The role of closed ecological systems in carbon cycle modelling

Acquiring a mechanistic understanding of the role of the biotic feedbacks on the links between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperature is essential for trustworthy climate predictions. Currently, computer based simulations are the only available tool to estimate the global impact of the biotic feedbacks on future atmospheric CO2 and temperatures. Here we propose an alternative and complementary approaches by using materially closed and energetically open analogue/physical models of the carbon cycle. We argue that there is potential in using a materially closed approach to improve our understanding of the magnitude and sign of many biotic feedbacks, and that recent technological advance make this feasible. We also suggest how such systems could be designed and discuss the advantages and limitations of establishing physical models of the global carbon cycle

The importance of ecosystem services for rural inhabitants in a changing cultural landscape in Romania

Many traditional cultural landscapes evolved as coupled social-ecological systems. It is important to understand how such systems navigate novel challenges posed by globalization. To address this issue, we bring together two components of a pilot study carried out in a cultural landscape from Central Romania. The region was affected by major social and economic perturbations in the past century, affecting ethnic composition, community cohesion, land property regimes, and the management of common resources. The first component of our study investigated how rural inhabitants appreciated ecosystem services through questionnaires with 98 people in 30 villages. The second component aimed to assess the perception of people about ongoing changes in their communities through semistructured interviews with 50 people in 5 villages. Rural inhabitants particularly valued provisioning ecosystem services such as firewood, water, and crops, but also healthy soils. Rural communities were characterized by a number of social and economic issues, especially individualism, lack of trust, corruption, and poverty. People from communities with many initiatives, e.g., NGOs, associations, and active individuals, were more optimistic regarding the future of their communities than people from villages with few or no initiatives. A major challenge for cultural landscapes such as those in Central Romania is to find new, meaningful ways to keep the social and ecological systems connected. Otherwise there is a risk that (short-term) socioeconomic interests may impair the provisioning of important ecosystem services

Associations between landscape values, self-reported knowledge, and land-use: a public participation GIS assessment

While previous socio-ecological systems research has shown relationships between local knowledge and the assignment of landscape values, the relationships between value assignment and more nuanced forms of local knowledge remain less understood. This study makes use of public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS), a method for identifying and mapping landscape attributes important to local communities. We use this method to assess the spatial associations between three landscape attributes often overlooked in the PPGIS literature: landscape values, self-reported knowledge about different types of landscape management practices and land-use types. We analyzed responses from residents of Mjölby kommun, Sweden (n = 301) using Monte Carlo simulations and density-based clustering. Overall, we found stronger spatial associations between landscape values and land-use types compared with landscape values and self-reported knowledge about landscape management. For example, significant positive associations were found between aesthetic and recreation values and certain land-use types, but there was no association between these values and self-reported knowledge. The land-use type to which a landscape value is assigned is sometimes supported by self-reported knowledge (especially for underrepresented landscape values), while self-reported knowledge did not provide a conclusive pattern about value assignment on its own. We discuss the implications of using PPGIS in integrated landscape management for building multifunctionality in landscape management by addressing the values of different land-use stakeholders, and the potential benefits of increased inclusivity in forms of local knowledge.Peer reviewe

Three principles for co-designing sustainability intervention strategies : Experiences from Southern Transylvania

Transformational research frameworks provide understanding and guidance for fostering change towards sustainability. They comprise stages of system understanding, visioning and co-designing intervention strategies to foster change. Guidance and empirical examples for how to facilitate the process of co-designing intervention strategies in real-world contexts remain scarce, especially with regard to integrating local initiatives. We suggest three principles to facilitate the process of co-designing intervention strategies that integrate local initiatives: (1) Explore existing and envisioned initiatives fostering change towards the desired future; (2) Frame the intervention strategy to bridge the gap between the present state and desired future state(s), building on, strengthening and complementing existing initiatives; (3) Identify drivers, barriers and potential leverage points for how to accelerate progress towards sustainability. We illustrate our approach via a case study on sustainable development in Southern Transylvania. We conclude that our principles were useful in the case study, especially with regards to integrating initiatives, and could also be applied in other real-world contexts.Peer reviewe

Belowground interactive effects of elevated CO2, plant diversity and earthworms in grassland microcosms

