No description available.

This thesis has endeavoured to enhance the knowledge and effectiveness of integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) as a model for the management of conservation areas and the buffer zones to national parks and reserves in Nepal. ICDPs evolved as it was recognised that the Western model of protected natural area management imposed costs on poor rural communities in developing countries and often failed to achieve nature conservation objectives. The ICDP concept was questioned when, after many years of mostly development effort in several developing countries, ICDPs did not provide an appropriate contribution to nature conservation. An ICDP in Nepal that provided considerable benefit to local people and greatly enhanced nature conservation is provided to establish that the ICDP concept is valid. The question that initiated this research was why some ICDPs fail to contribute to nature conservation while others are successful. The ICDP process is based on the assumption that the welfare of people who rely on resources from within protected natural areas is central to the pursuit of nature conservation and has priority in that nature conservation objectives can only be achieved where the wellbeing of local people and their access to the resources they require has been assured. The establishment of a nature conservation estate in developing countries is both an ecological problem and a social problem. The social problem is one of poverty. ICDPs in Nepal’s protected natural areas have been studied using qualitative research methods and a contextual constructionist approach that is central to the study of social problems. The evidence suggests that ICDP agencies have accepted assumptions that sustainable development and poverty alleviation will lead to the conservation of biodiversity. This thesis argues that sustainable resource use can not ensure the conservation of biodiversity yet paradoxically the sustainable use of resources in one place may lead to biodiversity conservation in more remote places where human impact is minimal. The variables associated with different settings are such that the outcomes of interventions designed to achieve ICDP objectives are not always predictable. The research suggests that assumptions about the outcomes of interventions should be treated with caution. Monitoring interventions can help ensure the desired outcomes are achieved but ICDP intervention monitoring in Nepal has been neglected. Numerous reports and evaluations detail input and effort rather than outcomes. The results include a recommendation to apply the principles of action research and adoption of a structured process for monitoring and evaluation of progress towards clearly stated objectives for the project and for individual interventions. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Throughout the last two decades, biodiversity has been increasingly acknowledged as a valuable asset. However there are numerous challenges to managing the asset. Firstly, there is no universally accepted measure of biodiversity per se. As a consequence, rather than measuring the intrinsic value of biodiversity the focus has typically shifted to valuing biodiversity services. Secondly, biodiversity issues should not be considered in a vacuum, but rather alongside general natural resource management problems. Conservation agencies and regulators alike would greatly benefit from more transparent biodiversity targets for conservation policies and natural resource management. This thesis makes a number of contributions to meet these challenges including measuring biodiversity, modelling diverse ecosystems and considering biodiversity outcomes in the management of an environmental resource. To value biodiversity, it is essential to measure it. Focusing on pairwise genetic dissimilarities at the species level, this thesis develops two models for measuring biodiversity. An axiomatic diagnosis of the existing and new measures is presented. This comparison suggests that the adequate biodiversity measure depends on the context. The diversity measures describe the biodiversity catalogue available at a given point in time. Modelling biodiversity is important for forecasting the impact of conservation decisions and understanding the future value of biodiversity. The importance of each species, however, depends on its role in the ecosystem as well as its genetic diversity. The interactions between species are therefore investigated and described, using a new model built around CES production functions. Three existing models based on predator-prey equations are extended to the multi-species case. These interaction models provide the necessary link for biodiversity maintenance over time. The four models are compared using simulations and an axiomatic approach. This approach shows that the new model performs well, offers the flexibility required to describe different types of ecosystems and is less data intensive. Finally, a case study of natural resource exploitation is presented, illustrating the idea that biodiversity loss can have direct economic implications in natural resource management. The model shows the impact of market structures on the extraction path of the resource and the distribution of the resource rent.

