Valuing ecosystem resilience

The concept of ecosystem resilience is being increasingly discussed as a driver of biodiversity values. It implies that marginal deteriorations in ecosystem conditions can abruptly result in non-marginal and irreversible changes in ecosystem functioning and the economic values that the ecosystem generates. This challenges the traditional approach to the valuation of biodiversity, which has focused on quantifying values attached to individual species or other elements of ecosystems. As yet, little is known about the value society attaches to changes in ecosystem resilience. This paper investigates this value. A discrete choice experiment is used to estimate implicit prices for attributes used to describe ecosystem resilience using the Border Ranges rainforests in Australia as an example. We find evidence that implicit prices for the attributes describing ecosystem resilience are positive and statistically significantly different from zero.ecosystem resilience, discrete choice experiments, implicit prices, willingness to pay space, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Globalization, Local Ecosystems, and the Rural Poor

poverty, globalization, environment, ecosystem resilience, institutions, traditional knowledge

The economic insurance value of ecosystem resilience

Ecosystem resilience, i.e. an ecosystem’s ability to maintain its basic functions and controls under disturbances, is often interpreted as insurance: by decreasing the probability of future drops in the provision of ecosystem services, resilience insures risk-averse ecosystem users against potential welfare losses. Using a general and stringent definition of “insurance” and a simple ecological-economic model, we derive the economic insurance value of ecosystem resilience and study how it depends on ecosystem properties, economic context, and the ecosystem user’s risk preferences. We show that (i) the insurance value of resilience is negative (positive) for low (high) levels of resilience, (ii) it increases with the level of resilience, and (iii) it is one additive component of the total economic value of resilience.ecosystem, economic value, insurance, resilience, risk, risk preferences

Extending Tlusty's method to the glycome: Tuning the repertoire of glycan determinants

We apply Tlusty's information-theoretic analysis of the genetic code to the glycome, using a cognitive paradigm in which external information sources constrain and tune the glycan code error network, in the context of available metabolic energy. The resulting dynamic model suggests the possibility of observing spontaneous symmetry breaking of the glycan code as a function of metabolic energy intensity. These effects may be currently present, or embedded in evolutionary trajectory, recording large-scale ecosystem resilience shifts in energy availability such as the aerobic transition

Roman roads: The hierarchical endosymbiosis of cognitive modules

Serial endosymbiosis theory provides a unifying paradigm for examining the interaction of cognitive modules at vastly different scales of biological, social, and cultural organization. A trivial but not unimportant model associates a dual information source with a broad class of cognitive processes, and punctuated phenomena akin to phase transitions in physical systems, and associated coevolutionary processes, emerge as consequences of the homology between information source uncertainty and free energy density. The dynamics, including patterns of punctuation similar to ecosystem resilience transitions, are large dominated by the availability of 'Roman roads' constituting channels for the transmission of information between modules

Lady Elliot Island ecosystem resilience plan

[Extract] The Lady Elliot Island Ecosystem Resilience Plan is a two-phased action plan to increase the resilience of the terrestrial ecosystems of Lady Elliot Island (LEI) to the adverse impacts of climate change and other ecosystem stressors. Increasing resilience to climate change is best achieved by enhancing the integrity and natural ecosystem function by restoring the native cay vegetation communities, while balancing the ongoing needs of the LEI Eco Resort

Using remote sensing to assess ecosystem resilience

Vegetation ecosystems are increasingly under pressure from both direct human influence and indirect anthropogenically-driven climate change. Increasing amounts of data are made available from satellite systems which can image these ecosystems from afar. The work in this thesis provides several examples of the utility of remotely sensed data from satellites to assess the resilience of ecosystems. This notion of resilience is measured by considering the return rate following a perturbation, with statistical metrics such as AR(1) and variance providing an indication of system resilience and the proximity to a potential tipping point. The first focus of this work is on direct human environmental intervention through community-based agroforestry groups in Kenya. These results show that the efforts of these groups can be detected with satellite data as a greening trend which occurs both within designated tree planting groves and in the surrounding landscape. These groups provide a case study for the power of positive social tipping points to achieve environmental improvement. Following this, the potential of high-resolution satellite data from Sentinel-2 to quantify patterned vegetation in the Sahel is explored. These striking patterns have often been associated with vegetation resilience in drylands. No correlation is found between pattern morphology and resilience, contrary to a previously held hypothesis from the literature. Precipitation is also identified as a key driver of these patterns. Moving beyond drylands, satellite data is utilised at a global scale to assess the link between vegetation resilience and climatic variables across the world. There is a clear relationship between average resilience, as measured by AR(1), and precipitation, which is evident at three spatial scales; the local (pixel), ecoregion and biome. There is also a temperature component, with hotter, drier locations displaying lower levels of resilience. This thesis finishes with a discussion of the potential for a resilience sensing framework constructed by combining remote sensing data with new cloud computing technologies. This will enable the monitoring of resilience change across the world and the identification of regions which require further investigation and intervention.Leverhulme Trus

Organism-sediment interactions govern post-hypoxia recovery of ecosystem functioning

Hypoxia represents one of the major causes of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning loss for coastal waters. Since eutrophication-induced hypoxic events are becoming increasingly frequent and intense, understanding the response of ecosystems to hypoxia is of primary importance to understand and predict the stability of ecosystem functioning. Such ecological stability may greatly depend on the recovery patterns of communities and the return time of the system properties associated to these patterns. Here, we have examined how the reassembly of a benthic community contributed to the recovery of ecosystem functioning following experimentally-induced hypoxia in a tidal flat. We demonstrate that organism-sediment interactions that depend on organism size and relate to mobility traits and sediment reworking capacities are generally more important than recovering species richness to set the return time of the measured sediment processes and properties. Specifically, increasing macrofauna bioturbation potential during community reassembly significantly contributed to the recovery of sediment processes and properties such as denitrification, bedload sediment transport, primary production and deep pore water ammonium concentration. Such bioturbation potential was due to the replacement of the small-sized organisms that recolonised at early stages by large-sized bioturbating organisms, which had a disproportionately stronger influence on sediment. This study suggests that the complete recovery of organism-sediment interactions is a necessary condition for ecosystem functioning recovery, and that such process requires long periods after disturbance due to the slow growth of juveniles into adult stages involved in these interactions. Consequently, repeated episodes of disturbance at intervals smaller than the time needed for the system to fully recover organism-sediment interactions may greatly impair the resilience of ecosystem functioning.