The potential interactive effects of future atmospheric CO2 concentrations and plant diversity loss on the functioning of belowground systems are still poorly understood. Using a microcosm greenhouse approach with assembled grassland plant communities of different diversity (1, 4 and 8 species), we explored the interactive effects between plant species richness and elevated CO2 (ambient and + 200 p.p.m.v. CO2) on earthworms and microbial biomass. We hypothesised that the beneficial effect of increasing plant species richness on earthworm performance and microbial biomass will be modified by elevated CO2 through impacts on belowground organic matter inputs, soil water availability and nitrogen availability. We found higher earthworm biomass in eight species mixtures under elevated CO2, and higher microbial biomass under elevated CO2 in four and eight species mixtures if earthworms were present. The results suggest that plant driven changes in belowground organic matter inputs, soil water availability and nitrogen availability explain the interactive effects of CO2 and plant diversity on the belowground compartment. The interacting mechanisms by which elevated CO2 modified the impact of plant diversity on earthworms and microorganisms are discussed

Transdisciplinary research in natural resources management : Towards an integrative and transformative use of co-concepts

Transdisciplinary research often utilizes collaborative ways of knowledge production to enable deliberate transformations towards sustainability. Multiple concepts with varying definitions are applied, leading to confusion in the aims and uses of these concepts. In this article, we review five concepts relevant to the current debate on the new collaborative ways of knowledge production in transdisciplinary research. We focus on the concepts of co-creation, co-production, co-design, co-learning, and adaptive co-management in the context of natural resources management (NRM). This study couples a literature review and a conceptual analysis, and aims to clarify definitions, use, the interlinkages of these concepts and to shed light on their intertwined nature. We propose an integrative understanding of the concepts to facilitate collaborative modes and to enable the transformative aims of research processes. To this end, we discuss how to harvest the transformative potential of the "co-concepts" by focusing on reflexivity, power analysis and process orientation.Peer reviewe

Grounding IPBES experts’ views on the multiple values of nature in epistemology, knowledge and collaborative science

This study identifies and analyses the underlying assumptions of experts involved in the first author meeting (FAM) of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)’s Values Assessment, and how they shape understandings of the multiple values of nature. We draw from survey data collected from 94 experts attending the FAM. Respondents self-report the tendencies and aims they bring to the assessment (i.e. motivation), the type and amount of evidence they require for knowledge to be valid (i.e. confirmation) and their epistemic worldviews (i.e. objectivity). Four clusters emerged that correspond to Pragmatist, Post-Positivist, Constructivist and Transformative epistemic worldviews. This result clarifies how different knowledge claims are represented in science-policy processes. Despite the proportionately higher number of social scientists in the Values Assessment, compared with previous IPBES assessments, we still found that fewer experts have Constructivist or Transformative worldviews than Pragmatist or Post-Positivist outlooks, an imbalance that may influence the types of values and valuation perspectives emphasised in the assessment. We also detected a tension regarding what constitutes valid knowledge between Post-Positivists, who emphasised high levels of agreement, and Pragmatists and Constructivists, who did not necessarily consider agreement crucial. Conversely, Post-Positivists did not align with relational values and were more diverse in their views regarding definitions of multiple values of nature compared to other clusters. Pragmatists emphasized relational values, while Constructivists tended to consider all value types (including relational values) as important. We discuss the implications of our findings for future design and delivery of IPBES processes and interdisciplinary research.This study identifies and analyses the underlying assumptions of experts involved in the first author meeting (FAM) of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)'s Values Assessment, and how they shape understandings of the multiple values of nature. We draw from survey data collected from 94 experts attending the FAM. Respondents self-report the tendencies and aims they bring to the assessment (i.e. motivation), the type and amount of evidence they require for knowledge to be valid (i.e. confirmation) and their epistemic worldviews (i.e. objectivity). Four clusters emerged that correspond to Pragmatist, Post-Positivist, Constructivist and Transformative epistemic worldviews. This result clarifies how different knowledge claims are represented in science-policy processes. Despite the proportionately higher number of social scientists in the Values Assessment, compared with previous IPBES assessments, we still found that fewer experts have Constructivist or Transformative worldviews than Pragmatist or Post-Positivist outlooks, an imbalance that may influence the types of values and valuation perspectives emphasised in the assessment. We also detected a tension regarding what constitutes valid knowledge between Post-Positivists, who emphasised high levels of agreement, and Pragmatists and Constructivists, who did not necessarily consider agreement crucial. Conversely, Post-Positivists did not align with relational values and were more diverse in their views regarding definitions of multiple values of nature compared to other clusters. Pragmatists emphasized relational values, while Constructivists tended to consider all value types (including relational values) as important. We discuss the implications of our findings for future design and delivery of IPBES processes and interdisciplinary research.Peer reviewe

