Obstacles to local payments for ecosystem services schemes for water management at the catchment scale: a case study from Eastern Scotland

Water catchment management negotiates a complex landscape of local and expert knowledge, cultural and historical norms, property rights, and the pressures of environmental change. Various schemes have developed in recent years that aim to provide an integrated, consultative approach to environmental management, among which payment for ecosystem services (PES) has emerged as a successful example. Yet, there are certain characteristics of catchment landscapes that problematise the implementation of PES schemes for water management. This paper explores these characteristics in a case study of the Lunan water catchment area in Angus, Scotland. We report on a scientific research project to develop and implement a tilting weir system in the catchment that aims to address wetland nutrient and sediment pollution, winter flooding in the upper catchment, and summer water shortages in the lower catchment. Socio-scientific methods investigate the potential use of a PES approach to support the local management of the tilting weir system for the provision of multiple benefits at the catchment scale. Research shows evidence of conflicting levels of support between farmers and residents for both the intervention itself and the PES approach, diverse perceptions of rights and responsibilities in relation to water, and the challenges of identifying an adequate PES intermediary in the current institutional framework

Key actors in driving behavioural change in relation to on-farm biosecurity; a Northern Ireland perspective

Background: Agriculture and farming are valued contributors to local economy in Northern Ireland (NI). There is limited knowledge about farmers’ behaviours and attitudes towards disease biosecurity measures. As part of a larger project, a scenario-based workshop with key stakeholders was organised by the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI)-NI in December 2015. Results: A total of 22 participants belonging to 12 different institutions took part in the workshop. Participants were presented with an overview of previously conducted biosecurity research in NI and England. In small groups, participants were subsequently asked to discuss and give their opinions about a series of questions across four key areas in a semi-structured approach with an external facilitator. The key areas were 1- disease risk perception at the farm level; 2-perceived barriers to implementing on farm biosecurity measures; 3- avenues to successful behaviour change and 4-key industry responsibilities and roles. The discussion showed that training in biosecurity for farmers is important and necessary. Training was recommended to be provided by veterinary surgeons, preferably via a face-to-face format. The discussion addressing disease disclosure proved particularly challenging between those who were prospective buyers of cattle, and those who sold cattle. Conclusions: This workshop provided a unique and invaluable insight into key issues regarding farm level biosecurity activities. From a policy perspective, delivering improved on-farm biosecurity must be addressed via a multidisciplinary approach. This can only be achieved with active involvement, commitment and support of a number of key industry and government stakeholders

Developing and enhancing biodiversity monitoring programmes: a collaborative assessment of priorities

1.Biodiversity is changing at unprecedented rates, and it is increasingly important that these changes are quantified through monitoring programmes. Previous recommendations for developing or enhancing these programmes focus either on the end goals, that is the intended use of the data, or on how these goals are achieved, for example through volunteer involvement in citizen science, but not both. These recommendations are rarely prioritized. 2.We used a collaborative approach, involving 52 experts in biodiversity monitoring in the UK, to develop a list of attributes of relevance to any biodiversity monitoring programme and to order these attributes by their priority. We also ranked the attributes according to their importance in monitoring biodiversity in the UK. Experts involved included data users, funders, programme organizers and participants in data collection. They covered expertise in a wide range of taxa. 3.We developed a final list of 25 attributes of biodiversity monitoring schemes, ordered from the most elemental (those essential for monitoring schemes; e.g. articulate the objectives and gain sufficient participants) to the most aspirational (e.g. electronic data capture in the field, reporting change annually). This ordered list is a practical framework which can be used to support the development of monitoring programmes. 4.People's ranking of attributes revealed a difference between those who considered attributes with benefits to end users to be most important (e.g. people from governmental organizations) and those who considered attributes with greatest benefit to participants to be most important (e.g. people involved with volunteer biological recording schemes). This reveals a distinction between focussing on aims and the pragmatism in achieving those aims. 5.Synthesis and applications. The ordered list of attributes developed in this study will assist in prioritizing resources to develop biodiversity monitoring programmes (including citizen science). The potential conflict between end users of data and participants in data collection that we discovered should be addressed by involving the diversity of stakeholders at all stages of programme development. This will maximize the chance of successfully achieving the goals of biodiversity monitoring programmes

Prediction of prostate tumour hypoxia using pre-treatment MRI-derived radiomics: preliminary findings

