Lifestyle, habitat and farmers' risk of exposure to tick bites in an endemic area of tick-borne diseases in Hungary

Controlling tick bites on farmers is important to the management of tick-borne diseases and occupational health risks in agriculture. Based on an extensive household survey conducted between June and August 2015 with 219 farmers from western Hungary where tick-borne diseases are endemic, we analysed the pattern of farmers' self-reported contacts with ticks and investigated the potential interactions between farmers, landscape and the risk of exposure to tick bites. We developed a lifestyle typology based on farmers' socioeconomic profiles, farming objectives and time use patterns, and a habitat typology describing different configurations of tick habitats and agricultural areas in place of farming. We found no relationship between tick exposure risk and self-prevention. The lifestyle typology could be used to classify the risk of tick bites and the adoption of prevention measures into different levels, the difference between which could further be modified by the habitat typology. Our results suggest that (i) farmers who are frequently engaged in outdoor recreations and (ii) part-time and inexperienced farmers who have lower rate of preventive actions are likely to experience greater exposure to tick bites either in less cultivated, semi-natural habitats or in agricultural landscape with highly diverse land uses. Future disease prevention practices should take into consideration the interaction of lifestyle and habitat and the need to associate different farmer groups with different landscape configurations

Understanding the relationships between ecosystem services and poverty alleviation:A conceptual framework

AbstractAs interest grows in the contribution of ecosystem services to poverty alleviation, we present a new conceptual framework, synthesizing insights from existing frameworks in social–ecological systems science and international development. People have differentiated abilities to benefit from ecosystem services, and the framework places emphasis on access to services, which may constrain the poorest more than aggregate availability. Distinctions are also made between categories of ecosystem service in their contribution to wellbeing, provisioning services and cash being comparatively easy to control. The framework gives analytical space for understanding the contribution of payments for ecosystem services to wellbeing, as distinct from direct ecosystem services. It also highlights the consumption of ecosystem services by external actors, through land appropriation or agricultural commodities. Important conceptual distinctions are made between poverty reduction and prevention, and between human response options of adaptation and mitigation in response to environmental change. The framework has applications as a thinking tool, laying out important relationships such that an analyst could identify and understand these in a particular situation. Most immediately, this has research applications, as a basis for multidisciplinary, policy-relevant research, but there are also applications to support practitioners in pursuing joint policy objectives of environmental sustainability and poverty alleviation

Applying Occam\u27s razor to global agricultural land use change

We present a parsimonious agricultural land-use model that is designed to replicate global land-use change while allowing the exploration of uncertainties in input parameters. At the global scale, the modelled uncertainty range of agricultural land-use change covers observed land-use change. Spatial patterns of cropland change at the country level are simulated less satisfactorily, but temporal trends of cropland change in large agricultural nations were replicated by the model. A variance-based global sensitivity analysis showed that uncertainties in the input parameters representing to consumption preferences are important for changes in global agricultural areas. However, uncertainties in technological change had the largest effect on cereal yields and changes in global agricultural area. Uncertainties related to technological change in developing countries were most important for modelling the extent of cropland. The performance of the model suggests that highly generalised representations of socio- economic processes can be used to replicate global land-use change

Soils and climate change. Where next

International audienc

The crop productivity - erosion relationship: an analysis based on experimental work

Much research has been undertaken that seeks to understand the crop productivity response to soil erosion. Reported effects appear to be inconsistent with respect to both the magnitude of the response and shape of the response curve. This study was conducted to examine whether general patterns emerge when the results of experimental studies on soil loss are combined and compared. Results from a number of studies that relate crop productivity to erosion were collected and quantified. Important variables of a methodological or physical nature were identified. Both the magnitude and shape of the response curves were related to these variables. It appears that the experimental methodology has an overwhelming effect on the magnitude of the crop productivity response to soil erosion. The comparative-plot method showed an average reduction in crop productivity of 4.3% per 10 cm of soil loss, whereas the reduction averaged 10.9% for studies based on the transect method and 26.6% for desurfacing experiments. Physical variables affected the shape of the response curve: water deficit and physical root hindrance produced convex curves, whereas nutrient deficit resulted in linear to concave curves. The available data did not allow identification of any significant effect of the physical variables on the magnitude of the response, nor an effect of the research-method on the shape of the response curve. It is assumed that the desurfacing and transect methods overestimate the effect of soil erosion because (a) desurfacing experiments result in much stronger changes in soil properties than soil erosion that takes place gradually, and (b) transect methods often ¿include¿ effects of other processes that are related to topography. If this assumption is correct, then yield reductions of approximately 4% per 10 cm of soil loss should be considered realistic. Where nutrient deficits are avoided by fertilization, response curves are generally convex, implying that reductions will become increasingly severe with further erosion

A conceptual framework to assess the effects of environmental change on ecosystem services

A new conceptual framework is presented for the assessment of the impacts of environmental change drivers on ecosystem service provision and the policy and management responses that would derive from the valuation of these impacts. The Framework for Ecosystem Service Provision (FESP), is based on an interpretation of the widely-used Drivers-Pressures-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework. FESP differs from the DPSIR by offering clarity in the definitions of the various DPSIR components as well as introducing novel elements of relevance to the ecosystem service approach. The value of a common framework lies in making the comparison across competing services accessible and clear as well as highlighting the conflicts and trade-offs between not only multiple ecosystem services, but also multiple service beneficiaries. The framework is explicit, for example, in recognising as state variables not only the attributes of the Ecosystem Service Providers (ESPs), but also the attributes of the Ecosystem Service Beneficiaries (ESBs). That a service depends as much on the attributes of the people whose well-being benefits from the service as on the attributes of the biology providing the service is an important step in integrated social-ecological thinking. FESP also identifies the mechanisms of either mitigation or adaptation to the environmental change problem through the effect of these response strategies on specific pressure or state variables. In this way, FESP can contribute to the policies and strategies that are used to support conservation management. This paper describes the principles of FESP and presents some indicative examples of its practical implementation. <br/