Rangeland Livelihood Strategies under Varying Climate Regimes: Model Insights from Southern Kenya

Rangelands throughout sub-Saharan Africa are currently undergoing two major pressures: climate change (through altered rainfall and seasonality patterns) and habitat fragmentation (brought by land use change driven by land demand for agriculture and conservation). Here we explore these dimensions, investigating the impact of land use change decisions, by pastoralists in southern Kenya rangelands, on human well-being and animal densities using an agent-based model. The constructed agent-based model uses input biomass data simulated by the Lund-Potsdam-Jena General Ecosystem Simulator (LPJ-GUESS) dynamic vegetation model and parameterized with data from literature. Scenarios of land use change under different rainfall years, land tenure types and levels of wildlife conservation support were simulated. Reflecting reality, our results show livestock grazing as the predominant land use that changes with precipitation and land tenure leading to varying livelihood strategies. For example, agriculture is the most common livelihood in wet years and conservation levels increase with increasing support of wildlife conservation initiatives. Our model demonstrates the complex and multiple interactions between pastoralists, land management and the environment. We highlight the importance of understanding the conditions driving the sustainability of semi-arid rangelands and the communities they support, and the role of external actors, such as wildlife conservation investors, in East Africa

Burnout and psychiatric morbidity in new medical graduates

OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity and burnout in final-year medical students, and changes in these measures during the intern year. DESIGN: Prospective longitudinal cohort study over 18 months, with assessment of psychiatric morbidity and burnout on six occasions. PARTICIPANTS: All 117 students in the first graduating cohort of the University of Sydney Graduate Medical Program were invited to participate in the study; 110 consented. OUTCOME MEASURES: Psychiatric morbidity assessed with the 28-item General Health Questionnaire and burnout assessed with the Maslach Burnout Inventory. RESULTS: The point prevalence of participants meeting criteria for psychiatric morbidity and burnout rose steadily throughout the study period. CONCLUSIONS: Internship remains a stressful time for medical graduates, despite initiatives to better support them during this period. The implications for the doctors themselves and for the communities they serve warrant further attention, including programs specifically aimed at reducing the rate of psychological morbidity and burnout during internship.NHMR

On track to achieve No Net Loss of forest at Madagascar’s biggest mine

International audienceMeeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals requires reconciling development with biodiversity conservation. Governments and lenders increasingly call for major industrial developments to offset unavoidable biodiversity loss but there are few robust evaluations of whether offset interventions ensure no net loss of biodiversity. We focus on the biodiversity offsets associated with the high-profile Ambatovy mine in Madagascar and evaluate their effectiveness at delivering no net loss of forest. As part of their efforts to mitigate biodiversity loss, Ambatovy compensate for forest clearance at the mine site by slowing deforestation driven by small-scale agriculture elsewhere. Using a range of methods, including extensive robustness checks exploring 116 alternative model specifications, we show that the offsets are on track to avert as much deforestation as was caused by the mine. This encouraging result shows that biodiversity offsetting can contribute towards mitigating environmental damage from a major industrial development, even within a weak state, but there remain important caveats with broad application. Our approach could serve as a template to facilitate other evaluations and so build a stronger evidence-base of the effectiveness of no net loss interventions

Model ensembles of ecosystem services fill global certainty and capacity gaps

UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) NE/W005050/1 NE/T00391X/1 ES/R009279/1 ES/T007877/1 ES/V004077/1 ES/R006865/1National Science Foundation (NSF) NSF - Office of the Director (OD) 08695Next Generation European Union fundsUKCEHSpanish Government DGE-213989

A comparison of cultural ecosystem service survey methods within South England

AbstractAcross all societies, humans depend on goods received from nature, termed ecosystem services. However, cultural ecosystem services (CES), the non-material benefits people obtain from ecosystems, are often overlooked in land-use decision making due to their intangible nature. This study aimed to evaluate three possible survey methods for site-based CES data collection; language-based supervised surveys (in which interviewers conduct surveys in real-time, recording verbal responses), language-based unsupervised surveys (respondents complete written surveys without an interviewer), and image-based unsupervised surveys (respondents complete surveys via image selection without an interviewer). Language-based supervised surveys were found to be more efficient in collecting CES data than language-/image-based unsupervised surveys, with a mean completion rate over 1.5-fold greater than either unsupervised survey; furthermore, survey completion was over twice as fast, and less than a sixth of the monetary cost per respondent compared to unsupervised surveys. The site-based assessment developed in this study provides robust data, and is shown to provide rapid and useful feedback to land-use decision makers. We recommend that rapid, site-based assessment methods are utilised to collect the information required to support CES-related decision making

