration of alpine grasslands by controlling livestock numbers and decreasing grazing intensity. This study provides an objective assessment of restoration actuation on grassland ecosystems, having important implications for demonstrating the effectiveness of the GWP on grassland restoration on the Tibetan Plateau.
Climate change is increasingly recognized as the driver of biodiversity change. In recent years, the issues related to climate change have left the purely scientific realm and got on the agenda of many international organizations, programmes, conventions and initiatives seeking ways to mitigate and adapt to this phenomenon. Protected areas and biosphere reserves (BRs) in particular, focused as they are on the conservation of ecosystem services and on fostering sustainable regional development, play an important role in developing and implementing mitigation and adaptation measures and policies. This is officially recognized within the framework of the Madrid Action Plan for the BRs, adopted in 2008. It states that “MAB and WNBR bring added value through the integrated approach which is generally absent elsewhere. The role of biosphere reserves is essential to rapidly seek and test solutions to the challenges of climate change as well as monitor the changes as part of a global network. For the Natural Sciences as well as other Programme Sectors of UNESCO, biosphere reserves can be areas for demonstrating adaptation measures for natural and human systems, assisting the development of resilience strategies and practices. Buffer zones and transition areas of biosphere reserves may also be used to test many mitigation tactics and strategies”. Target 24 of the Action Plan envisages using BRs as learning sites for research into, adaptation to and mitigation of climate change effects.
Process-based restoration aims to reestablish normative rates and magnitudes of physical, chemical, and biological processes that sustain river and floodplain ecosystems. Ecosystem conditions at any site are governed by hierarchical regional, watershed, and reach-scale processes controlling hydrologic and sediment regimes; floodplain and aquatic habitat dynamics; and riparian and aquatic biota. We outline and illustrate four process-based principles that ensure river restoration will be guided toward sustainable actions: (1) restoration actions should address the root causes of degradation, (2) actions must be consistent with the physical and biological potential of the site, (3) actions should be at a scale commensurate with environmental problems, and (4) actions should have clearly articulated expected outcomes for ecosystem dynamics. Applying these principles will help avoid common pitfalls in river restoration, such as creating habitat types that are outside of a site’s natural potential, attempting to build static habitats in dynamic environments, or constructing habitat features that are ultimately overwhelmed by unconsidered system drivers.
An important question for salmon restoration efforts in the western USA is ‘How should habitat restoration plans be altered to accommodate climate change effects on stream flow and temperature?’ We developed a decision support process for adapting salmon recovery plans that incorporates (1) local habitat factors limiting salmon recovery, (2) scenarios of climate change effects on stream flow and temperature, (3) the ability of restoration actions to ameliorate climate change effects, and (4) the ability of restoration actions to increase habitat diversity and salmon population resilience. To facilitate the use of this decision support framework, we mapped scenarios of future stream flow and temperature in the Pacific Northwest region and reviewed literature on habitat restoration actions to determine whether they ameliorate a climate change effect or increase life history diversity and salmon resilience. Under the climate change scenarios considered here, summer low flows decrease by 35–75% west of the Cascade Mountains, maximum monthly flows increase by 10–60% across most of the region, and stream temperatures increase between 2 and 6 C by 2070–2099. On the basis of our literature review, we found that restoring floodplain connectivity, restoring stream flow regimes, and re-aggrading incised channels are most likely to ameliorate stream flow and temperature changes and increase habitat diversity and population resilience. By contrast, most restoration actions focused on in-stream rehabilitation are unlikely to ameliorate climate change effects. Finally, we illustrate how the decision support process can be used to evaluate whether climate change should alter the types or priority of restoration actions in a salmon habitat restoration plan.
Climate change challenges traditional strategies to conserve native biological diversity while sustaining ecosystem services. Several key climate adaptation frameworks call for adoption of experimental management whereby different strategies are viewed as experimental treatments requiring untreated controls by which to compare alternative approaches. At the same time, a variety of traditional conservation approaches (e.g., protecting land as connected network of reserves) continue to be emphasized as critical climate adaptation strategies, assuming that reserves are sufficiently representative of ecological diversity. Lands within the National Wilderness Preservation System could be used as untreated control landscapes while also serving as cores within protected area networks. The value of NWPS lands to serve as both untreated controls and representative ecological reserves will require maximizing ecological diversity within protected areas. Here, we assessed ecological representation across wilderness, potential wilderness, and other lands located on the Flathead National Forest (FNF). Our aim was to quantify and map ecological cover types currently underrepresented in wilderness. Underrepresented land cover types included diverse low-elevation mixed-conifer forests. These cover types were well-distributed within potential wilderness, suggesting opportunities to expand untreated controls while diversifying ecological reserves. Investigating the proportion of potential wilderness composed of underrepresented ecosystems provides a means to prioritize areas for future wilderness recommendations. However, on the FNF large potential wilderness areas provide opportunities for significantly increasing the representation of individual ecosystems from minimal representation in wilderness. The method demonstrated here could be used in other national forest planning efforts to prioritize recommended wilderness based on increasing ecosystem representation at national and forest-wide scales.