Circadian rhythms regulate the environmental responses of net CO2 exchange in bean and cotton canopies

Studies on the dependence of the rates of ecosystem gas exchange on environmental parameters often rely on the up-scaling of leaf-level response curves ('bottom-up' approach), and/or the down-scaling of ecosystem fluxes ('top-down' approach), where one takes advantage of the natural diurnal covariation between the parameter of interest and photosynthesis rates. Partly independent from environmental variation, molecular circadian clocks drive ∼24 h oscillations in leaf-level photosynthesis, stomatal conductance and other physiological processes in plants under controlled laboratory conditions. If present and of sufficient magnitude at ecosystem scales, circadian regulation could lead to different results when using the bottom-up approach (where circadian regulation exerts a negligible influence over fluxes because the environment is modified rapidly) relative to the top-down approach (where circadian regulation could affect fluxes as it requires the passage of a few hours). Here we dissected the drivers of diurnal net CO2 exchange in canopies of an annual herb (bean) and of a perennial shrub (cotton) through a set of experimental manipulations to test for the importance of circadian regulation of net canopy CO2 exchange, relative to that of temperature and vapor pressure deficit, and to understand whether circadian regulation could affect the derivation of environmental flux dependencies. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we observed how circadian regulation exerted controls over net CO2 exchange that were of similar magnitude to the controls exerted by direct physiological responses to temperature and vapor pressure deficit. Diurnal patterns of net CO2 exchange could only be explained by considering effects of environmental responses combined with circadian effects. Consequently, we observed significantly different results when inferring the dependence of photosynthesis over temperature and vapor pressure deficit when using the top-down and the bottom up approaches.We remain indebted to E. Gerardeau, D. Dessauw, J. Jean, P. Prudent (Aïda CIRAD), J.-J. Drevon, C. Pernot (Eco&Sol INRA), B. Buatois, A. Rocheteau (CEFE CNRS), A. Pra, A. Mokhtar and the full Ecotron team, in particular C. Escape, for outstanding technical assistance during experiment set-up, plant cultivation and measurements. Earlier versions of the manuscript benefitted from comments by M. Dietze, B. Medlyn, R. Duursma and Y.-S. Lin. This study benefited from the CNRS human and technical resources allocated to the ECOTRONS Research Infrastructures as well as from the state allocation ‘Investissement d'Avenir’ ANR-11-INBS-0001, ExpeER Transnational Access program, Ramón y Cajal fellowships (RYC-2012-10970 to VRD and RYC-2008-02050 to JPF), the Erasmus Mundus Master Course Mediterranean Forestry and Natural Resources Management (MEDfOR) and internal grants from UWS-HIE to VRD and ZALF to AG. We thank the Associate Editor T. Vesala and two anonymous reviewers for their help to improve this manuscript

The relationship between values and knowledge in visioning for landscape management : relevance for a collaborative approach

Respecting connections between the diversity of values and forms of knowledge is essential to support a decision-making that fosters relationships between ecosystems and people. However, little theory has been developed for clarifying interactions between values and knowledge, and their relevance for environmental policy. We surfaced the overlooked relationship between values and knowledge by studying individual cognitive and emotional processes during a guided visioning exercise in the context of the multifunctional landscapes of Ostergotland, Sweden. We investigated these cognitive processes using 30 semi-structured interviews and questionnaires organized around three types of relationships: vision. values, vision. knowledge, and especially values. knowledge. The analysis of the relationship between vision and values reveals that all types of values including core human values, relational, and intrinsic values are important in shaping the decision-making context in which landscape management visions arise. The relationship between vision and knowledge uncovers the mix of experiential and theoretical knowledge that informs the decisionmaking context. Interviews unfold three modalities in terms of how values and knowledge relate: i) linked and not necessarily connected (e.g. when individuals perceive a high conflict between their knowledge and their values leading to one construct silencing the other); ii) mutually reinforcing (e.g. when values and knowledge are seen as feeding into one another); and iii) intertwined (e.g. when individuals perceive that values and knowledge can co-exist). We discuss our findings in the context of their relevance for a collaborative decision-making process for balancing consensus and dissensus in multifunctional landscapes.Peer reviewe