Ecosystem services are the aspects of the environment utilized to produce human well-being and are key elements of landscape sustainability. Increasingly, measures of ecosystem services are being incorporated into conservation decision making. However, a framework for evaluating systematic conservation planning ranked selection scenarios with indicators of ecosystem services has not been developed. Using the Central Texas counties of Blanco, Burnet, Hays, Llano, San Saba, and Travis as a study, a suite of spatially explicit modeling tools, Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), are used to quantify carbon storage, soil conservation, and water provision. A fourth service metric, ecosystem richness, is derived using Texas Parks and Wildlife ecological systems classification data. The values of these four services are then used to evaluate four conservation scenarios, developed in conjunction with a local conservation non-profit, Hill Country Conservancy (HCC), and derived using Marxan decision-support software. The evaluation process consists of both geographic information system (GIS) and statistical analysis. GIS based overlay analysis is used to identify areas of multiple ecosystem service overlap. Spearman correlation tables are used to test the spatial relationship among ecosystem services, as well as the relationship among each of the four conservation scenarios. Wilcox-Mann-Whitney U tests (WMW) are used to assess the statistical significance of each scenario’s ecosystem service values as compared to the values of a random control scenario. The results of this work reinforce the findings that there is often significant variability in the spatial congruence of multiple ecosystem services and their provision across a landscape. This work also supports the conclusion that the targeting of ecological phenomena for conservation concurrently targets areas supporting multiple ecosystem services. More distinctively, the results verify the capacity of ecosystem service indicators to effectively inform an iterative systematic conservation planning process. At the local landscape-scale, this work provides HCC with defensible support of their conservation decisions based not only on organizational priorities, but also on ecosystem service values. More broadly, this work provides a framework for evaluating conservation scenarios with spatially explicit values of ecosystem services which can be replicated across a wide range of project scales and objectives. / text

<p>This study puts special attention on how family businesses can create a unique context for entrepreneurship through its internal resources and how they can create wealth across gen-erations. These internal resources are called “familiness” that is generated by the interaction of the family and individual family members with the business. In order for the family business to be transgenerational (to create wealth across generations), they must develop their familiness and the culture must encourage family firms to be constantly involved in entrepreneurial activities.</p><p>In this thesis, the internal resources of a family firm were analyzed in order to help the company understand the requirements of a transgenerational business. The familiness that were assessed in the family business are, as suggested by Habbershon (2006), network, tacit knowledge, access to financial capital, decision making, business portfolio, mentoring rela-tionship, and culture.</p><p>As a result of the analysis, we conclude that the family firm has a positive bundle of famili-ness that can be used in order for the company to be more entrepreneurial. However, it is not enough to have a positive bundle of familiness that could encourage entrepreneurship; but also, the family members should have the psychological predisposition to allocate re-sources in the hope of finding entrepreneurial gain (Penrose, 1959).</p><p>This study ends up with the recommendations that are useful in order to understand the requirements of a transgenerational family business.</p>

Little is known about the spatial distribution and abundance of tree holes in New Zealand’s native forests, or the invertebrate communities that they support. I found that tree holes were common on five endemic tree species, belonging to the families Fagaceae and Podocarpaceae in the mixed broadleaf-podocarp rainforest of Orikaka Ecological Area, Buller District, New Zealand. However, tree holes were not uniformly distributed throughout the forest, with more holes found on the three podocarp species, Prumnopitys ferruginea, P. taxifolia and Dacrycarpus dacrydioides, than on Nothofagus fusca or N. menziesii. Nevertheless, Nothofagus fusca had the largest holes of any of the tree species sampled and larger trees generally had larger holes. Large, hole-bearing Nothofagus fusca trees support a specialist hole-dwelling vertebrate fauna in New Zealand and worldwide, tree holes provide habitat for a range of invertebrate species. Using specially-designed emergence traps, I collected invertebrates emerging from naturally-occurring dry tree holes and compared this assemblage with invertebrates inhabiting leaf litter on the forest floor and those dispersing aerially throughout the study area. At the higher taxonomic resolution (i.e., Order or Class), community composition within the tree holes was highly variable, and there was no strong distinction between invertebrates from tree holes, leaf litter or Malaise traps. Moreover, although some beetle species emerging from tree holes were found exclusively in tree holes, most of these were represented by a single individual. Consequently, only minor differences in species composition were detected between beetle assemblages from tree holes, leaf-litter and those aerially dispersing throughout the forest. In contrast, the aquatic invertebrate assemblage within water-filled tree holes was highly distinctive from that in ground-based freshwater ecosystems, with only six aquatic taxa in common between all freshwater habitats. Using experimental water-filled tree-hole microcosms, I found that species richness and community composition within these microcosms were primarily driven by resource concentration, although habitat quality (i.e., water chemistry parameters) was also an important determinant of the identity and composition of colonising species. Overall, my study has shown that tree holes are common in the study area, and are likely to be more abundant in New Zealand’s indigenous forests than previously thought. Moreover, these generally small, discrete forest ecosystems support a diverse array of terrestrial invertebrates as well as a distinctive aquatic invertebrate community that is primarily structured by organic matter resource availability. These findings not only represent an important advance in our knowledge of New Zealand’s freshwater invertebrate biodiversity, but also highlight the need for further investigation into these unique forest canopy habitats which may well be at risk from deforestation and land use change.

