Peer-reviewed publications

Sustaining the Last Rivers: The renewable revolution could keep dams off the world’s remaining free-flowing rivers.

This study analyzes the five primary ecosystem services and their trade-offs and synergies associated with future scenarios of oil palm plantations in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Three plausible future scenarios were assessed: 1) business as usual, 2) conservation and, 3) sustainable intensification, based on current land-use policy and spatial planning and projected oil palm expansion. The spatial analysis tool in ArcGIS and the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs Tool (InVEST Tool) were used to analyze historical and future land-use change, valuation and trade-offs of ecosystem services. The sustainable intensification scenario generates a positive impact on carbon storages and water yield, although habitat quality nominally declines. In terms of total economic value of ecosystem services, the conservation scenario generates the highest value of ecosystem services, while the sustainable intensification scenario offers a compromise solution for future expansion of oil palm by ensuring the supply of ecosystem services comparable to conservation scenario but without significantly affecting palm oil yield in comparison to the business-as-usual scenario. A detailed study with better information on the economic values of ecosystem services can provide a better understanding of the social and environmental impacts of oil palm expansion.

Without drastic efforts to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate globalized stressors, tropical coral reefs are in jeopardy. Strategic conservation and management requires identification of the environmental and socioeconomic factors driving the persistence of scleractinian coral assemblages—the foundation species of coral reef ecosystems. Here, we compiled coral abundance data from 2,584 Indo-Pacific reefs to evaluate the influence of 21 climate, social and environmental drivers on the ecology of reef coral assemblages. Higher abundances of framework-building corals were typically associated with: weaker thermal disturbances and longer intervals for potential recovery; slower human population growth; reduced access by human settlements and markets; and less nearby agriculture. We therefore propose a framework of three management strategies (protect, recover or transform) by considering: (1) if reefs were above or below a proposed threshold of >10% cover of the coral taxa important for structural complexity and carbonate production; and (2) reef exposure to severe thermal stress during the 2014–2017 global coral bleaching event. Our findings can guide urgent management efforts for coral reefs, by identifying key threats across multiple scales and strategic policy priorities that might sustain a network of functioning reefs in the Indo-Pacific to avoid ecosystem collapse.

Water-management infrastructure, such as dams, diversions, and levees, provides important benefits to society, including energy, flood management, and water supply, but this infrastructure is a primary cause of the decline of freshwater ecosystems and the services they provide. Due to these declines, recent attention has focused on improving the environmental performance of water infrastructure, such as modifying the location, design, or operation of infrastructure to maintain or restore environmental flows. Despite growing attention to the importance of environmental flows, and continued advancement in flow assessment methods, implementation of flow protection or restoration has lagged expectations. In this paper we describe how pursuing environmental flows at the scale of infrastructure systems, rather than individual sites, such as a dam, offers two pathways to increased implementation of environmental flows. First, policy and management mechanisms that apply to large areas–river basins or political jurisdictions–can catalyze large-scale implementation of flow protection or restoration. We provide two examples of system-scale policy and management mechanisms: flow protection policies and system-scale hydropower planning and management. Although system-scale policy and management offer a clear path to large-scale implementation, there will continue to be a need for flow implementation that occurs at smaller scales, such as a high priority river reach. The second pathway focuses on implementation at that scale–such as environmental flow releases from a dam or small set of dams–but embeds dam reoperation or site-scale flow implementation within reoperation of the larger systems of resource management within which the dam or ecosystem is located. These systems of resource management can encompass various sectors and here we provide examples of dam reoperation or flow implementation facilitated by solutions that included changes to the management of (1) water supply systems; (2) floodplains; and (3) irrigation systems. We illustrate both of these system-scale pathways through a set of case studies, drawn primarily from North America, each of which includes an example of current implementation.

Biodiversity conservation interventions often aim to benefit both nature and people; however, the social impacts of these interventions remain poorly understood. We reviewed recent literature on the social impacts of four marine conservation interventions to understand the synergies, tradeoffs, and equity (STE) of these impacts, focusing on the direction, magnitude, and distribution of impacts across domains of human wellbeing and across spatial, temporal, and social scales. STE literature has increased dramatically since 2000, particularly for marine protected areas (MPAs), but remains limited. Few studies use rigorous counterfactual study designs, and significant research gaps remain regarding specific wellbeing domains (culture, education), social groups (gender, age, ethnic groups), and impacts over time. Practitioners and researchers should recognize the role of shifting property rights, power asymmetries, individual capabilities, and resource dependency in shaping STE in conservation outcomes, and utilize multi-consequential frameworks to support the wellbeing of vulnerable and marginalized groups.

Camera traps have existed since the 1890s (Kucera and Barrett 2011), but they weren't widely used until the introduction of commercial infrared-triggered cameras in the early 1990s (Meek et al. 2014). Since then, millions, perhaps billions of camera trap images have been collected for many reasons, biodiversity monitoring being one of the key applications. Unfortunately, although there are camera trap deployments all over the world, these operations occur in isolation, limiting the impact they could have on a global understanding of biodiversity health. Even within individual institutions, managing and analyzing multiple camera trap deployments in aggregate can be challenging. In fact, managing a single deployment of camera traps is non-trivial and important data are frequently cast aside as bycatch, left unanalyzed on decaying hard drives. Wildlife Insights attempts to overcome these hurdles by providing camera trap data upload, management, and analysis services. It provides the world's largest database of camera trap images by bringing together the camera trapping efforts of several the world’s largest conservation and research organizations, and it is open to future contributors. Artificial Intelligence-driven services sit at the heart of the platform. New camera trap data uploads are automatically analyzed to differentiate between images with people, non-human animals, and no animals. The images with non-human animals are further analyzed to detect specific species. The proposed labels are sent back to the submitter for review and then uploaded to the database. All uploaded images, unless specifically embargoed, are immediately available for analysis by all users of the system. A selection of tools are provided to support analyses of global biodiversity. This presentation will describe Wildlife Insights and its AI implementation in detail, contextualized by case studies using analyses of the data currently stored on the platform. Challenges around integrating camera trap data within the platform and with other external services that work with the platform will also be discussed. The talk will end with some thoughts about future directions for the AI services, especially with regards to integration with related platforms.