The knowledge and understanding of sediment transport is essential for the development of effective management strategies for nutrient and sediment loading in estuarine systems. Estuarine suspended sediment (in high concentrations), has the ability to adversely impact upon surrounding ecosystems, such as the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Due to a recent decline in water and sediment quality, it has recently been mandated that a number of tropical, coastal estuarine systems in Queensland, such as the Fitzroy River estuary, have their sediment loading reduced. In order to meet these requirements, a greater understanding of the sediment transport dynamics and driving processes (such as flocculation and settling velocity) needs to be achieved, and the accuracy of estimation improved. This research project was motivated by the need to improve the general accuracy of field measurements for estuarine suspended sediment transport and dynamics. Field-based measurements (especially settling velocity) are necessary for the parameterisation of sediment transport models. The difficulty in obtaining accurate, in situ data is well documented and is generally limited to methods that isolate a water sample from its natural environment, removing all influences of estuarine turbulence. Furthermore, the water samples are often extracted from points (Eulerian) where the history of the suspended particles is generally unknown. These sampling methods typically contain intrinsic errors as suspended sediment transport is essentially Lagrangian (i.e., flows with the net motion of flow-field) in nature. An investigation into different drogue systems conducted in parallel with a study into the tidal states of the Fitzroy River estuary led to the development of a novel Lagrangian drogue device, the LAD. Additionally, the water-tracking ability of the LAD was tested and found to accurately follow a parcel of estuarine water over a slack water period. Therefore the LAD was deployed in the Fitzroy River to assist in the further understanding of complex sediment transport processes such as flocculation and settling velocity in a natural estuarine flow field. The final device (the LAD - Lagrangian Acoustic Drogue) was developed, utilizing the principals of acoustic backscatter intensity-derived SSC measurements. The investigation of a series LAD deployments (during slack water) in the Fitzroy River estuary, revealed the dominant suspended sediment processes and also gave an insight into the prevailing flow-patterns. Results showed the presence of a settling lag mechanism between low and high tide, which can initiate a net sediment flow upstream with each flood tide. The bulk settling velocity showed comparable results at both low and high water. The LAD derived bulk settling velocity as a function of concentration (SSC), yielding a strong positive correlation (r2 = 0.73). Also the importance of flocculation in the bulk settling and clear up of the water column during periods of still water (high and low tide) was demonstrated as all in situ settling velocities (0.33 - 1.75 mm s-1) exceeded single grain approximations (0.47 mm s-1). This research demonstrates the potential for Lagrangian drogue studies as an effective measuring platform for the accurate quantification of estuarine suspended sediment dynamics. The application of the LAD in the Fitzroy River has lead to a significant improvement in the understanding of the system's real sediment transport processes. This research has provided an effective and accurate technique for measuring real settling velocities for input into numerical models or for the validation of existing model outputs. Furthermore, this technique shows great potential for application in other estuarine systems.

Rivers around the world are under increasing pressure from a variety of human activities. Effective management of riverine landscapes requires an ecosystem approach and one that recognises the complex interactions between their physical, chemical and biological components. Perceptions of pattern and process are central to our understanding of riverine landscapes. Pattern and process operate over multiple scales to produce heterogeneous mosaics of landscape patches that change over time. Hierarchical patch dynamics provides a useful approach to unravel pattern and process at multiple scales in riverine landscapes. This thesis adopts a hierarchical patch dynamics approach to investigate floodplain sediment and nutrient dynamics within the Barwon-Darling River in South Eastern Australia. The flow regime of the Barwon-Darling River is highly variable. As a result, it has a complex channel cross section featuring inset-floodplain surfaces that occur at multiple elevations within the channel trough. These surfaces formed the focus of this study. The texture of inset- floodplain surface sediments displays a patchy spatial distribution and one that did not reflect lateral or longitudinal gradients within this floodplain landscape. Rather a sediment textural patch mosaic was identified. Nutrient concentrations associated with the surface sediments of the inset-floodplains were also shown to vary significantly resulting in a nutrient patch mosaic. This spatial nutrient mosaic was enhanced by factors including the surface elevation of the floodplain surface. Sediment and nutrient exchange between the river channel and inset-floodplain surfaces was measured during several flows in 2001, 2002 and 2005. Pin and sediment trap data showed that significant quantities of sediment were exchanged between the river channel and floodplain surfaces during inundation with both cut and fill processes occurring. Patterns in sediment exchange appear to be related to local sediment supply and seasonal sediment exhaustion, rather than the top down geomorphic constraints considered. These material exchanges resulted in a change to the spatial configuration of the sediment textural patch mosaic. Distinct new sediment textural patches were created following inundation, while other patches were lost post inundation and other patches changed sediment textural character to move into pre-existing patches. Thus a truly dynamic sediment textural mosaic exists within this floodplain landscape. Nutrient concentrations associated with floodplain sediments also changed over time. While nutrient concentrations increased after the December 2001 flow event, they generally decreased after the March 2002 event, highlighting their dynamic nature over time. The spatial distribution of nutrient concentrations also varied over time, with a 40 percent change to the nutrient mosaic as a result of the March 2002 flow event. In addition to the influence of the changing physical template (sediment texture mosaic), nutrient concentrations were shown to be influenced by rainfall processes on non flooded surfaces, and also a number of top-down constraints and bottom-up influences operating over multiple spatial scales. Overall, the inset-floodplains studied in this thesis acted primarily as sediment and nutrient sinks, and were a source for dissolved nutrients. Nutrient exchange was associated with the exchange of sediments in this riverine landscape, over both inter-flow and decadal timescales. It was demonstrated that water resource development within the catchment reduced the number, magnitude and duration of flow events down the Barwon-Darling River and as a result reductions in the exchange of sediment, associated and dissolved nutrients between inset-floodplains and the main river channel were calculated. The greatest reductions were with the release of dissolved nutrients (42-25 percent) and the exchange of sediment and associated nutrients from high level surfaces (43 percent). Effective conservation and management of riverine ecosystems must occur at the correct scale. This study identified potential nutrient hotspots at several scales in the Barwon-Darling floodplain landscape that could be targeted by management. The low predictability of the location of nutrient hotspots at the inset-floodplain scale over time means that environmental flows should be targeted at high level surfaces (<25 000 MLD-1) that provide long term sources of carbon to the river channel. Conserving flows of this magnitude will also reinstate flow variability, an important facet of the Barwon-Darling River?s hydrology that has been changed by water resource development. The research presented in this thesis highlights the importance of not only considering pattern and process at multiple scales, but also the way in which these processes influence landscape patterns over time, leading to the identification of the appropriate scales that can best be targeted for the conservation of these systems.

