Multifaceted value profiles of forest owner categories in South Sweden: The river helge å catchment as a case study

Forest landscapes provide benefits from a wide range of goods, function and intangible values. But what are different forest owner categories\u27 profiles of economic use and non-use values? This study focuses on the complex forest ownership pattern of the River Helge å catchment including the Kristianstad Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve in southern Sweden. We made 89 telephone interviews with informants representing the four main forest owner categories. Our mapping included consumptive and non-consumptive direct use values, indirect use values, and non-use values such as natural and cultural heritage. While the value profiles of non-industrial forest land owners and municipalities included all value categories, the forest companies focused on wood production, and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency on nature protection. We discuss the challenges of communicating different forest owners\u27 economic value profiles among stakeholders, the need for a broader suite of forest management systems, and fora for collaborative planning. © 2013 The Author(s)

Purposes and degrees of commodification: Economic instruments for biodiversity and ecosystem services need not rely on markets or monetary valuation

Commodification of nature refers to the expansion of market trade to previously non-marketed spheres. This is a contested issue both in the scientific literature and in policy deliberations. The aim of this paper is to analytically clarify and distinguish between different purposes and degrees of commodification and to focus attention to the safeguards: the detailed institutional design. We identify six degrees of commodification and find that all ecosystem services policies are associated with some degree of commodification but only the two highest degrees can properly be associated with neoliberalisation of nature. For example, most payments for ecosystem services (PES) are subsidy-like government compensations not based on monetary valuation of nature. Biodiversity offsets can be designed as market schemes or non-market regulations; the cost-effectiveness of markets cannot be assumed. To avoid the confusion around the concept ‘market-based instrument’ we suggest replacing it with ‘economic instruments’ since relying on the price signal is not the same thing as relying on the market. We provide a comprehensive framework emphasising the diversity in institutional design, valuation approaches and role of markets. This provides flexibility and options for policy integration of biodiversity and ecosystem services in different countries according to their political and cultural context

Purposes and degrees of commodification: Economic instruments for biodiversity and ecosystem services need not rely on markets or monetary valuation

Commodification of nature refers to the expansion of market trade to previously non-marketed spheres. This is a contested issue both in the scientific literature and in policy deliberations. The aim of this paper is to analytically clarify and distinguish between different purposes and degrees of commodification and to focus attention to the safeguards: the detailed institutional design. We identify six degrees of commodification and find that all ecosystem services policies are associated with some degree of commodification but only the two highest degrees can properly be associated with neoliberalisation of nature. For example, most payments for ecosystem services (PES) are subsidy-like government compensations not based on monetary valuation of nature. Biodiversity offsets can be designed as market schemes or non-market regulations; the cost-effectiveness of markets cannot be assumed. To avoid the confusion around the concept ‘market-based instrument’ we suggest replacing it with ‘economic instruments’ since relying on the price signal is not the same thing as relying on the market. We provide a comprehensive framework emphasising the diversity in institutional design, valuation approaches and role of markets. This provides flexibility and options for policy integration of biodiversity and ecosystem services in different countries according to their political and cultural context

Field preference of Greylag geese Anser anser during the breeding season

Few studies address food preference of geese on agricultural land (utilization related to availability) and only a handful so for the breeding season. We studied Greylag geese Anser anser during the breeding season in an intensively farmed area in southern Sweden. Few of 22 available field types were truly preferred. Pastureland was the most consistently preferred, by goslings (with parents) as well as by nonbreeders. In some sampling periods, goslings also preferred grazed hay, ley, and carrot fields. Non-breeders exploited a greater variety of crops/fields, feeding also on barley, fallow, grazed hay, lettuce, oats, potatoes, and carrots. Most of these crops were preferred on at least one sampling occasion, except for fallow, grazed hay, and wheat, which were always used less than expected from availability. GLMs revealed that goslings rested more than they fed and preferred shorter vegetation before higher. Moreover, goslings occurred in higher densities in younger age classes than in older and preferred nearshore areas. In contrast, density of non-breeders was only related to field type and sampling occasion (higher densities as the season progressed). The maximum number of broods observed (106) implies a breeding success of 34% based on311 active nests earlier in the season. Brood size decreased from 3.5 to 2.1 during the study period. Our study shows that goose management during the breeding season should consider goslings and their parents separately from non-breeders, and it implies little potential conflict between Greylag geese and agriculture during the breeding period

Dissolved organic carbon in streams within a subarctic catchment analysed using a GIS/remote sensing approach

Climate change projections show that temperature and precipitation increases can alter the exchange of greenhouse gases between the atmosphere and high latitude landscapes, including their freshwaters. Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) plays an important role in greenhouse gas emissions, but the impact of catchment productivity on DOC release to subarctic waters remains poorly known, especially at regional scales. We test the hypothesis that increased terrestrial productivity, as indicated by the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), generates higher stream DOC concentrations in the Stordalen catchment in subarctic Sweden. Furthermore, we aimed to determine the degree to which other generic catchment properties (elevation, slope) explain DOC concentration, and whether or not land cover variables representing the local vegetation type (e.g., mire, forest) need to be included to obtain adequate predictive models for DOC delivered into rivers. We show that the land cover type, especially the proportion of mire, played a dominant role in the catchment's release of DOC, while NDVI, slope, and elevation were supporting predictor variables. The NDVI as a single predictor showed weak and inconsistent relationships to DOC concentrations in recipient waters, yet NDVI was a significant positive regulator of DOC in multiple regression models that included land cover variables. Our study illustrates that vegetation type exerts primary control in DOC regulation in Stordalen, while productivity (NDVI) is of secondary importance. Thus, predictive multiple linear regression models for DOC can be utilized combining these different types of explanatory variables