Studying scleractinian coral bleaching and recovery dynamics in remote, isolated reef systems offers an opportunity to examine impacts of global reef stressors in the absence of local human threats. Reefs in the Chagos Archipelago, central Indian Ocean, suffered severe bleaching and mortality in 2015 following a 7.5 maximum degree heating weeks (DHWs) thermal anomaly, causing a 60% coral cover decrease from 30% cover in 2012 to 12% in April 2016. Mortality was taxon specific, with Porites becoming the dominant coral genus post-bleaching because of an 86% decline in Acropora from 14 to 2% cover. Spatial heterogeneity in Acropora mortality across the Archipelago was significantly negatively correlated with variation in DHWs and with chlorophyll-a concentrations. In 2016, a 17.6 maximum DHWs thermal anomaly caused further damage, with 68% of remaining corals bleaching in May 2016, and coral cover further declining by 29% at Peros Banhos Atoll (northern Chagos Archipelago) from 14% in March 2016 to 10% in April 2017. We therefore document back-to-back coral bleaching and mortality events for two successive years in the remote central Indian Ocean. Our results indicate lower coral mortality in 2016 than 2015 despite a more severe thermal anomaly event in 2016. This could be caused by increased thermal resistance and resilience within corals surviving the 2015 thermal anomaly; however, high bleaching prevalence in 2016 suggests there remained a high sensitivity to bleaching. Similar coral mortality and community change were seen in the Chagos Archipelago following the 1998 global bleaching event, from which recovery took 10 yr. This relatively rapid recovery suggests high reef resiliency and indicates that the Archipelago’s lack of local disturbances will increase the probability that the reefs will again recover over time. However, as the return time between thermal anomaly events becomes shorter, this ability to recover will become increasingly compromised.

Coral reefs are biodiverse and productive ecosystems but are threatened by local and global stresses. The resulting loss of coral reefs is threatening coastal food and livelihoods. Climate projections suggest that coral reefs will continue to undergo major changes even if the goals of the Paris Agreement (Dec 2015) are successfully implemented. Ecological changes include modified food webs, shifts in community structure, reduced habitat complexity, decreased fecundity and recruitment, changes to fisheries productivity/opportunity, and a shift in the carbonate budget of some ecosystems toward dissolution and erosion of calcium carbonate stocks. Broad estimates of the long-term (present value) of services provided by the ocean's ecological assets exist and are useful in highlighting the value of reefs yet must be contextualised by how people respond under ecosystem change. The dynamic nature of the relationship between people, economies, and the environment complicates estimation of human consequences and economic outcomes of changing environmental and ecological capital. Challenges have increased given lack of baseline data and our inability to predict (with any precision) how people respond to changing coral reef conditions, especially given the variability, flexibility, and creativity shown by human communities and economies under change. Here, we explore how the changes to the three-dimensional structure of coral reefs affect benefits for people, specifically coastal protection, fisheries habitat, and tourism. Based on a review of available data and literature, we make a series of key recommendations that are required to better understanding of how global change will affect people dependent on coral reefs. These include: (1) baseline studies and frameworks for understanding human responses to climate change within complex social and ecological setting such as coral reefs, (2) better tools for exploring environmental benefits, markets, and financial systems faced by change, and (3) the integration of these insights into more effective policy making.

Enhancing smallholder compliance with sustainability standards and good agricultural practices features prominently on the global sustainability agenda. Operating in a sector that bears intense public scrutiny, Indonesia's oil palm smallholders are especially confronted by pressures to enhance their environmental performance. Because smallholders experience differentiated compliance barriers however, it is widely recognized that for the purpose of more effectively prioritizing and targeting the necessary intervention support, smallholder heterogeneity needs to be better understood. This is especially the case for independent – in contrast to 'plasma' - oil palm smallholders, for whom corporate technical, input and financial support is comparatively inaccessible. Through multivariate analysis, this article contributes to these needs by developing a typology of independent oil palm smallholders in Indonesian Borneo. We subsequently model the predicted probabilities of different types of smallholders complying with Indonesia's major national sustainability standard and select indicators of good agricultural practice. This analysis reveals structural compliance gaps, which threatens to restrict smallholder access to formal markets in future. In showing that intervention strategies to resolve these compliance gaps can be more impactful when these are adapted to smallholder livelihood assets, portfolios and strategies, this article points to the importance of more explicitly accounting for socio-economic differentiation when addressing contemporary smallholder upgrading challenges. With results however revealing how local entrepreneurs and elites complicit in regulatory evasion and illegal land encroachments play a significant role in the sub-sector, local political resistance to initiatives that aim to bring the sub-sector above board can be anticipated. This highlights how institutional building needs to be more explicitly incorporated into the design of smallholder-centric intervention strategies; through, for example, the adoption of more integrative landscape-level planning approaches.

Mega-diverse coral reef ecosystems are declining globally, necessitating conservation prioritizations to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services of sites with high functional integrity to promote persistence. In practice however, the design of marine-protected area (MPA) systems often relies on broad classifications of habitat class and size, making the tacit assumption that all reefs are of comparable condition. We explored the impact of this assumption through a novel, pragmatic approach for incorporating variability in coral cover in a large-scale regional spatial prioritization plan.