Stimulating a Canadian narrative for climate

ABSTRACT: This perspective documents current thinking around climate actions in Canada by synthesizing scholarly proposals made by Sustainable Canada Dialogues (SCD), an informal network of scholars from all 10 provinces, and by reviewing responses from civil society representatives to the scholars' proposals. Motivated by Canada's recent history of repeatedly missing its emissions reduction targets and failing to produce a coherent plan to address climate change, SCD mobilized more than 60 scholars to identify possible pathways towards a low-carbon economy and sustainable society and invited civil society to comment on the proposed solutions. This perspective illustrates a range of Canadian ideas coming from many sectors of society and a wealth of existing inspiring initiatives. Solutions discussed include climate change governance, low-carbon transition, energy production, and consumption. This process of knowledge synthesis/creation is novel and important because it provides a working model for making connections across academic fields as well as between academia and civil society. The process produces a holistic set of insights and recommendations for climate change actions and a unique model of engagement. The different voices reported here enrich the scope of possible solutions, showing that Canada is brimming with ideas, possibilities, and the will to act

Potential for using insects to guide the search for medicinally-active chemical compounds in plants

This thesis investigates the possibility of using aposematic insects as guides to plants that contain pharmacologically-active compounds. Plants were monitored within national parks in the Republic of Panama over a period of six months and all insects feeding on them were collected and raised in captivity. The insects were then extracted and analyzed to determine how they were treating toxic chemical compounds in their host plant. Two principal plants were investigated with their associated insects: (1) Vismia baccifera and (2) Mikania guaco. One generalist and one specialist Lepidopteran species were found to sequester vismione B from their host plant Vismia baccifera, a cytotoxic compound active against three cancer cell lines. Two specialist Coleopterans were found to sequester the novel compound Guacanone, isolated by the primary author from the vine Mikania guaco and active against Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas' disease. A generalist Coleopteran was found to not sequester this compound. (Abstract shortened by UMI.

Managing ecosystem services: tools and theory for understanding the dynamics of multiple ecosystem services on a landscape

A key challenge for achieving sustainability is understanding how to manage landscapes for multiple ecosystem services, the benefits that humans obtain from ecosystems. Because the enhancement of provisioning ecosystem services, such as food and timber, often leads to declines in regulating and cultural ecosystem services, such as nutrient cycling and tourism, ecological management has often been less successful than it could be. As the demand for all types of ecosystem services increases globally, management that considers and manages ecosystem service interactions is needed to produce better outcomes for societies. This thesis develops new tools and approaches for understanding and managing the multiple ecosystem services provided by landscapes. It does this by combining a global assessment with a regional case study.I assess global trends to explore how human well-being has continued to improve while the condition of many ecosystem services has sharply degraded. This paradox is partially explained by humanity's success in engineering productive food systems and substitutions for ecosystem services, and by time lags in the global system. The analysis concludes that sustainable management of ecosystem services to enhance human well-being requires quantitative methods for analyzing interactions among ecosystem services.I develop and test an approach for analyzing interactions among multiple ecosystem services across space, using a case study of 12 ecosystem services quantified across a landscape in southern Québec. Based on this analysis, I present the first empirical demonstration of ecosystem service bundles, sets of services that appear together repeatedly across a landscape. Bundle analysis demonstrates landscape-scale trade-offs between provisioning and almost all regulating and cultural ecosystem services and that a greater diversity of ecosystem services is positively correlated with regulating ecosystem services. I find that predicting these landscape patterns requires models that integrate social, geographic and ecological drivers. Finally, a novel analysis of the effect of scale on ecosystem service assessment outcomes reveals that both the patterns and interactions of ecosystem services with more spatially clustered distributions change the most as the scale of observation changes. Scale mismatches among production, consumption and management processes of ecosystem services are identified as potential indicators of management problems.Le principal problème à résoudre pour atteindre la durabilité consiste à comprendre comment gérer les paysages en fonction de services écosytémiques multiples, représentant les bienfaits que les hommes obtiennent des écosystèmes. En raison de l'amélioration des services écosystémiques de prélèvement; tels l'alimentation et le bois d'oeuvre, menant souvent à la dégradation des services écosystémiques culturels et de régulation; tels le cycle des substances nutritives et le tourisme, la gestion écologique s'est souvent avérée moins réussie qu'elle aurait pu l'être. Comme la demande pour tout type de services écosystémiques augmente de façon globale, une gestion tenant compte des interactions entre les services écosytémiques gérant ceux-ci pour obtenir de meilleurs résultats pour les sociétés, est nécessaire. Cette thèse propose de nouveaux outils et de nouvelles approches pour la compréhension et la gestion des services écosystémiques multiples qu'offrent nos paysages, en conjuguant une évaluation globale et une étude de cas régionale.Nous avons évalué les tendances globales pour examiner comment le bien-être de l'humanité a continué de s'améliorer alors que la condition de nombreux services écosystémiques s'est brusquement dégradée. Ce paradoxe s'explique en partie par les réussites de l'humanité en matière d'applications techniques destinées aux systèmes de production alimentaire et de substitution de services écosystémiques, et aussi par le décalage de leurs impacts sur le système global. L'analyse conclut que la gestion durable des services écosystémiques pour l'amélioration du bien-être de l'humanité exige des méthodes quantitatives pour l'analyse des interactions entre les écosystèmes.Nous avons conçu et testé une approche pour analyser les interactions entre des services écosystémiques multiples dans un espace donné, utilisant une étude de cas réalisée sur 12 services écosystémiques quantifiés dans un paysage du sud du Québec. C'est sur la base de cette analyse que nous présentons la première démonstration empirique de ballots de services écosystémiques, d'une série de services apparaissant simultanément à plusieurs reprises dans le paysage. L'analyse par ballots fait la démonstration des compromis à l'échelle du paysage entre le prélèvement et presque tous les services écosystémiques culturels et de régulation. Elle démontre également qu'il existe une corrélation positive entre une plus grande diversité de services écosystémiques et des services écosystémiques de régulation. Nous avons découvert que cette prédiction nécessite des modèles intégrant des moteurs sociaux, géographiques et écologiques. Finalement, une analyse originale des effets d'échelle sur les résultats de l'évaluation des services écosystémiques révèle que les modèles et les interactions des services écosystémiques, dont la distribution dans l'espace est davantage regroupée, varient le plus lorsque l'échelle d'observation change. Les contrastes d'échelle entre la production, la consommation et les procédés de gestion des services écosytémiques sont reconnus comme autant d'indicateurs potentiels pour les problèmes de gestion