Climate change adds an additional layer of complexity to existing sustainable development and biodiversity conservation challenges. The impacts of global climate change are felt locally, and thus local governance structures will increasingly be responsible for preparedness and local responses. Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) options are gaining prominence as relevant climate change solutions. Local government officials seldom have an appropriate understanding of the role of ecosystem functioning in sustainable development goals, or access to relevant climate information. Thus the use of ecosystems in helping people adapt to climate change is limited partially by the lack of information on where ecosystems have the highest potential to do so. To begin overcoming this barrier, Conservation South Africa in partnership with local government developed a socio-ecological approach for identifying spatial EbA priorities at the sub-national level. Using GIS-based multi-criteria analysis and vegetation distribution models, the authors have spatially integrated relevant ecological and social information at a scale appropriate to inform local level political, administrative, and operational decision makers. This is the first systematic approach of which we are aware that highlights spatial priority areas for EbA implementation. Nodes of socio-ecological vulnerability are identified, and the inclusion of areas that provide ecosystem services and ecological resilience to future climate change is innovative. The purpose of this paper is to present and demonstrate a methodology for combining complex information into user-friendly spatial products for local level decision making on EbA. The authors focus on illustrating the kinds of products that can be generated from combining information in the suggested ways, and do not discuss the nuance of climate models nor present specific technical details of the model outputs here. Two representative case studies from rural South Africa demonstrate the replicability of this approach in rural and peri-urban areas of other developing and least developed countries around the world.
Shrub species were selected for potential use in restoration projects in the semiarid shrublands of Central Mexico. Ecological characteristics of the species were considered, including tolerance to climate change. Inventories of shrubs were carried out in 17 semiarid shrubland fragments of xeric shrubland. The 46 species recorded were ordered using a principal component analysis, considering ecological characteristics such as frequency, land cover, sociability and interaction with mycorrhizal fungi. From these, the 10 species that presented the highest values of the desired characteristics were selected. The response of these species to climate change was evaluated using current potential distribution models and by applying climate change scenario A2, using MaxEnt. The species that presented suitable ecological qualities for restoration and maintained or increased their distribution under the climate change scenario were Acacia schaffneri, Ageratina espinosarum, Bursera fagaroides, Dalea bicolor, Eysenhardtia polystachya and Karwinskia humboldtiana. These species are therefore recommended for use in medium and long-term ecological restoration projects in the semi-arid region in Central Mexico.
Annual row crops dominate agriculture around the world and have considerable negative environmental impacts, including significant greenhouse gas emissions. Transformative land‐use solutions are necessary to mitigate climate change and restore critical ecosystem services. Alley cropping (AC)—the integration of trees with crops—is an agroforestry practice that has been studied as a transformative, multifunctional land‐use solution. In the temperate zone, AC has strong potential for climate change mitigation through direct emissions reductions and increases in land‐use efficiency via overyielding compared to trees and crops grown separately. In addition, AC provides climate change adaptation potential and ecological benefits by buffering alley crops to weather extremes, diversifying income to hedge financial risk, increasing biodiversity, reducing soil erosion, and improving nutrient‐ and water‐use efficiency. The scope of temperate AC research and application has been largely limited to simple systems that combine one timber tree species with an annual grain. We propose two frontiers in temperate AC that expand this scope and could transform its climate‐related benefits: (i) diversification via woody polyculture and (ii) expanded use of tree crops for food and fodder. While AC is ready now for implementation on marginal lands, we discuss key considerations that could enhance the scalability of the two proposed frontiers and catalyze widespread adoption.
Since the late 1960s it became clear that a more sustainable protection of people and property from the negative impacts of natural hazards will require a more balanced use of structural and non-structural measures, such as land-use planning and ecosystem-based solutions for disaster risk reduction, also called Eco-DRR. The most prominent example of Eco-DRR in mountainous regions are forests that protect people, settlements and infrastructures against gravitational natural hazards such as avalanches, landslides and hazards related to mountain torrents. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview on the influence of forests on risks induced by natural hazards and the associated challenges and uncertainties concerning risk analysis. Approaches from natural hazard risk are presented, along with recent results from forest research, thereby offering new ways to integrate forests into risk analysis. We discuss the potential effects of forests on the three important hazard components of the risk concept, namely the onset probability, the propagation probability and the intensity, and propose a set of guiding principles for integrating forests into quantitative risk assessment (QRA) for natural hazards. Our focus thereby lies on snow avalanches, rockfalls, floods, landslides, and debris flows. This review shows that existing methods and models for assessing forest effects on natural hazards suffice for integrating forests into QRA. However, they are mostly limited to the stand- or slope-scale, and further efforts are therefore needed to upscale these approaches to a regional level, and account for uncertainties related to forest effects and natural dynamics. Such a dynamic, rather than a static assessment of risk will finally allow for planning and implementing intelligent combinations of Eco-DRR and technical protection measures.