High spatial-temporal resolution data across large scales are needed to transform our understanding of ecosystem services

Editorial for special issue. Many assessments of ecosystem services are based on maps of land cover. For example, Costanza et al. estimated the value of global ESs using economic valuations based on land cover and land use data. This method consists of matching an ecosystem type with the potential ESs that they provide. However, within the different types of land cover or land use considered, various environmental factors occurring at finer temporal or spatial scales (e.g., climatic variation) are not well captured. Thus, ES assessments are largely scale dependent, often missing important variables at both large and small scales. More in-depth studies should be encouraged to elucidate the roles of variables other than land cover

An investigation of the magnetic properties of high tensile steels

This thesis describes an investigation of the magnetic properties of high tensile steels typical of those produced for the high pressure gas pipe-line industry. Results are presented for both bulk and small section samples, and the observed variations in magnetic behaviour as a function of orientation and position within the steel are described qualitatively by changes in steel metallography. The development of an automated double-crank Vibrating Sample Magnetometer, required for determining the magnetic characteristics of small samples, is also described which, without signal amplification, has a moment detectability limit of 10(^-4) e.m.u. The representation of the full magnetization loop by a Fourier series is investigated and the variations in harmonic amplitudes found for the range of steels considered here are compared to those predicted by theoretical models. The successful parameterization of the initial magnetization curve is also reported using a two parameter model (LnB = (k – H(^-1))LnA)), and linear relationships between the coercive field (H(_c)) and these parameters (k,LnA) are presented which permit the prediction of the initial magnetization curve of any similar steel from a knowledge of H(_c). Although the latter may be determined accurately by direct measurements of small samples, further linear relationships are indicated which allow the determination of the coercive field from knowledge of either the steel chemistry or metallography. The compatibility of the observed ferrite grain size dependent contribution to the coercive field with grain boundary domain wall pinning models is also investigated

Ecosystem service responses to rewilding - first-order estimates from 27 years of rewilding in the Scottish Highlands

<p>Rewilding as a conservation strategy is gaining increasing scientific, political and public attention, yet empirical evaluations of its impacts remain scarce, especially with regards to ecosystem services. We provide evidence of the change in three ecosystem services (timber [provisioning], pollination [regulating], and aesthetics [cultural]) from up to 27 years of a moorland rewilding strategy in the Scottish Highlands using a chronosequence of rewilded plots and adjacent controls. These services were assessed in the field and using online surveys. We found that rewilding increased aboveground woody biomass and restored natural tree recruitment processes, although the latter only emerged after at least 15 years of rewilding. Rewilding caused a linear increase in perceived aesthetic quality over the first 27 years, but had no effect on pollination visitation rates. Thus, we conclude that rewilding can be used for ecosystem service recovery in moorland landscapes, but that results vary depending on the preferred service.</p><p><b>EDITED BY</b> John Haslett</p><p></p> <p><b>EDITED BY</b> John Haslett</p

The flows of nature to people, and of people to nature: applying movement concepts to ecosystem services

To date, the provision of ecosystem services has largely been estimated based on spatial patterns of land cover alone, using benefit transfer analysis. Although it is increasingly being recognised that the distribution of the human population affects whether a potential service translates into a realised service, this misses key steps in the process and assumes that everyone accesses ecosystem services in the same way. Here we describe a conceptual approach to ecosystem services in terms of movement and flows. We highlight that ecosystem service flows can be broken down into ‘nature to people’ (the movement of nature towards beneficiaries) and ‘people to nature’ (the movement of beneficiaries towards nature). The former has been relatively well described. Here, we explore the latter by reviewing research on human migration, animal foraging and landscape connectivity. We assess if and how existing theories might be useful in describing how people seek out ecosystem services. We consider some of the ways in which flows of people to nature can be measured. Such measurements may reveal which movement theories best represent how people seek out and access ecosystem services. Overall, our review aims to improve the future modelling of ecosystem services by more explicitly considering how people access potential services and therefore realise them