4 pp. / Climate Change and Variability in Southwest Ecosystems Series / Several environmental factors are changing, including the global rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and global warming. These environmental changes portend needed changes in the future management of forests in the Southwestern U.S. Therefore, University of Arizona Extension Agents organized a Workshop in Sedona, AZ, in February, 2005, targeted at Southwest forest managers. This paper presents facts from one of the presentations at that workshop and summarizes what the direct effects of the increased CO2 concentrations are likely to be on future tree growth. It is expected that the growth of most trees will be stimulated by the higher CO2 concentrations but variations in response among species will alter competition among species. The fact sheet also speculates about what the implications may be for future forest management. This research benefits the forest industry, as well as the many consumers of forest products.

226 pp. / UACE Firewise publications (8 total) / The Living with Wildfire in Arizona educational materials synthesize the most recent scientific and technically known information available on fire ecology for the ecosystems of Arizona, including mixed conifer forests, ponderosa pine forests, pinyon-juniper and oak woodlands, chaparral, grasslands and desert scrub, and riparian areas. The materials are meant to educate homeowners living in the wildland urban interface areas as to the natural function of fire in each ecosystem and what significant changes have impacted fire behavior over time. Information includes the natural role of fire, how and why fire behavior has changed over time, and the role that humans play in affecting that change in protecting themselves and their property.

This is an applied ethnographic study of Southern Paiute cultural resources and how these are related to the natural ecosystems that surround and incorporate Zion National Park in southern Utah and Pipe Spring National Monument in northern Arizona. Southern Paiute people perceive Zion National Park and Pipe Spring National Monument as places whose significance derives from larger cultural and ecological landscapes. Southern Paiute people view both parks as being parts of riverine ecosystems. Zion National Park is a place along the Virgin River, and Pipe Spring National Monument part of the greater Kanab Creek Hydrological System. The current boundaries of both parks are largely irrelevant for understanding the lives of birds that fly along the river, of deer who seasonally migrate up and down the river, and of fish who swim in the river. Paiute people, whose ancestors lived along these riverine ecosystems for a thousand years or more, recognize that the plants they gathered, the animals they hunted, and the lives they lived are unrelated to the current boundaries of these two parks. As a result, the National Park Service and the Southern Paiutes arrived at the same conclusion: that is, to understand the cultural and natural significance of these parks requires knowledge of their relationships with other places. Thus it is both administratively and culturally appropriate for this applied ethnographic study to follow an ecosystem approach. This study was unique in two major ways. Unlike many other American Indian cultural resources studies conducted within National Parks at this period of time, this study moved beyond the formal boundaries of these NPS units in an effort to understand them as components of a broader natural ecosystem. As such, this study built upon the scientific and social framework for ecologically based stewardship of Federal lands and waters. This report provides both the ethnographic information relating to Pipe Spring National Monument and Zion National Park. This information was then incorporated in the parks’ resource management plans

Andelen människor som flyttar till städer ökar, vilket gör att det blir allt mer konkurrens om markytan. För att skapa fler bostäder tas mark i anspråk som tidigare haft andra syften eller bestått av naturliga grönytor. När växtlighet prioriteras bort minskar ekosystemtjänster som har förmåga att rena stadsluften. Denna studie baseras på Stockholm, där den regionala översiktsplaneringen åsyftar att staden ska förtätas för att skapa mer centrala bostäder. Att stadsluften är förorenad är ett generellt problem som utsätter invånare för hälsorisker.  Detta är en fallstudie som granskar hur luftföroreningar uppmärksammas när nya bostadsprojekt är planerade att etableras. Fem fall har valts ut nära en hårt trafikerad Europaväg, för att undersöka hur luftkvaliteter beaktats i planprocesserna. Dokument har granskats och berörda aktörer har intervjuats. Riskerna med luftföroreningar omnämns ytterst lite i vissa fall, medan de anses som betydande miljöpåverkan i andra. Detta har lett till att miljökonsekvensbeskrivningar (MKB) krävts vid vissa bostadsprojekt men inte i andra, trots att liknande eller högre nivåer av luftföroreningar eller fordonsmängd uppmätts eller beräknats vid projekten som uppmärksammat aspekten minst. Resultaten i fallstudien belyser den varierande förekomsten av omnämnandet om luftföroreningar och därmed risker för människors hälsa i de olika bostadsprojekten. / The numbers of people that are living in cities are expanding. That means an arising competition of the ground surface. To create enough homes areas that earlier was filled with natural green spaces are sometimes becoming mobilized. Green space’s that seems to clean the air becomes rarer. This study is based on the city of Stockholm, that is planned to expand more towards the central parts of the city. The city air is as in many other cities polluted and citizens are exposed to health risks.  This is a case study that examines how air pollution is being noticed in new residential projects. Five projects located close to a heavy traffic road have been chosen. Documents have been surveyed and relevant stakeholders have been interviewed in reason to find out how air quality is being observed. The different concerns regarding air quality has lead to decisions that environmental impact assessment (EIA) has being required in some cases, but not in others. Thus the levels of air quality or traffic density have approximately been the same or sometimes even higher in the cases that mentioned air quality least. This case study highlights the varied mention about air pollution and thereby the risks for human health in the studied projects.