This paper reports on early soil related outcomes from conservation agriculture (CA) benchmark sites located within the marginal rainfed environment of agro-ecological zone 4 (annual rainfall: 200–250 mm) in pre-conflict central Syria. The outcomes reported are specifically those that relate to beneficial soil quality and water retention attributes relative to conventional tillage-based soil management practices applied to the fodder barley–livestock system, the dominant system in the zone. On-farm operational research was established to examine the impact of a barley (Hordeum vulgare) and vetch (Vicia sativa) rotation intercropped with atriplex (Atriplex halimus) and salsola (Salsola collina), under CA and conventional tillage agriculture, on the soil quality parameters and crop productivity. Preliminary results showed that CA had a positive effect on the soil quality parameters and crop performance. The soil moisture and hydraulic conductivity were higher under CA (p < 0.05), combined with improved productivity (grain and above-ground biomass) under specific crop mixes. The results suggest that despite the marginal nature of the zone, the use of CA is a viable option for the future of farmers’ livelihoods within similar localities and agro-climates, given the benefits for soil moisture and grain and straw productivity. In addition, it is likely to positively impact those in marginal environments where both pastoralism and agro-pastoralism production systems co-exist and compete for crop biomass as a main source of livestock feed. The increase in grain and straw yields vis-à-vis improvements in biophysical parameters in the CA system relative to tillage agriculture does suggest, however, that the competition with livestock for biomass is likely to reduce over time, and farmers would be able to return increased levels of straw (as stubble and residue) as mulch, given improved biomass yields.
Much of the United States’ critical infrastructure is either aging or requires significant repair, leaving U.S. communities and the economy vulnerable. Outdated and dilapidated infrastructure places coastal communities, in particular, at risk from the increasingly frequent and intense coastal storm events and rising sea levels. Therefore, investments in coastal infrastructure are urgently needed to ensure community safety and prosperity; however, these investments should not jeopardize the ecosystems and natural resources that underlie economic wealth and human well-being. Over the past 50 years, efforts have been made to integrate built infrastructure with natural landscape features, often termed “green” infrastructure, in order to sustain and restore valuable ecosystem functions and services. For example, significant advances have been made in implementing green infrastructure approaches for stormwater management, wastewater treatment, and drinking water conservation and delivery. However, the implementation of natural and nature-based infrastructure (NNBI) aimed at flood prevention and coastal erosion protection is lagging. There is an opportunity now, as the U.S. government reacts to the recent, unprecedented flooding and hurricane damage and considers greater infrastructure investments, to incorporate NNBI into coastal infrastructure projects. Doing so will increase resilience and provide critical services to local communities in a cost-effective manner and thereby help to sustain a growing economy.
The forests in the Republic of Korea (ROK) successfully recovered through the national forestation program as did the ecosystem services associated with them. With this positive experience, it is instructive to investigate the economic viability of the forestation program. In this study, we estimated the changes in the key ecosystem services (disaster risk reduction (DRR), carbon sequestration, water yield enhancement, and soil erosion control; 1971–2010) and the monetary investment of the forestation (1960–2010) in the ROK, at a national scale. These benefits and costs were estimated by biophysical and monetary approaches, using statistical data from several public organizations, including the Korea Forest Service and the Korea Meteorological Administration, combined with model simulation. All monetary values were converted to the present value in 2010. The net present value and the benefit-cost ratio of the forestation program were 54,316 million $ and 5.84 in 2010, respectively, in the long-term. The break-even point of the extensive investment on the forestation appeared within two decades. In particular, the enhancements of DRR and carbon sequestration were substantial. This economic viability was ensured by the subsidiary implementations (e.g., participation of villagers, shifting energy source, and administrative regulation). Early and extensive investment in forestation is recommended for economic viability and successful implementation of the program. Our study is expected to provide a scientific rationale for implementing forestation program in other countries.
Faidherbia albida parklands cover a large area of the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Africa, a region that suffers from soil fertility decline, food insecurity and climate change. The parklands deliver multiple benefits, including fuelwood, soil nutrient replenishment, moisture conservation, and improved crop yield underneath the canopy. Its microclimate modification may provide an affordable climate adaptation strategy which needs to be explored. We carried out an on-farm experiment for three consecutive seasons in the Ethiopian Central Rift Valley with treatments of Faidherbia trees with bare soil underneath, wheat grown beneath Faidherbia and wheat grown in open fields. We tested the sensitivity of wheat yield to tree-mediated variables of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), air temperature and soil nitrogen, using APSIM-wheat model. Results showed that soil moisture in the sub-soil was the least for wheat with tree, intermediate for sole tree and the highest for open field. Presence of trees resulted in 35–55% larger available N close to tree crowns compared with sole wheat. Trees significantly reduced PAR reaching the canopy of wheat growing underneath to optimum levels. Midday air temperature was about 6 °C less under the trees than in the open fields. LAI, number of grains spike−1, plant height, total aboveground biomass and wheat grain yield were all significantly higher (P < 0.001) for wheat associated with F. albida compared with sole wheat. Model-based sensitivity analysis showed that under moderate to high rates of N, wheat yield responded positively to a decrease in temperature caused by F. albida shade. Thus, F. albida trees increase soil mineral N, wheat water use efficiency and reduce heat stress, increasing yield significantly. With heat and moisture stress likely to be more prevalent in the face of climate change, F. albida, with its impact on microclimate modification, maybe a starting point to design more resilient and climate-smart farming systems.