Climate-ready conservation objectives: a scoping study

AbstractAnticipated future climate change is very likely to have a wide range of different types of ecological impact on biodiversity across the whole of Australia. There is a high degree of confidence that these changes will be significant, affecting almost all species, ecosystems and landscapes. However, because of the complexity of ecological systems and the multiple ways climate change will affect them, the details of the future change are less certain for any given species or location. The nature of the changes means that the multiple ways biodiversity is experienced, used and valued by society will be affected in different ways. The likely changes present a significant challenge to any societal aspiration to preserve biodiversity in its current state, for example, to maintain a species in its current abundance and distribution. Preserving biodiversity ‘as is’ may have been feasible in a stationary climate (one that is variable but not changing), but this will not be possible with the widespread, pervasive and large ecological changes anticipated under significant levels of climate change. This makes the impacts of climate change quite unlike other threats to biodiversity, and they challenge, fundamentally, what it actually means to conserve biodiversity under climate change: what should the objectives of biodiversity conservation be under climate change? And what are the barriers to recalibrating conservation objectives?Based on key insights from the scientific literature on climate change and biodiversity, the project developed three adaptation propositions about managing biodiversity:Conservation strategies accommodate large amounts of ecological change and the likelihood of significant climate change–induced loss in biodiversity. Strategies remain relevant and feasible under a range of possible future trajectories of ecological change.Strategies seek to conserve the multiple different dimensions of biodiversity that are experienced and valued by society. Together these propositions summarise the challenge of future climate change for biodiversity conservation, and define a new way of framing conservation we called the ‘climate ready’ approach. In the near term, conservation strategies may be able to include some consideration of these propositions. However, under significant levels of climate change many of the current approaches to conservation will become increasingly difficult and ineffective (e.g. maintaining community types in their current locations). This challenge is fundamentally different from that posed by other threats to biodiversity, and the climate-ready approach is akin to a paradigm shift in conservation.The project used a review of 26 conservation strategy documents (spanning scales from international to local) and four case studies with conservation agencies to test and refine the climate-ready approach. The project found the approach to be robust and highly relevant; in the majority of situations, if adopted, it would lead to significant changes in the objectives and priorities of conservation. There were also many ‘green shoots’ of elements of the new approach in existing conservation practice. However, the project found there are currently substantial barriers to fully adopting a climate-ready approach. These include the need for: further development of ecological characterisation of ecosystem health and human activities in landscapesmuch better understanding of how society values different aspects of biodiversity, including ecosystems and landscapesdevelopment of policy tools to codify and implement new ecologically robust and socially endorsed objectives.  Anticipated future climate change is very likely to have a wide range of different types of ecological impact on biodiversity across the whole of Australia. There is a high degree of confidence that these changes will be significant, affecting almost all species, ecosystems and landscapes. However, because of the complexity of ecological systems and the multiple ways climate change will affect them, the details of the future change are less certain for any given species or location. The nature of the changes means that the multiple ways biodiversity is experienced, used and valued by society will be affected in different ways. The likely changes present a significant challenge to any societal aspiration to preserve biodiversity in its current state, for example, to maintain a species in its current abundance and distribution. Preserving biodiversity ‘as is’ may have been feasible in a stationary climate (one that is variable but not changing), but this will not be possible with the widespread, pervasive and large ecological changes anticipated under significant levels of climate change. This makes the impacts of climate change quite unlike other threats to biodiversity, and they challenge, fundamentally, what it actually means to conserve biodiversity under climate change: what should the objectives of biodiversity conservation be under climate change? And what are the barriers to recalibrating conservation objectives?Based on key insights from the scientific literature on climate change and biodiversity, the project developed three adaptation propositions about managing biodiversity:Conservation strategies accommodate large amounts of ecological change and the likelihood of significant climate change–induced loss in biodiversity. Strategies remain relevant and feasible under a range of possible future trajectories of ecological change.Strategies seek to conserve the multiple different dimensions of biodiversity that are experienced and valued by society. Together these propositions summarise the challenge of future climate change for biodiversity conservation, and define a new way of framing conservation we called the ‘climate ready’ approach. In the near term, conservation strategies may be able to include some consideration of these propositions. However, under significant levels of climate change many of the current approaches to conservation will become increasingly difficult and ineffective (e.g. maintaining community types in their current locations). This challenge is fundamentally different from that posed by other threats to biodiversity, and the climate-ready approach is akin to a paradigm shift in conservation.The project used a review of 26 conservation strategy documents (spanning scales from international to local) and four case studies with conservation agencies to test and refine the climate-ready approach. The project found the approach to be robust and highly relevant; in the majority of situations, if adopted, it would lead to significant changes in the objectives and priorities of conservation. There were also many ‘green shoots’ of elements of the new approach in existing conservation practice. However, the project found there are currently substantial barriers to fully adopting a climate-ready approach. These include the need for: further development of ecological characterisation of ecosystem health and human activities in landscapesmuch better understanding of how society values different aspects of biodiversity, including ecosystems and landscapesdevelopment of policy tools to codify and implement new ecologically robust and socially endorsed objectives. Please cite this report as: Dunlop M, Parris, H, Ryan, P, Kroon, F 2013 Climate-ready conservation objectives: a scoping study, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Gold Coast, pp. 102