De nyttor som människan får direkt och indirekt från ekosystemen kallas ekosystemtjänster. Mänsklighetens påverkan på ekosystemen idag leder till degradering av tjänsterna och då mänskligheten ytterst är beroende av vad de tillför, är bevarandet av dessa tjänster viktig. Livscykelanalys, LCA, är ett väletablerat verktyg som används för att fastställa miljöpåverkan från olika produktprocesser men få ekosystemtjänster beaktas i LCA. Det finns därför ett behov av att vidare undersöka och utveckla möjligheterna att med livscykelbaserade metoder analysera påverkan på ekosystemtjänster. Huvudsyftet med denna studie har varit att undersöka om det är möjligt att integrera ekosystemtjänstbegreppet i LCA-metodik. Detta har kartlagts med hjälp av en fallstudie på pelletsproduktion, som bl.a. identifierat berörda ekosystemtjänster och möjligheten att kvantifiera dem, vilka ekosystemtjänster som går att studera med LCA idag samt möjliga sätt att analysera påverkan på ekosystemtjänster med LCA. Ett delmål har varit att grundligt beskriva både ekosystemtjänster och LCA samt aspekter som kan koppla ihop dessa områden. En omfattande litteraturstudie och en LCA modellering rörande pelletsproduktion utgjorde grund för arbetet. I dagsläget är det inte möjligt att integrera ekosystemtjänstbegreppet i LCA-metodiken med undantag för de fåtal ekosystemtjänster som i LCA-metodiken redan beaktas i viss utsträckning. Det stora hindret är att det inte finns någon fullständig och enhetlig metodik för kartläggning, klassificering och kvantifiering av ekosystemtjänsterna, vilket anses nödvändigt för att kunna analysera påverkan på dem. Ett stort antal ekosystemtjänster såsom klimatreglering, näringsflöden, biodiversitet och rekreation kan kopplas till pelletsproduktion men påverkan på dem är inte möjlig att fullt ut analysera med LCA. Detta illustreras av LCA-modelleringen av pelletsproduktion där endast påverkan på tjänsterna förnybara energikällor och vattenanvändning ingår. Då kunskapen rörande olika ekosystemtjänster skiljer sig mycket åt varierar förutsättningarna för att inkludera dem i LCA-metodiken. Befintliga tillvägagångssätt för att försöka analysera påverkan på ekosystemtjänster med hjälp av LCA föreslår nya miljöpåverkanskategorier och samlandet av tjänsterna i gemensamma enheter såsom exergi och solekvivalenter. Metoderna är dock begränsade och täcker inte in ekosystemtjänsterna på ett fullgott sätt. Mer forskning behövs för att bättre utveckla tillvägagångsätten för analys av påverkan på ekosystemtjänster genom LCA. / The profits humankind obtains directly and indirectly from ecosystems are called ecosystem services. The impact human activities have on ecosystems lead to degradation of the ecosystem services and since humankind fully depends on what the ecosystems provide, the preservation of these services is crucial. Lifecycle assessment, LCA, is a well-established tool used to assess environmental impacts from different product processes but few ecosystem services are considered. Thus, there is a need to study and develop the possibilities to analyze ecosystem services through LCA based methods. The project aimed to determine whether it is possible to integrate the ecosystem-service concept into LCA-methodology. A case study on pellet production was carried out to identify relevant ecosystem services and the possibilities to quantify them, which ecosystem services that could be analyzed in LCA today and also available approaches to study impacts on ecosystem services with LCA. An intermediate goal was to present a comprehensive description of both ecosystem services and LCA and to map common aspects that connect the two fields. The analysis was based on a comprehensive literature study, and a specific LCA-modeling of pellet production. At present, it is not possible to integrate the ecosystem-service concept into LCA-methodology, except for the few ecosystem services that to some extent already are covered in the methodology. The main obstacle is the lack of coherent approaches to map, classify, and foremost quantify ecosystem services, which is considered crucial for analyzing the impact on them. A large number of ecosystem services such as climate regulation, nutrient cycling, biodiversity and recreation can be influenced by pellet production but it is not possible to fully analyze these impacts with LCA. This is illustrated by the LCA-modeling on pellet production where only impacts on the services renewable resources and water use could be included. The possibilities to analyze ecosystem services within LCA vary due to the variation in knowledge about certain services. The present approaches for analyzing more services with LCA propose new environmental impact categories an aggregation of services into common units such as exergy and solar equivalents. The methods are limited due to the fact that they are not able to cover the diversity of the services. More research is needed to develop the approaches for analyzing impacts on ecosystem services through LCA.

