Éditeur(s) : World Resources Institute World Resources Institute ( Washington, D.C. )

Éditeur(s) : World Resoruces Institute World Resoruces Institute ( Washington, D.C. )

Éditeur(s) : World Resources Institute National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration World Resources Institute ( Washington D. C. ) National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration ( Washington D. C. )
Résumé : Cover title.
February 2006.
(Statement of Responsibility) The Ocean Conservancy
United States Virgin Islands
Virgin Islands of the United States
Virgin Islands of the United States
Virgin Islands of the United States
Virgin Islands of the United States

70080572

Éditeur(s) : World Resources Institute World Resources Institute ( Washington, D.C. )

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Wiley Open Access
Résumé : Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species' threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project - and avert - future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups - including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems - ). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015.
ISSN: 2045-7758

hal-01204216
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01204216
DOI : 10.1002/ece3.1303
PRODINRA : 280886

Éditeur(s) : World Resources Institute World Resources Institute ( Washington, D.C. )

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD
Résumé : International audience
Cumulative human impacts have led to the degradation of marine ecosystems and thedecline of biodiversity in the European and contiguous seas. Effective conservationmeasures are urgently needed to reverse these trends. Conservation must entail societalchoices, underpinned by human values and worldviews that differ between the countriesbordering these seas. Social, economic and political heterogeneity adds to the challenge ofbalancing conservation with sustainable use of the seas. Comprehensive macro-regionalcoordination is needed to ensure effective conservation of marine ecosystems andbiodiversity of this region. Under the European Union Horizon 2020 framework programme,the MarCons COST action aims to promote collaborative research to support marinemanagement, conservation planning and policy development. This will be achieved bydeveloping novel methods and tools to close knowledge gaps and advance marineconservation science. This action will provide support for the development of macro-regional and national policies through six key actions: to develop tools to analysecumulative human impacts; to identify critical scientific and technical gaps in conservationefforts; to improve the resilience of the marine environment to global change and biologicalinvasions; to develop frameworks for integrated conservation planning across terrestrial,freshwater, and marine environments; to coordinate marine conservation policy acrossnational boundaries; and to identify effective governance approaches for marine protectedarea management. Achieving the objectives of these actions will facilitate the integration ofmarine conservation policy into macro-regional maritime spatial planning agendas for theEuropean and contiguous seas, thereby offsetting the loss of biodiversity and ecosystemservices in this region.
Research Ideas and Outcomes

hal-01474085
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01474085
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01474085/document
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01474085/file/RIO_article_11884.pdf
DOI : 10.3897/rio.3.e11884

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD
Résumé : International audience
The identification and economic valuation of ecosystem services (ES) are becoming important components of coral reef management. In many contexts, protection of human assets against coastal floods is one of the most important ES provided by coral reefs. The methods utilized to characterize this ES should be able to accommodate situations with low data availability, without sacrificing robustness. In this paper, we suggest such an approach that utilizes expert opinion and does not require copious amounts of data. Our primary objective is to find a balance between simple and complex models that can be used in a data scarce environment, to produce an economic valuation of the coral reef ES of protection against coastal floods. The approach has three steps: (i) identify geographic zones and assets at risk, (ii) identify the contributing role of coral reefs in the protection of coasts and, (iii) value the annual repair costs of assets through the avoided damage cost approach. The proposed method seems appropriate for advocacy with policy makers, but appears to be less effective for small scale approaches, such as those required for Payment for ES negotiations or marine spatial planning.
Ecosystem Services

hal-01359394
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01359394
DOI : 10.1016/j.ecoser.2016.07.005

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Ecological Society of America
Résumé : CABI:20153174020
Understanding how plants are constructed - i.e., how key size dimensions and the amount of mass invested in different tissues varies among individuals - is essential for modeling plant growth, carbon stocks, and energy fluxes in the terrestrial biosphere. Allocation patterns can differ through ontogeny, but also among coexisting species and among species adapted to different environments. While a variety of models dealing with biomass allocation exist, we lack a synthetic understanding of the underlying processes. This is partly due to the lack of suitable data sets for validating and parameterizing models. To that end, we present the Biomass And Allometry Database (BAAD) for woody plants. The BAAD contains 259634 measurements collected in 176 different studies, from 21084 individuals across 678 species. Most of these data come from existing publications. However, raw data were rarely made public at the time of publication. Thus, the BAAD contains data from different studies, transformed into standard units and variable names. The transformations were achieved using a common workflow for all raw data files. Other features that distinguish the BAAD are: (i) measurements were for individual plants rather than stand averages; (ii) individuals spanning a range of sizes were measured; (iii) plants from 0.01-100 m in height were included; and (iv) biomass was estimated directly, i.e., not indirectly via allometric equations (except in very large trees where biomass was estimated from detailed sub-sampling). We included both wild and artificially grown plants. The data set contains the following size metrics: total leaf area; area of stem cross-section including sapwood, heartwood, and bark; height of plant and crown base, crown area, and surface area; and the dry mass of leaf, stem, branches, sapwood, heartwood, bark, coarse roots, and fine root tissues. We also report other properties of individuals (age, leaf size, leaf mass per area, wood density, nitrogen content of leaves and wood), as well as information about the growing environment (location, light, experimental treatment, vegetation type) where available. It is our hope that making these data available will improve our ability to understand plant growth, ecosystem dynamics, and carbon cycling in the world's vegetation.
ISSN: 0012-9658

hal-01535227
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01535227
DOI : 10.1890/14-1889.1
PRODINRA : 306122

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD
Résumé : Atmospheric carbon dioxide records indicate that the land surface has acted as a strong global carbon sink over recent decades, with a substantial fraction of this sink probably located in the tropics, particularly in the Amazon. Nevertheless, it is unclear how the terrestrial carbon sink will evolve as climate and atmospheric composition continue to change. Here we analyse the historical evolution of the biomass dynamics of the Amazon rainforest over three decades using a distributed network of 321 plots. While this analysis confirms that Amazon forests have acted as a long-term net biomass sink, we find a long-term decreasing trend of carbon accumulation. Rates of net increase in above-ground biomass declined by one-third during the past decade compared to the 1990s. This is a consequence of growth rate increases levelling off recently, while biomass mortality persistently increased throughout, leading to a shortening of carbon residence times. Potential drivers for the mortality increase include greater climate variability, and feedbacks of faster growth on mortality, resulting in shortened tree longevity. The observed decline of the Amazon sink diverges markedly from the recent increase in terrestrial carbon uptake at the global scale, and is contrary to expectations based on models.
ISSN: 1476-4687

hal-01204223
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01204223
DOI : 10.1038/nature14283
PRODINRA : 294797
PUBMED : 25788097