Object - oriented ecosystem modelling was introduced in the early of 1990s ( Silvert, 1992 ). From that time on, ecosystem models using object - oriented programming ( OOP ) has earned significant achievements with increasing upgraded information technology. The common purposes of ecosystem modellers are to build a model with flexible structure, which allow continuous modifications on the model content. In last decade, ecosystem modellers have put a large number of efforts to practice the OOP approaches in order to implement a true object - oriented ecosystem model. However, these previous work have not fully take advantage of object - orientation because of misusing more or less this technique. This paper explains the shortcoming of these previous endeavours therewith points out a practical solution that using the methodology of object - oriented software engineering and some relative novel information techniques. A case study SALMO - OO will be presented in this paper to prove Silvert ' s assumption that OOP play an important role on ecosystem modelling approaches. Moreover, the results of SALMO - OO convince that object - oriented ecosystem modelling can be achieved by using object - oriented software engineering associating with a true object - oriented programming language ( Java in this case ). / Thesis (M.Sc.)--School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, 2006.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 206-221).

<p>Water governance in South Africa is challenged by natural as well as socially constructed water scarcity. 15 years after the transition from Apartheid to the new democratic era, this paper shows that water resources are still distributed along racial lines. Based on a case study in rural KwaZulu Natal, results indicate that outcomes of water policies which aimed at redressing historic inequalities have not yet been able to create the expected benefits for the disadvantaged black farming community. This paper uses an ecosystem service (ESS) approach to assess how those benefits that are derived from different water-related ecosystem services (WES) developed in the smallholder community and its adjacent commercial farming area. The change in the distribution of water for household use, water for irrigation, water flow regulation and water for scenic beauty is further discussed in regards to its response to water policies on local and national level. Hereby, the paper addresses the research need to provide insight into ESS responses to policy outcomes, which in turn is expected to reveal challenges and opportunities for policy makers to incorporate the complex yet important interactions between social and ecological systems into their decision making. Practically, this paper contributes by making gaps in ESS utilization between smallholder and commercial farmers explicit. Focusing on the material aspects of equality, i.e. the redistribution of water resources is argued to be neither feasible nor unequivocally desirable in the near future. Rather, I encourage capacity building to increase possibilities of the smallholder farmers to effectively use existing resources.</p>

