Global biodiversity losses are being driven by human actions, and coral reef communities are not immune. Local anthropogenic stress and global climate change are rapidly changing coral reefs, through coral bleaching and mortality. How these stressors impact the biodiversity and community structure of corals on tropical reefs will not only affect the communities of fish and invertebrates that rely on coral reefs, but they could have lasting impacts on ecosystem functioning. The record-breaking marine heatwave caused by the 2015/2016 El Niño was superimposed on a strong local human disturbance gradient on Kiritimati, Kiribati, allowing for the investigation of how these combined disturbances affect coral communities. In Chapter 2, I investigated how soft coral cover varies with these disturbances and natural environmental factors, using benthic photoquadrats collected on Kiritimati’s forereefs from 2007 to 2019. Additionally, I conducted a literature review to establish what is already known about soft coral and disturbances, to compare Kiritimati data to that found in the literature. I show that soft corals are grossly understudied, with only a fifth (19/94) of coral studies presenting any results of heat stress effects on soft corals, and even fewer (5%) presenting taxonomic-specific results. On Kiritimati, prior to the 2015/2016 El Niño, soft corals were more common at sheltered sites with lower net primary productivity, but no effect of local disturbance was found. Soft corals were, however, highly vulnerable to heat stress, with a documented complete loss after the heatwave. I also show that soft coral skeletons persisted for years after the heatwave and provided substrate for hard coral recruitment. In Chapter 3, I examined how local and global stressors affected coral diversity, using community composition photoquadrat data collected from 2013 to 2017, and developed a conceptual framework for understanding effects of multiple stressors, when there are both discrete and continuous stressors. Coral alpha diversity (assessed as Hill diversity) exhibited a non-linear relationship with local anthropogenic stress, peaking at intermediate levels, and was negatively impacted by the marine heatwave, such that sites tended to decrease in both coral richness and evenness. Coral beta diversity (assessed as community composition turnover) was significantly impacted by both stressors, but sites exposed to higher levels of anthropogenic stress tended to experience less turnover during the heatwave. Explicitly considering the relationships between the two stressors, I found that it varied depending on the intensity of anthropogenic stress and the diversity metric (i.e., richness vs. composition) examined. For Hill-Richness, I found a tipping point at moderate levels of local anthropogenic stress, below which there was an additive response and above which the response tended towards synergy. In contrast, for Hill-Shannon and Hill-Simpson the responses were additive and there was an antagonistic effect between stressors for community composition. By using the frameworks outlined in this thesis for reporting changes to soft coral due to disturbances, and examining relationships between discrete and continuous stressors, we may better predict how reefs will look in the future and what actions will conserve and assist in the recovery of coral reef ecosystems. / Graduate / 2022-08-10

Climate change has created potential major threats to global biodiversity. The multiple components of climate change are projected to affect all pillars of biodiversity, from genes over species to biome level. Of particular concerns are "tipping points" where the exceedance of ecosystem thresholds will possibly lead to irreversible shifts of ecosystems and their functioning. As biodiversity underlies all goods and services provided by ecosystems that are crucial for human survival and wellbeing, this paper presents potential effects of climate change on biodiversity, its plausible impacts on human society as well as the setting in addressing a global crisis. Species affected by climate change may respond in three ways: change, move or die. Local species extinctions or a rapidly affected ecosystem as a whole respectively might move toward its particular "tipping point", thereby probably depriving its services to human society and ending up in a global crisis. Urgent and appropriate actions within various scenarios of climate change impacts on biodiversity, especially in tropical regions, are needed to be considered. Foremost a multisectoral approach on biodiversity issues with broader policies, stringent strategies and programs at international, national and local levels is essential to meet the challenges of climate change impacts on biodiversity.

