Mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services. Urban ecosystems

Action 5 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 requires member states to Map and Assess the state of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES). This report provides guidance for mapping and assessment of urban ecosystems. The MAES urban pilot is a collaboration between the European Commission, the European Environment Agency, volunteering Member States and cities, and stakeholders. Its ultimate goal is to deliver a knowledge base for policy and management of urban ecosystems by analysing urban green infrastructure, condition of urban ecosystems and ecosystem services. This report presents guidance for mapping urban ecosystems and includes an indicator framework to assess the condition of urban ecosystems and urban ecosystem services. The scientific framework of mapping and assessment is designed to support in particular urban planning policy and policy on green infrastructure at urban, metropolitan and regional scales. The results are based on the following different sources of information: a literature survey of 54 scientific articles, an online-survey (on urban ecosystems, related policies and planning instruments and with participation of 42 cities), ten case studies (Portugal: Cascais, Oeiras, Lisbon; Italy: Padua, Trento, Rome; The Netherlands: Utrecht; Poland: Poznań; Spain: Barcelona; Norway: Oslo), and a two-day expert workshop. The case studies constituted the core of the MAES urban pilot. They provided real examples and applications of how mapping and assessment can be organized to support policy; on top, they provided the necessary expertise to select a set of final indicators for condition and ecosystem services. Urban ecosystems or cities are defined here as socio-ecological systems which are composed of green infrastructure and built infrastructure. Urban green infrastructure (GI) is understood in this report as the multi-functional network of urban green spaces situated within the boundary of the urban ecosystem. Urban green spaces are the structural components of urban GI. This study has shown that there is a large scope for urban ecosystem assessments. Firstly, urban policies increasingly use urban green infrastructure and nature-based solutions in their planning process. Secondly, an increasing amount of data at multiple spatial scales is becoming available to support these policies, to provide a baseline, and to compare or benchmark cities with respect to the extent and management of the urban ecosystem. Concrete examples are given on how to delineate urban ecosystems, how to choose an appropriate spatial scale, and how to map urban ecosystems based on a combination of national or European datasets (including Urban Atlas) and locally collected information (e.g., location of trees). Also examples of typologies for urban green spaces are presented. This report presents an indicator framework which is composed of indicators to assess for urban ecosystem condition and for urban ecosystem services. These are the result of a rigorous selection process and ensure consistent mapping and assessment across Europe. The MAES urban pilot will continue with work on the interface between research and policy. The framework presented in this report needs to be tested and validated across Europe, e.g. on its applicability at city scale, on how far the methodology for measuring ecosystem condition and ecosystem service delivery in urban areas can be used to assess urban green infrastructure and nature-based solutions

Una investigación sobre habilidades para el aprendizaje científico

We report on the natural sciences aspects (physics and biology) of arnore complete research on the prerequisites which university teachers expect from freshmen, and the actual capabilities of students at the end of their secondary school. This research has been done on 120 students of 15 classes in Rome (Ktaly). We have tested their ability of transposition among verbal, mathematical and graphical languages, sf reading non-elementary graphs, of utilizing empirical data. The conclusion is that at the end of their high school students are largely unprepared to cope with scientific studies, because of their low training to assume analytic attitudes and to operate in formalized manners

Una investigación sobre habilidades para el aprendizaje científico

We report on the natural sciences aspects (physics and biology) of arnore complete research on the prerequisites which university teachers expect from freshmen, and the actual capabilities of students at the end of their secondary school. This research has been done on 120 students of 15 classes in Rome (Ktaly). We have tested their ability of transposition among verbal, mathematical and graphical languages, sf reading non-elementary graphs, of utilizing empirical data. The conclusion is that at the end of their high school students are largely unprepared to cope with scientific studies, because of their low training to assume analytic attitudes and to operate in formalized manners

Spatial gradient in nitrogen deposition affects plant species frequency in acidic grasslands