<p>The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) promotes the Ecosystem Approach (EA). In this thesis it is analyzed how the EA approach could be applied to regional management of coastal areas in Sweden. The aim of this report is to compare management for preserving biodiversity on a landscape level in two regional coastal areas in Uppsala and Västra Götaland respectively. In Uppsala, one of the plans consists of a previous nature reserve and in Västra Götaland, a Regional landscape strategy has been established. The ecosystem approach is used as a theoretical framework in this thesis. More precisely, five EA operational guidelines have been used as analytical tools in the comparative approach adopted.</p><p>The results show that the Västra Götaland Regional landscape strategy has been most consistent with the EA framework, since it fulfills three of the five operational guidelines while Gårdsskärskusten only accomplish two of the criteria. The social aspects are more central in the landscape strategy than in Gårdskärskusten, which is the main difference between the two plans. One area of inadequacy detected in the landscape strategy was the few identified aspects on maintenance of landscape connectivity features. The Regional landscape strategy could, if established in every county in Sweden, be a way to prevent the loss of biodiversity. However the plan needs to be supported by actions where preservation and utilization are integrated in an economic context. By considering nature protection as a development opportunity in strategic planning rather than as only a cost, important steps towards a sustainable future can be taken.</p> / <p>För att implementera målsättningarna i FN:s Konvention om Biologisk Mångfald har en ekosystemansats (EA) antagits och en viktig ekosystemtyp i Sverige där EA kan appliceras är kuster. Syftet med examensarbetet är att, med ekosystemansatsen som analysverktyg, studera hur och varför två planer för att bevara biologisk mångfald på landskapsnivå i två regionala kustområden i Uppsala län respektive Västra Götalands län skiljer sig åt. Planen består i Uppsala län av ett tilltänkt naturreservat och i Västra Götalands län av en Regional landskapsstrategi. Uppsatsens teoretiska förankring sker i ekosystemansatsen, med fokus på dess fem vägledande punkter och metodvalet är en jämförande design. Inom ramen för den jämförande designen har sedan en innehållsanalys samt kompletterande semistrukturerade intervjuer utförts.</p><p>Resultatet visar att den Regionala landskapsstrategin i dagsläget är mer i linje med ekosystemansatsen, eftersom den uppfyller tre av fem vägledande punkter medan processen med Gårdsskärskusten enbart uppfyller två av fem vägledande punkter. I landskapsstrategin är sociala aspekter centrala och det är en förklaring till varför de olika planerna skiljer sig åt. Intressant är dock att betoningen på aktörsinvolvering verkar leda till att vissa ekologiska grundprinciper som konnektivitet i landskapet tonas ned, vilka är framträdande i processen med Gårdskärskusten. Regionala landskapsstrategier kan enligt min mening innebära ett stort steg mot att hindra förlusten av biologisk mångfald i Sverige om de uppförs i varje län. Inom landskapsstrategierna är det vidare essentiellt att skyddade områden, som exempelvis Gårdsskärskusten, också inkorporerar ett landskapsstrategitänk och i många fall innebär det att skötselåtgärder fortsätter att utföras. Svårigheten kan dock vara hur finansieringen av skötseln skall ske men där finns alternativa inkomstmöjligheter, från exempelvis naturturism och stresshantering på företag, som behöver utvecklas ytterligare.</p>

<p>Climatic variation and change affect the dynamics of organisms and ecosystem processes. This thesis examines phytoplankton as a target variable to trace climatic impacts on Lake Erken (Sweden) with special emphasis on the spring bloom. </p><p>A strong correlation between the timing of the spring bloom and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) illustrates the link between atmospheric pressure variations and local biological processes. The predictive power increased by applying a recently established regional Scandinavian Circulation Index (SCI). Changes to an earlier timing of the spring bloom and elevated water temperature were induced by the global warming trend. The climate signal was still persistent in summer manifested by an enhanced summer phytoplankton biomass. </p><p>Between spring and summer, the phytoplankton was mainly controlled by phosphorus limitation. The application of a new method to measure alkaline phosphatase activity revealed that P-limitation varied between species and among individual cells.</p><p>Combining the above knowledge and literature data, the impact of the NAO on the timing of life history events, biomass and trophic cascade in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems was quantitatively tested with a meta-analysis. In all environments, pronounced effects of the NAO were apparent, indicating the generality of climate effects found in different ecosystems. </p><p>Finally, a regional climate model was applied, forcing a physical lake model from which future lake conditions were simulated. The simulation revealed a one-month shorter ice cover period with two years out of ten being completely ice free. Internal eutrophication is one of the expected consequences. </p><p>In conclusion, the strong influences of global and regional climate are apparent in local physical, chemical and biological variables and will most probably also in future affect the structure and function of processes in lakes. </p>