Purpose To develop a machine learning (ML) model based on radiomic features (RF) extracted from whole prostate gland magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for prediction of tumour hypoxia pre-radiotherapy. Material and methods Consecutive patients with high-grade prostate cancer and pre-treatment MRI treated with radiotherapy between 01/12/2007 and 1/08/2013 at two cancer centres were included. Cancers were dichotomised as normoxic or hypoxic using a biopsy-based 32-gene hypoxia signature (Ragnum signature). Prostate segmentation was performed on axial T2-weighted (T2w) sequences using RayStation (v9.1). Histogram standardisation was applied prior to RF extraction. PyRadiomics (v3.0.1) was used to extract RFs for analysis. The cohort was split 80:20 into training and test sets. Six different ML classifiers for distinguishing hypoxia were trained and tuned using five different feature selection models and fivefold cross-validation with 20 repeats. The model with the highest mean validation area under the curve (AUC) receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was tested on the unseen set, and AUCs were compared via DeLong test with 95% confidence interval (CI). Results 195 patients were included with 97 (49.7%) having hypoxic tumours. The hypoxia prediction model with best performance was derived using ridge regression and had a test AUC of 0.69 (95% CI: 0.14). The test AUC for the clinical-only model was lower (0.57), but this was not statistically significant (p = 0.35). The five selected RFs included textural and wavelet-transformed features. Conclusion Whole prostate MRI-radiomics has the potential to non-invasively predict tumour hypoxia prior to radiotherapy which may be helpful for individualised treatment optimisation

Social Capital, Network Governance and Social Innovation: Towards a New Paradigm?

Limited knowledge and empirical evidence exist so far on how governance is related to social capital, and to comprehensively evaluate the effects of collaborative public-private partnerships in rural development actions, and whether these elements foster socially innovative actions. The book chapter begins to address these knowledge gaps. It highlights the conceptual framework linking social capital and network governance and identifies specific approaches to analysing governance. Moreover, it conceptually identifies the key elements for assessing governance mechanisms in the LEADER approach and explains its adoption in the evaluation method proposed in the book. The chapter concludes by outlining how social capital and governance may support social innovation, a topic which is developed more comprehensively in relation to LEADER's specific contribution in the final chapter of the same book

More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas

Global declines in insects have sparked wide interest among scientists, politicians, and the general public. Loss of insect diversity and abundance is expected to provoke cascading effects on food webs and to jeopardize ecosystem services. Our understanding of the extent and underlying causes of this decline is based on the abundance of single species or taxonomic groups only, rather than changes in insect biomass which is more relevant for ecological functioning. Here, we used a standardized protocol to measure total insect biomass using Malaise traps, deployed over 27 years in 63 nature protection areas in Germany (96 unique location-year combinations) to infer on the status and trend of local entomofauna. Our analysis estimates a seasonal decline of 76%, and mid-summer decline of 82% in flying insect biomass over the 27 years of study. We show that this decline is apparent regardless of habitat type, while changes in weather, land use, and habitat characteristics cannot explain this overall decline. This yet unrecognized loss of insect biomass must be taken into account in evaluating declines in abundance of species depending on insects as a food source, and ecosystem functioning in the European landscape

UK Dairy Farmer Survey on Production Practices and Attitudes Towards Grass-based and Indoor Systems, 2018-2019

The results of a survey about UK dairy farmers' production practices and views of grass-based and indoor systems. The survey was disseminated between August 2018 and February 2019 online through social media (twitter and facebook), farming and local press and agricultural organisations and in the form of a paper survey posted to 909 Scottish farmers. Postal addresses for Scottish farmers were obtained from the Scottish government. There were 371 responses - 254 from Scotland, 76 from England, 26 from Northern Ireland and 15 from Wales. There were 237 responses to the postal survey in Scotland (additional Scottish surveys were filled in online) and 11 surveys were returned stating that the dairy farm was no longer in business, giving a response rate of 26%. The terms ‘grass-based’ system is used to refer to systems where the cows graze for part of the year. These systems may involve year-round grazing but usually involve a period of housing the cows in winter. An indoor system means that the cows are housed all year-round and do not graze.The aim of the survey was to explore farmers' current practices and their views on the economic, animal welfare and environmental aspects of different systems.This is a social science research project exploring farmer, public and stakeholder views about indoor, pasture based and high input dairy production systems in the UK and Ireland. There are the debates about the environment, economic and animal welfare implications of pasture-based, high input and indoor dairy systems. The UK and Ireland make for a useful comparison because they face different challenges: the Irish dairy sector is grass-based but there are concerns the sector will compromise what is seen as its marketing and economic advantage by increasing yields through increasing feed inputs. The UK sector is diverse, including a proportion of year-round housed farms, which is a contentious practice among the public. This project explores values and decision making around different system to shed light on debates about the future of dairy farming.</p