Anthropogenic eutrophication impacts ecosystems worldwide. Here, we use a vegetation dataset from semi-natural grasslands on acidic soils sampled along a gradient in north-western Europe to examine the response of species frequency to nitrogen (N) deposition, controlling for the effects of other environmental variables. A second dataset of acidic grasslands from Germany and the Netherlands containing plots from different time periods was analysed to examine whether the results of the spatial gradient approach coincided with temporal changes in the abundance of species. Out of 44 studied species, 16 were affected by N deposition, 12 of them negatively. Soil pH and phosphorus (P) influenced 24 and 14 species, respectively, predominantly positively. Fewer species were related to the soil contents of NO3 − or NH4 +, with no significant differences between the number of positive and negative effects. Whereas the temporal change of species was unrelated to their responses to pH, species responding negatively to N deposition, soil P and NO3 − showed a significant decline over time in both countries. Species that were negatively affected by high N deposition and/or high soil P also showed a negative temporal trend and could be characterised by short stature and slow growth. The results confirm the negative role of N deposition for many plant species in semi-natural acidic grasslands. The negative temporal trends of species sensitive to high N deposition and soil P values clearly show a need for maintaining low soil nutrient status and for restoring the formerly infertile conditions in nutrient-enriched grasslands

Biodiversity of acid grasslands in the Atlantic regions of Europe:the impact of nitrogen deposition

Reduction in the species richness of acid grasslands along a gradient of atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition has previously been demonstrated in the UK (Stevens, Dise, Mountford, Gowing, Science 303:1876–1879, 2004). Further surveys of acid grasslands in the UK confirm this relationship. This chapter reports an examination of the relationship across the Atlantic region of Europe. Examining the cover of functional groups across this gradient reveals that forb cover is strongly reduced along the gradient of N deposition

Vanin-1(−/−) Mice Exhibit a Glutathione-Mediated Tissue Resistance to Oxidative Stress

Vanin-1 is an epithelial ectoenzyme with pantetheinase activity and generating the amino-thiol cysteamine through the metabolism of pantothenic acid (vitamin B(5)). Here we show that Vanin-1(−/−) mice, which lack cysteamine in tissues, exhibit resistance to oxidative injury induced by whole-body γ-irradiation or paraquat. This protection is correlated with reduced apoptosis and inflammation and is reversed by treating mutant animals with cystamine. The better tolerance of the Vanin-1(−/−) mice is associated with an enhanced gamma-glutamylcysteine synthetase activity in liver, probably due to the absence of cysteamine and leading to elevated stores of glutathione (GSH), the most potent cellular antioxidant. Consequently, Vanin-1(−/−) mice maintain a more reducing environment in tissue after exposure to irradiation. In normal mice, we found a stress-induced biphasic expression of Vanin-1 regulated via antioxidant response elements in its promoter region. This process should finely tune the redox environment and thus change an early inflammatory process into a late tissue repair process. We propose Vanin-1 as a key molecule to regulate the GSH-dependent response to oxidative injury in tissue at the epithelial level. Therefore, Vanin/pantetheinase inhibitors could be useful for treatment of damage due to irradiation and pro-oxidant inducers

Cross-scale analysis of the region effect on vascular plant species diversity in southern and northern European mountain ranges.

Background: The divergent glacial histories of southern and northern Europe affect present-day species diversity at coarse-grained scales in these two regions, but do these effects also penetrate to the more fine-grained scales of local communities?Methodology/Principal Findings: We carried out a cross-scale analysis to address this question for vascular plants in two mountain regions, the Alps in southern Europe and the Scandes in northern Europe, using environmentally paired vegetation plots in the two regions (n = 403 in each region) to quantify four diversity components: (i) total number of species occurring in a region (total gamma-diversity), (ii) number of species that could occur in a target plot after environmental filtering (habitat-specific gamma-diversity), (iii) pair-wise species compositional turnover between plots (plot-to-plot beta-diversity) and (iv) number of species present per plot (plot gamma-diversity). We found strong region effects on total gamma-diversity, habitat-specific gamma-diversity and plot-to-plot beta-diversity, with a greater diversity in the Alps even towards distances smaller than 50 m between plots. In contrast, there was a slightly greater plot alpha-diversity in the Scandes, but with a tendency towards contrasting region effects on high and low soil-acidity plots.Conclusions/Significance: We conclude that there are strong regional differences between coarse-grained (landscape- to regional-scale) diversity components of the flora in the Alps and the Scandes mountain ranges,but that these differences do not necessarily penetrate to the finest-grained (plot-scale) diversity component, at least not on acidic soils. Because different processes can lead to a similar pattern, we discuss the consistency of our results with Quaternary history and other divergent features between the two regions such as habitat connectivity, selection for vagility and environmental differences not accounted for in our analyse