Land-cover change and carbon sequestration at Supa Longling Watershed
Our recently completed satellite image analyses of about 200,500 ha area around the Supa Longling Watershed showed that national government conservation policies in China have led to an increase in forest cover. Forested areas grew at the rate of 1.17% per year as forest vegetations were restored on 17% of landscape occupied by croplands between 1989 and 2001. Grassland expansion also occurred at the rate of 0.3% per year. In spite of the reforestation policies however, conversion of forest and grassland occurred in about 2% of the landscape.
As a result of these land-cover changes, more than 75,000 ha sequestered 0.04-42.75 Mg Carbon per grid cell. Carbon was lost in about 10,000 ha of the landscape at the rate of 1.3-42.75 Mg per grid cell.
The Role of Governance in Managing Ecosystem Service Trade-offs
Attempts to optimize one ecosystem service often lead to reductions or losses of others. In the Special Issue of Update, GLP Sapporo Nodal Office in collaboration with United Nations University highlights some of the asymmetries in ecosystem services and possible management responses to them.
The article can be downloaded here. |
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The governance of ecosystem services from tropical upland watersheds
Governance of ecosystem services is crucial to human well-being and environmental sustainability. In a recent article in Current Opinion in Environmental sustainability, Louis Lebel and Rajesh Daniel review the approaches of communities, governments and firms in sharing ecosystem? benefits, negotiating trade-offs, and in allocating the risks and burdens when services are degraded or lost. The article can be downloaded here.
Addressing Issues for Land Change Science published in Eos Transactions American Geophysical Union.
The GLP offices in Beijing and Sapporo recently featured an article in Eos
on the major outcomes of the Land Systems Vulnerability Workshop held in
Beijing in June 2009. The article discusses three pertinent issues that the
Land Change Science community should address, namely plurality of
definitions in vulnerability research, addressing trade-offs in land systems vulnerability and integrating science and policy for the design of
adaptation measures. The article appeared in Eos 90 (38):334 on 22 September
2009 <http://www.agu.org/pubs/eos-news/>
New Paper Highlights the Role of Strategic Partnership in Resources Management
Several global environmental assessments indicate that ecosystems on which
our livelihood depends have been adversely influenced by human activities.
Nonetheless, these resources continue to be managed on a sectoral basis with
virtually no integration between sectors or with other environmental
management strategies. In Strategic Partnership for Sustainable Management
of Aquatic Resources, Agboola and Braimoh review human impact on aquatic
resources and argue for a strategic partnership (SP) of stakeholders for
sustainable management of aquatic resources. SP integrates the objectives of ecosystem-based and co/community-based approach to management. The
suitability of SP for aquatic resources management is illustrated with two
examples. The article can be downloaded <http://www.springerlink.com/content/m2g7473n441622g2/> here.
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