The European Union have since the signing of the Rome treaty in 1957, come to be a new superpower in the world, spreading the word of soft power through the economic and democratic cooperation in the pan-European continent. The theory of soft and hard power and the theory of diffusion of innovations illuminate how the European Union has been able to increase their influence and gain power in the world, as it has become the largest economy in the world. Through this soft power focus, the European Union has been able to grow and to act as a model for success as it attracts other parts of the world by the positive messages of cooperation and economic integration. This should be seen in a time when the US has increasingly acted unilateral in their foreign policy and experienced increasing legitimacy problems on the global scale. The understanding of the development of the European Union to its contemporary magnitude through the theory of soft and hard power and the diffusion of innovations, what I call cooptive enlargement, brings new light of how to understand its development and influence in the world. This theory could further be used to analyze and understand why and how other parts of the world create trade areas and Unions in their quest for future peace, democracy and economic development. The European Union has through this cooptive enlargement come to lay the foundation to a new world order, enabling all parts of the world to collide into a prosperous future of cooperation.

Climate change has created potential major threats to global biodiversity. The multiple components of climate change are projected to affect all pillars of biodiversity, from genes over species to biome level. Of particular concerns are "tipping points" where the exceedance of ecosystem thresholds will possibly lead to irreversible shifts of ecosystems and their functioning. As biodiversity underlies all goods and services provided by ecosystems that are crucial for human survival and wellbeing, this paper presents potential effects of climate change on biodiversity, its plausible impacts on human society as well as the setting in addressing a global crisis. Species affected by climate change may respond in three ways: change, move or die. Local species extinctions or a rapidly affected ecosystem as a whole respectively might move toward its particular "tipping point", thereby probably depriving its services to human society and ending up in a global crisis. Urgent and appropriate actions within various scenarios of climate change impacts on biodiversity, especially in tropical regions, are needed to be considered. Foremost a multisectoral approach on biodiversity issues with broader policies, stringent strategies and programs at international, national and local levels is essential to meet the challenges of climate change impacts on biodiversity.

Regression discontinuity designs are increasingly popular quasi-experimental research designs among applied econometricians desiring to make causal inferences on the local effect of a treatment, intervention, or policy. They are also widely used in social, behavioral, and natural sciences. Much of the existing literature relies on the assumption that the discontinuity point or cutoff is known a-priori, which may not always hold. This thesis seeks to extend the applicability of regression discontinuity designs by proposing a new approach towards detection of an unknown discontinuity point using structural-break detection and machine learning methods. The approach is evaluated on both simulated and real data. Estimation and inference based on estimating the cutoff following this approach are compared to the counterfactual scenario where the cutoff is known. Monte Carlo simulations show that the empirical false-detection and true-detection probabilities of the proposed procedure are generally satisfactory. Finally, the approach is further illustrated with an empirical application. / Graduate

Studying and simulating social systems including human groups and societies can be a complex problem. In order to build a model that simulates humans' actions, it is necessary to consider the major factors that affect human behavior. Norms are one of these factors: social norms are the customary rules that govern behavior in groups and societies. Norms are everywhere around us, from the way people handshake or bow to the clothes they wear. They play a large role in determining our behaviors. Studies on norms are much older than the age of computer science, since normative studies have been a classic topic in sociology, psychology, philosophy and law. Various theories have been put forth about the functioning of social norms. Although an extensive amount of research on norms has been performed during the recent years, there remains a significant gap between current models and models that can explain real-world normative behaviors. Most of the existing work on norms focuses on abstract applications, and very few realistic normative simulations of human societies can be found. The contributions of this dissertation include the following: 1) a new hybrid technique based on agent-based modeling and Markov Chain Monte Carlo is introduced. This method is used to prepare a smoking case study for applying normative models. 2) This hybrid technique is described using category theory, which is a mathematical theory focusing on relations rather than objects. 3) The relationship between norm emergence in social networks and the theory of tipping points is studied. 4) A new lightweight normative architecture for studying smoking cessation trends is introduced. This architecture is then extended to a more general normative framework that can be used to model real-world normative behaviors. The final normative architecture considers cognitive and social aspects of norm formation in human societies. Normative architectures based on only one of these two aspects exist in the literature, but a normative architecture that effectively includes both of these two is missing.