An Intimate Revolution: Fascism, Sexuality and Kommune I in 1960s West Germany

Subversive voices within the German New Left developed a discourse which linked the rise of fascism in Germany with repressed sexuality. In response, a group of Berlin students founded a commune in 1967, attempting to liberate sexuality and revolutionise relationships. Kommune I’s provocative antiauthoritarianism led to infamy and derision from mainstream Germany, and the commune ended in political failure. While the historiography has refused to see the commune as a serious political project, this thesis argues that Kommune I warrants a more considered examination as a moral and political response to the Nazi past. Drawing on intellectual, social, and cultural history, it explores the power and limitations of this discourse in post-war Germany society

An Intimate Revolution: Fascism, Sexuality and Kommune I in 1960s West Germany

Subversive voices within the German New Left developed a discourse which linked the rise of fascism in Germany with repressed sexuality. In response, a group of Berlin students founded a commune in 1967, attempting to liberate sexuality and revolutionise relationships. Kommune I’s provocative antiauthoritarianism led to infamy and derision from mainstream Germany, and the commune ended in political failure. While the historiography has refused to see the commune as a serious political project, this thesis argues that Kommune I warrants a more considered examination as a moral and political response to the Nazi past. Drawing on intellectual, social, and cultural history, it explores the power and limitations of this discourse in post-war Germany society

English Identity in the Writings of John Milton

John Milton is an essential writer to the English canon. Understanding his life and thought is necessary to understanding his corpus. This thesis will examine Milton’s nationalism in several major and minor poems as well as in some of Milton’s prose. It will argue that Milton’s nationalism is difficult to trace chronologically, but that education is always essential to Milton’s national vision of England

A Hot Microflare Observed With RHESSI and Hinode

RHESSI and Hinode observations of a GOES B-class flare are combined to investigate the origin of 15 MK plasma. The absence of any detectable hard X-ray emission coupled with weak blueshifted emission lines (indicating upward velocities averaging only 14 km/s) suggests that this was a result of direct heating in the corona, as opposed to nonthermal electron precipitation causing chromospheric evaporation. These findings are in agreement with a recent hydrodynamical simulation of microflare plasmas which found that higher temperatures can be attained when less energy is used to accelerate electrons out of the thermal distribution. In addition, unusual redshifts in the 2 MK Fe XV line (indicating downward velocities of 14 km/s) were observed cospatial with one of the flare ribbons during the event. Downflows of such high temperature plasma are not predicted by any common flare model.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, ApJL (Accepted

Quantitatively Assessed Blood Loss Compared to Visually Estimated Blood Loss in the Early Identification and Treatment of Post-partum Hemorrhage

Nearly one-quarter of all maternal pregnancy-related deaths worldwide are a result of post-partum hemorrhage (PPH) [1]. In the Joint Commission’s Sentinel Event Database, hemorrhage was a causal factor in over half of the cases leading to maternal death or severe morbidity [3]. Between 1993 and 2014, the rate of PPH per 10,000 delivery hospitalizations increased by almost five times, from 4.3 to 21.2 [3]. Using visualization to estimate blood loss is currently the primary method for assessment. However, a new, alternative assessment technique is using quantitative measurement. These two techniques were compared through a literature review. The literature review was conducted using MEDLINE Complete and CINAHL Complete, and five studies were identified. These studies were appraised and synthesized to answer the PICO question: in post-partum mothers, is the use of quantitative blood loss assessment or visually estimated blood loss effective in the early identification of PPH? The literature indicated that using a quantitative method to estimate postpartum blood loss early is more effective than using a visual estimation method and may reduce the number of PPHs. These findings can be implemented into nursing practice by incorporating a quantitative blood loss assessment protocol for post-partum mothers. Annual simulation-based training on this new method may be an appropriate means of educating point-of-care healthcare providers. With these changes, health care facilities should collect morbidity and mortality rates, incidence rates, treatment rates, and the time-to-treat rate to measure the effectiveness of the quantitative blood loss method