Peer-reviewed publications

The meta-ecosystem approach has significantly advanced ecosystem science and landscape ecology by explicitly addressing the flow of elements (live organisms, biotic and abiotic materials) among ecosystems at different temporal and spatial scales [1,2]. Gounand et al. [3] recently argued that the conciliation of theoretical and empirical studies on meta-ecosystems needs better quantification of spatial flows in terms of movements (dispersal, foraging, life-cycle, and migration), feedbacks, and resources.

The construction of the Three Gorges Dam, along with other development in the Yangtze River basin, has had profound consequences for the river's flow and sediment regime. This has had major impacts on the geomorphology and ecology of the river downstream of the dam, with related impacts on biodiversity, including fish populations, livelihoods, and water security in the middle and lower Yangtze. Changes to fish populations have included a fall of around 90% in the total number of fish fry for the four economically-important Chinese carp species, caused at least in part by alterations in the flow regime. In response, there has been increased research into the significance of flow regimes for Chinese carp, as well as other aspects of river health. A partnership between the Chinese Government, the dam operator, scientists, and conservationists has led to pilot environmental flow releases over a 5-year period in an attempt to mitigate some of these impacts. Subsequent monitoring has shown that numbers of fish fry are increasing from the low they had fallen to in 2008. Drawing on lessons from the pilot environmental flow releases, in October 2015 the official regulations that govern operations of the Three Gorges Dam were amended to incorporate additional objectives, including incorporating environmental flow releases as part of the routine operation of the dam. This paper describes the processes that led to the environmental flow program from Three Gorges, a review of monitoring data collected during the pilot environmental flow releases, the subsequent amendment of the dam operating rules, and prospects for expanding environmental flow implementation in the Yangtze River in coming years.

Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing society and is already having a significant impact on people and biodiversity around the globe. Rural communities in developing countries are experiencing some of the worst impacts of climate change, but removed from decision making bodies and financial resources, they are often left to their own devices to cope with and adapt to these changes. Through WWF's Climate Crowd initiative, large amounts of data on how vulnerable communities are affected by changes in weather and climate, how they are coping with these changes, and how their responses might negatively impact biodiversity are being crowd-sourced. WWF then curates data sourced from partner organisations, analyses it, and disseminates it on wwfclimatecrowd.org for use by researchers, educators, and conservation and development practitioners. This data is also used to develop and implement site-specific solutions that reduce the vulnerability of people and wildlife to changes in climate.

Degradation of freshwater ecosystems and the services they provide is a primary cause of increasing water insecurity, raising the need for integrated solutions to freshwater management. While methods for characterizing the multi-faceted challenges of managing freshwater ecosystems abound, they tend to emphasize either social or ecological dimensions and fall short of being truly integrative. This paper suggests that management for sustainability of freshwater systems needs to consider the linkages between human water uses, freshwater ecosystems and governance. We present a conceptualization of freshwater resources as part of an integrated social-ecological system and propose a set of corresponding indicators to monitor freshwater ecosystem health and to highlight priorities for management. We demonstrate an application of this new framework—the Freshwater Health Index (FHI)—in the Dongjiang River Basin in southern China, where stakeholders are addressing multiple and conflicting freshwater demands. By combining empirical and modeled datasets with surveys to gauge stakeholders' preferences and elicit expert information about governance mechanisms, the FHI helps stakeholders understand the status of freshwater ecosystems in their basin, how ecosystems are being manipulated to enhance or decrease water-related services, and how well the existing water resource management regime is equipped to govern these dynamics over time. This framework helps to operationalize a truly integrated approach to water resource management by recognizing the interplay between governance, stakeholders, freshwater ecosystems and the services they provide.

Marine reserves are a commonly applied conservation tool, but their size is often chosen based on considerations of socioeconomic rather than ecological impact. Here, we use a simple individual-based model together with the latest empirical information on home ranges, densities and schooling behavior in 66 coral reef fishes to quantify the conservation effectiveness of various reserve sizes. We find that standard reserves with a diameter of 1-2 km can achieve partial protection (greater than or equal to 50% of the maximum number of individuals) of 56% of all simulated species. Partial protection of the most important fishery species, and of species with diverse functional roles, required 2-10 km wide reserves. Full protection of nearly all simulated species required 100 km wide reserves. Linear regressions based on the mean home range and density, and even just the maximum length, of fish species approximated these results reliably, and can therefore be used to support locally effective decision making.

Ecosystem service (ES) maps are instrumental for the assessment and communication of the costs and benefits of human-nature interactions. Yet, despite the increased understanding that we live a globalized tele-coupled world where such interactions extend globally, ES maps are usually place-based and fail to depict the global flows of locally produced ES. We aim to shift the way ES maps are developed by bringing global value chains into ES assessments. We propose and apply a conceptual framework that integrates ES provision principles, with value chain analysis and human well-being assessment methods, while considering the spatial dimension of these components in ES mapping. We apply this framework to the case of seafood provision from purse seine tuna fishery in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean. The ES maps produced demonstrate the flow of a marine ES to a series of global beneficiaries via different trade and mobility pathways. We identify three types of flows – one to one, closed loop and open loop. We emphasize the need to consider a series of intermediate beneficiaries in ES mapping despite the lack of data. We highlight the need for a shift in ES mapping, to better include global commodity flows, across spatial scales.

This paper analyses the contributions of community and smallholder forestry (CSF) to achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs). A CSF-SDG positive feedback model is proposed; a model that holds that successful CSF positively contributes to 13 SDGs and 31 SDG targets. Recent CSF meta-studies have scrutinized factors leading to CSF success and found some 10 factors and conditions that contribute to that objective. If efforts towards reaching the SDGs support or enhance these factors leading to the greater success of CSF, this in turn would boost CSF contributions to the SDGs and their targets. As a result, CSF or active support for CSF, focusing on the 10 CSF factors that favor success, can be linked to 48 unique SDG targets. The analysis suggests that there is a significant opportunity to explore win-win options for efforts to support CSF and contribute to SDGs, but also for efforts to pursue the SDGs and targets that favor CSF, which will in turn boost the contribution of CSF to the SDGs. The case of CSF and its feedback links with the SDGs suggests that it may be relevant to identify interactions between the SDGs and other socio-ecological realities and related research.

The United States has been at the forefront of marine resource stewardship since the 1970s when Federal officials began to implement a series of national policies aimed at the conservation and management of public trust resources in the ocean. Beginning with the establishment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1970, soon followed by several pieces of landmark legislation, this era marked the start of a continuing effort to integrate ecosystem science with marine resource management. Among the most important bipartisan legacies of this effort has been the steady expansion of marine managed areas in U.S. coastal and ocean waters. This legacy is being challenged as the Trump Administration considers whether to alter or eliminate the nation's Marine National Monuments and National Marine Sanctuaries.

We found that 27 academic fields within the umbrella field of human-animal studies study human-animal relationships.• There is a strong differentiation between the fields that study "animals as constructed" vs. those that study "animals as such".• All these fields have much to contribute to conservation, but interdisciplinary research collaborations remain scarce.

Recruit young scientists and local talent to safeguard coral reefs