Tropische Regenwälder sind durch anthropogene Aktivitäten gefährdet und wurden als Kippelement identifiziert. Ein Kippen in einen neuen Zustand könnte tiefgreifende Auswirkungen auf das globale Klima haben, sobald die Vegetation von einem bewaldeten in einen Savannen- oder Graslandzustand übergegangen ist. Waldbrände können die Grenze zwischen Savanne und Wald verschieben und somit das dynamische Gleichgewicht zwischen diesen beiden möglichen Vegetationszuständen unter sich änderndem Klima beeinträchtigen. In der vorliegenden Doktorarbeit wurde ein neues Erdsystemmodell entwickelt und angewendet, um explizit die Auswirkungen von Feuer, Klimawandel und Landnutzung auf eine potenzielle tropische Hysterese abzuschätzen. In den ersten beiden Teilen der Arbeit wurde das Vegetationsmodell LPJmL vor allem in Hinblick auf Feuersimulation verbessert und anschließend biophysikalisch an das Erdystemmodell CM2Mc gekoppelt. Im dritten Teil dieser Arbeit wurde das resultierende Modell CM2Mc-LPJmL schließlich angewendet, um wichtige biophysikalische Feuer-Vegetations-Klima-Rückkopplungen und einen potentiellen Kipppunkt bzw. eine Hysterese der tropischen Wälder zu untersuchen. Die Ergebnisse der Experimente zeigten, dass eine alleinige Klima Störung nicht zu einem großflächigen Kipppunkt tropischer Wälder führt. Andererseits führte die vollständige Entwaldung bei einer erhöhten CO2-Konzentration von über 450 ppm und die Wirkung von Waldbränden zu einer Verschiebung großer Teile des Amazonas Regenwaldes in einen stabilen Graslandzustand. Die Leistung dieser Arbeit ist die Entwicklung eines neuen Erdsystemmodells, das die Vorteile des umfassenden dynamischen Vegetationsmodells LPJmL und eines prozessbasierten Feuermodells mit dem geringen Rechenaufwand von CM2Mc verbindet. Diese Doktorarbeit untersuchte zum ersten Mal den expliziten Einfluss von Feuer auf tropische Kipppunkte und auf eine mögliche vegetative Erholung in einem umfassenden feuerfähigen Erdsystemmodell. / Tropical rain forests are endangered by anthropogenic activities and are recognized as one of the terrestrial tipping elements. An ecosystem regime change to a new state could have profound impacts on the global climate, once the biome has transitioned from a forest into a savanna or grassland state. Fire could potentially shift the savanna-forest boundary and hence impact the dynamical equilibrium between these two possible vegetation states under a changing climate. In this thesis, a new Earth system model was developed and applied to explicitly estimate the impact of fire, climate change and land-use on a potential tropical tipping point and hysteresis. The first part of this thesis describes the improvement of simulating fire within the dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) LPJmL (Lund-Potsdam-Jena-managed-Land). In the second part, the improved LPJmL model was biophysically coupled to the Earth system model CM2Mc, which involved numerous changes in the original LPJmL model. In the third part of this thesis, the resulting model CM2Mc-LPJmL was finally applied to investigate important biophysical fire-vegetation-climate feedbacks and a potential tipping point and hysteresis of tropical forests. The results of the modeling experiments indicated that a sole climate disturbance does not lead to a large-scale tipping of tropical forests into a savanna or grassland state. On the other hand, complete deforestation alongside elevated CO2 above 450 ppm and the impact of fire led to a shift of large parts of the Amazon into a stable grassland state. The contribution of this thesis is the development of a new Earth system model, including the advantages of the comprehensive dynamic vegetation model LPJmL, a process-based fire model and the low computation cost of CM2Mc. This thesis studied for the first time the explicit impact of fire on tropical tipping points and a possible vegetation recovery in a comprehensive fire-enabled Earth system model.

The diploma thesis focuses on build a real business plan for a newly established company MARTart, s.r.o. The business plan is a result of analysis based on a environment business as well as the primary method for a data acquisition market analysis. Also included is a detailed financial plan for the next years of business, giving an important information about the financial development of this company.