Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is a major assessment of the human impact on the environment, called for by the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000, launched in 2001 and published in 2005 with more than $14 million of grants. It popularized the term ecosystem services, the benefits gained by humans from ecosystems. History During the 1990s, international conventions such as the UNEP Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification identified the need for a global scientific ecosystem assessment. There had been advances in resource economics with little effect on environmental policy. In November 1998, UNEP, NASA, and the World Bank published a study called "Protecting our Planet, Securing our Future: Linkages Among Global Environmental Issues and Human Needs". In 2001, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was launched with work over a period of four years. Over 1300 contributors from 95 coun

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Defining and spatially modelling cultural ecosystem services using crowdsourced data

Devis Tuia

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are some of the most valuable contributions of ecosystems to human well- being. Nevertheless, these services are often underrepresented in ecosystem service assessments. Defining CES for the purposes of spatial quantification has been challenging because it has been difficult to spatially model CES. However, rapid increases in mobile network connectivity and the use of social media have generated huge amounts of crowdsourced data. This offers an opportunity to define and spatially quantify CES. We inventoried established CES conceptualisations and sources of crowdsourced data to propose a CES definition and typology for spatial quantification. Furthermore, we present the results of three spatial models employing crowdsourced data to measure CES on Texel, a coastal island in the Netherlands. Defining CES as information-flows best enables service quantification. A general typology of eight services is proposed. The spatial models produced distributions consistent with known areas of cultural importance on Texel. However, user representativeness and measurement uncertainties affect our results. Ethical considerations must also be taken into account. Still, crowdsourced data is a valuable source of information to define and model CES due to the level of detail available. This can encourage the representation of CES in ecosystem service assessments.

2020

Coupling virtual watersheds with ecosystem services assessment: a 21st century platform to support river research and management

Tom Ian Battin

The demand for freshwater is projected to increase worldwide over the coming decades, resulting in severe water stress and threats to riverine biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and services. A major societal challenge is to determine where environmental changes will have the greatest impacts on riverine ecosystem services and where resilience can be incorporated into adaptive resource planning. Both water managers and scientists need new integrative tools to guide them toward the best solutions that meet the demands of a growing human population but also ensure riverine biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. Resource planners and scientists could better address a growing set of riverine management and risk mitigation issues by (1) using a ‘virtual watersheds’ approach based on improved digital river networks and better connections to terrestrial systems, (2) integrating virtual watersheds with ecosystem services technology (ARtificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services: ARIES), and (3) incorporating the role of riverine biotic interactions in shaping ecological responses. This integrative platform can support both interdisciplinary scientific analyses of pressing societal issues and effective dissemination of findings across river research and management communities. It should also provide new integrative tools to identify the best solutions and trade-offs to ensure the conservation of riverine biodiversity and ecosystem services.

2015

Ecosystem

An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked

Biodiversity

Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (genetic variability), species (species diversity), and ec

Ecosystem service

Ecosystem services are the many and varied benefits to humans provided by the natural environment and healthy ecosystems. Such ecosystems include, for example, agroecosystems, forest ecosystem, gr

ENV-426: Fluvial biogeosciences

Stream and river ecosystems are increasingly deteriorated owing to global change and climate change. Students will understand basic physical, chemical and biological processes in streams and rivers, and how they relate to ecosystem health and integrity .

ENV-513: Multivariate statistics in R

Data required for ecosystem assessment is typically multidimensional. Multivariate statistical tools allow us to summarize and model multiple ecological parameters. This course provides a conceptual introduction and guidelines for the use of multivariate statistical tools using the R platform.

ENV-222: Soil sciences

Le cours est une introduction aux Sciences du sol. Il a pour but de présenter les principales caractéristiques, propriétés et fonctions des sols. Il fait appel à des notions théoriques mais également à des cas d'étude pratique à l'aide d'exercices et de travaux pratiques.