Our Future (Executive Summary-ENG)

Tahapkuat Kitikmeot tagiumi tagiuqnilu uumayut atuqpiaqtut nunaliuyunut tahamani nunaliit avikhimaniani piplugit ikayuqni aaniaqtailiniqmun inuuhugikniqmutlu amihunut pityuhiqnut. Iqalukhiurniq Ukiurtaqtumi iqalukpiknik angunahuarniqlu tagiuqni mitquliknik atuqpiaqtut pitaqvi aaniaqtailiniqmun tagiuqni niqikhanik. Iqalukhiurniq angunahuarniqlu piqagutauyut havakhanik maniktanutlu, taimatut atugauyunik talvani Ikaluktutiak maniliugutit iqalukhiurniq, tamna anginiqpaq Nunavutmi. Ukiungani, aularniq tagiup hikuagut tahamani Kitikmeot tagiungani pipkaiyut tikilaqninik angunahuaqviuyut ahiinutlu nunaliuyut. Nunalikni inuit aliagiyat tahamna Kitikmeot Tagiunga pihukvigiyami hinaagut qayartuqviunialu. Tamaita tahapkuat tagiuqni-tugangayut huliniit pivaluqtitat ilitquhiq, inuliqutit inuuhit, hunaunit, pitquhiitlu. Taimaittumik, ahianguqni tahaphuma Kitikmeot Tagiunga tagiuqnilu uumayut pityutauniaq atuqpiaqtunik qanugityutauni nunaliknut aaniaqtailini inuuhigiknitlu. [...

Ecosystems and human well-being: multiscale assessments: findings of the Sub-global Assessments Working Group of the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment

One of the major innovations of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is the incorporation of local and regional assessmentsù33 in allùin a global portrait of the planetÆs health. It is the first global assessment of ecosystems to include not only a diversity of ecosystems, but to draw on a wide range of cultural orientations and intellectual traditions, including those of indigenous peoples. The Sub-global Assessments Working Group integrated information from multiple sources and found that biophysical factors such as land-use change, climate change and variability, pollution, and invasive species have a significant effect on human well-being across cultures. For example, in places where there are no other social safety nets, diminished human well-being tends to increase immediate dependence on ecosystem services, which can damage the capacity of those local ecosystems, which in turn appears to increase the probability of natural disaster or conflict. Representing the baseline and framework for ongoing assessments of ecosystem and human well-being on a variety of scales around the world, Multiscale Assessments provides students, researchers, and policy-makers with the most comprehensive methodology for assessing ecosystems at local, national, and regional scales

Ecosystem Services: A Guide for Decision Makers

Offers an approach to decision-making that reconciles conservation with development goals through multiple-use ecosystem management, ecosystem restoration, and conservation planning. Details steps for assessing risks, priorities, conditions, and costs