Household survey investigating the social impacts of biodiversity offsets in Madagascar

Biodiversity offsets can be defined as fulfilling three criteria: “(1) they provide additional substitution or replacement for unavoidable negative impacts of human activity on biodiversity, (2) they involve measurable, comparable biodiversity losses and gains, and (3) they demonstrably achieve, as a minimum, no net loss of biodiversity.” (Bull, Suttle, Gordon, Singh, & Milner-Gulland, 2013, p371). In developing countries, mining companies are implementing biodiversity offset projects to compensate the degradation caused by the extraction of minerals. Mining companies can represent an important national financial windfall and offsets are seen as counteracting any associated environmental loss. However, the implementation of such schemes faces critical challenges which need investigation. For instance, how to integrate the socioeconomic targets as a proxy for poverty alleviation into biodiversity offsets is still poorly explored and not yet properly considered by mining companies (Seagle, 2012). In this project, we analysed biodiversity offset mechanisms and their consideration of local livelihoods through one case study: Ambatovy a mining company operating in Madagascar. The main aim of the research is to determine the potential impacts of biodiversity offsets on local livelihoods through changes in the supply of locally important ecosystem services and how the outcomes for poverty alleviation can be improved

Scenarios of shifts in GEnS bioclimate strata based on CIMP5 climate change scenarios for 2050, 2000-2017

This dataset provides an alternative representation of global climate change projections based on shifts in the 125 multivariate strata of the Global Environmental Stratification (Metzger et al. 2013), which are characterised by relatively homogeneous climate. These strata form climate analogues that help in the interpretation of climate change impacts. A Random Forest classifier was calculated and applied to 63 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate scenarios at 5 arcmin resolution. The dataset summarises future environmental change for 2050 and forms a middle ground, conveniently integrating current knowledge of climate change impact with the interpretation advantages of categorical data but with a level of detail that resembles a continuous surface at global and regional scales

Household survey and discrete choice experiment for investigating the opportunity cost of conservation restrictions in eastern Madagascar

This data collection consists of primary dataset with accompanying documents for 'General Households Survey and Choice Experiment' segment of the data for work package 6 (WP6) of the ESPA (ecosystem services for poverty alleviation)-funded P4ges project (see Related resources). WP6 is concerned with the socio-economic aspects of the research undertaken within P4ges project. The survey was designed to provide background information on household composition, livelihoods and assets for use in analysis looking at the opportunity cost of conservation using discrete choice experiment and for selecting a sub-sample for more detailed follow-up surveys looking at agricultural practices, productivity and use of wild harvested products. The data was collected between June 2014 and June 2015 and comprises of 603 households

Soil hydraulic property data from the Climoor fieldsite in the Clocaenog Forest (2010 - 2012)

This dataset contains soil hydraulic measurement data from the Climoor field site in the Clocaenog forest, in North Wales. The collection contains five data sets. 1) soil bulk density (0-5 centimetre) and saturated water content. 2) Unsaturated hydraulic conductivity measured in the field at tensions of -2 and -6 centimetre using a mini disk infiltrometer. 3) Unsaturated hydraulic conductivity measured using a HYPROP (registered trademark) instrument, an instrument which determines the hydraulic properties of soil samples, on soil cores taken from the field plots. 4) Soil water release curves for wet soil corresponding to the hydraulic conductivity measurements made using a HYPROP in the laboratory on cores from the field. 5) Soil water release curve data for dry soil measured using a WP4 potentiometer. The dataset has been quality checked, and incorrect or missing values removed, data has not been infilled and not available (NA’s) have been added where there is no data. Data was collected between the end of 2010 and early 2012. Data sets 1, 3 and 4 were collected in April and September, 2011, data set 2 in May, 2012 and data set 5 in November, 2010. The Climoor field experiment intends to answer questions regarding the effects of warming and drought on ecosystem processes. The reported data were collected to monitor site specific soil properties at a specific reference time