It has become increasingly clear that dealing with present day environmental crises requires a holistic view that takes into account the interactions of social and ecological factors across multiple spatial and temporal scales. An example of where this new paradigm is being operationalized is the study of social-ecological systems. A substantial aspect of this growing research area aims to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the links between social-ecological systems, the ecosystem services they generate, and human well-being. This thesis summarizes the first part of a PhD project with the overall objective of unravelling some of these linkages using a mapping approach in South Africa, a country with high levels of social and ecological diversity. In the first paper, I present an approach to mapping social-ecological systems based on different bundles of ecosystem services. Mapping social-ecological systems has so far mainly been achieved by the overlay of separate social and ecological data. Here, I identify characteristic bundles of ecosystem services and use these bundle types as a proxy for different social-ecological systems in South Africa. The emergent pattern shows three distinct and spatially coherent systems that represent an overall low, medium and high level of ecosystem service use amongst households, and differs markedly from maps based on the overlay of social and ecological datasets. This approach not only identifies areas within South Africa where people are especially vulnerable to environmental changes that negatively affect ecosystem services, but also highlights areas in which distinctly different system dynamics operate in close proximity. It is especially in those areas where systems characterized by high and low dependence on ecosystem services lie side by side that nuanced and differentiated decision-making is required to sustainably manage ecosystem services in support of human well-being across all sectors of society. In the second paper I expand on the approach pioneered in Paper I by mapping human well-being bundles in South Africa. Mapping human well-being as bundles allows us to interrogate the trade-offs between different constituents of well-being at the sub-national scale, something that is not possible when measuring human well-being based on indicators or indices that reduce well-being to a single number. This approach also enables us to perform a spatial comparison between the levels of ecosystem service use (identified in Paper I) and human well-being, which signifies an important step forward in the development of quantitative tools for the analysis of the relationship between ecosystem services and human well-being at scales between the local and the national. / Governance of ecosystem services under scenarios of change in southern and eastern Africa

Signal crayfish are an internationally widespread invasive species that can have important detrimental ecological impacts. This thesis aims to determine whether signal crayfish have the potential to also impact the physical environment in rivers. A series of experiments were undertaken in purpose-built still-water aquaria using a laser scanner to obtain Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) of narrowly-graded gravel surfaces before and after exposure to crayfish. The difference between DEMs was used to quantify volumetric changes in surface topography due to crayfish activity. Two distinct types of topographic change were identified. The first was the construction of pits and mounds which resulted in an increase in surface roughness and grain exposure. The second was the rearrangement of surface material caused by crayfish brushing past grains when walking and foraging, reorientating grains and altering friction angles. A series of 80 flume runs were undertaken to quantify alterations made by crayfish to water-worked, as well as loose, gravel substrates at low velocity flows. Crayfish significantly altered the structure of water-worked substrates, reversing the imbrication of surface grains to a more random arrangement. Surfaces were entrained at a relatively high velocity flow subsequent to crayfish activity in order to directly link topographic and structural alterations to substrate stability. Nearly twice as many grains were mobilised from surfaces which had been disturbed by crayfish in comparison to control surfaces that were not exposed to crayfish. A field investigation aimed to determine the potential significance of the geomorphic impact of crayfish in rivers. Signal crayfish were tracked through a 20 m reach of a small, lowland alluvial river for 150 days using a Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) system. Crayfish were active throughout the channel, although their activity became limited as water temperature dropped and flow stage increased. Substrate was not an important determinant of crayfish activity at this scale. Instead, crayfish tended to be found along the inner bank of a meander bend where there was a substantial cover of macrophytes. Consequently, signal crayfish were active for extended periods on substrates of a similar size to those that they could disturb in flume experiments. These results suggest that signal crayfish could have important geomorphic effects in rivers, disturbing bed structures and increasing the mobility of coarse material. This may have important implications for both the management of some rivers and benthic organisms that reside on the river bed.