基于生态系统服务理论的草地可持续利用评价

草地退化不仅仅是今天中国才发生的事情。历史上曾经发生“黑尘暴”的美国North Dakota州，现在仍然有62.7％土地被用作耕作，林地所占面积仅仅占1％。私有制和种植业较畜牧业的高的利润率，是该州种植业比重高于畜牧业的重要原因。草原保护项目（CRP）得到了美国政府财政的大力支持， 在North Dakota州采用了以草地恢复为主的措施。美国发达的教育体系带来的高流动率，使得North Dakota州自30年代后居住人口稳定在60－70万成为可能，从而避免了我国出现的草原地区不断增加的人口压力。由此可见：草地作为重要的自然资源，不可能完全保护起来;没有其他配套措施，私有制可能会带来新一轮垦殖;草地畜牧业仍然是畜牧业的重要组成部分，畜牧业发展需要结合种植业尤其需要与饲料生产相结合。 依据生态系统服务的理念，首次发展了生态系统服务指数（ESI），试图通过对生态系统服务功能的综合考虑，提出科学的适宜放牧率的评价方法。本文利用美国北达科他州立大学中部草原研究站17年长期放牧试验数据，选取植物多样性Shannon-Wiener指数、地上净初级生产力、土壤表层含水量和单位面积家畜增重等四个指标，通过对不同指标分别赋予不同的权重，计算不同管理目标下ESI及其稳定性，并对单目标管理与多目标管理进行了比较研究。结果表明，对于北美混合普列里(Prairie)草地，围封不利用或建立自然保护区，虽然生态系统比较稳定，但既不能有效的提高植物多样性、初级生产力和土壤水分含量等生态功能，又没有畜产品产出;而在重牧或极重牧处理下虽然获得了较大的畜产品生产，但导致了草地生态系统的退化和较大的系统不稳定性。因此，这两种管理方式在实践中都是不可取的。应用生态系统服务指数综合考虑，认为应该权衡各项生态功能和生产功能，此时轻牧或中牧是最适宜的。因此，ESI的建立避免了单项指标的评价偏差，使得适宜放牧率的确定更加合理。 利用前面构建的多目标权重评价体系，结合内蒙古草原生态系统定位站放牧试验样地的数据，探讨了锡林郭勒盟定位站附近的适宜放牧率为2.67羊/ha，低于单目标条件下的每公顷绵羊4羊/ha。同时在经济学和生态系统系统服务理论的基础上，依据谢高地等人（2001年）的研究，并提出了环境税和生态补偿的标准，分别是每公顷15元和90元。

生态补偿机制研究：以山东省为例

生态补偿机制因为能有效解决环境保护领域的外部性问题而日益引起关注。它是一套对造成自然环境破坏的行为进行处罚、对生态环境保护的行为实行奖励的制度。生态补偿机制不但能为生态保护筹措资金，而且能统筹协调各区域和各行业的关系，从而达到经济发展与保护生态平衡协调、区域协调发展和可持续发展的最终目标。 首先进行了生态补偿的理论研究。分析了生态补偿的概念、经济学原理、生态补偿网络的构成、以及目前在确定生态补偿的补偿依据和补偿额度方面所面临的问题和争议。引进生态系统服务功能评价的原理与方法，探讨将生态系统服务功能评价应用于生态补偿的可行性，并提出了生态补偿的组成部分和一般机制。 区域补偿是一类重要的生态补类型。山东省是一个面积较大、经济较发达、但各地发展还不够平衡的省份，在山东开展生态补偿具有重要意义。以山东省为研究案例，研究了在山东省开展区域生态补偿的可行性和实施办法，并根据山东省各地的生态系统服务功能提出优先补偿地区。提出了综合考虑各区域的单位面积非市场生态系统服务功能价值和单位面积GDP的生态补偿决策因子，并对山东不同生态功能区和17市的生态补偿决策因子分别进行了计算。从研究的结果来看，山东西部地区由于经济较落后和生态系统服务功能中的非市场价值较大而拥有相对较大的生态补偿决策因子，应该优先给与区域生态补偿，以促进山东整个区域的协调发展。 生态系统类型转换的补偿是生态补偿的重要组成部分。在山东省南四湖地区开展退耕还湿生态工程对保障南水北调东线工程水质安全具有重要意义，但要在当地开展大规模退耕还湿，合理的生态补偿机制至关重要。以南四湖地区退耕还湿地生态工程的生态效益和生态补偿机制为研究案例，探讨了生态系统类型转换的生态补偿方法。研究发现南四湖退耕还湿后生态系统服务功能大为增强，但当地农民的收入会受到显著负面影响，因此应该给与一定的资金补偿以提高农民参与退耕还湿的积极性和促进整个区域的可持续发展。另外，生态补偿的方式应该多样化和结合当地实际，除资金补偿以外，南四湖地区还应该重点采取技术补偿的方式，由政府组织专家给当地居民提供湿地恢复和湿地植物资源开发的技术。资金补偿和技术补偿对以提高农民退耕还湿的积极性和湿地系统的长期稳定运行具有重要意义。 最后对生态补偿的实施和保障机制进行了理论探讨。结合山东的研究案例和参考国内外经验，讨论和提出了生态补偿的主管部门、补偿费用征收机制、补偿费用使用的机制、生态补偿费用使用的监督机制等，并对生态补偿机制存在的问题进行了分析。根据研究结果对山东实施生态补偿的优先领域进行了讨论并提出了建议。 总之，通过生态补偿机制的理论研究和在山东开展生态补偿的案例研究，提出了生态补偿的一般机制和保障措施，以及对山东省开展生态补偿的建议，研究结果对促进生态补偿和可持续发展具有重要意义。

吴起县退耕还林(草)政策实施情况调查研究

吴起县退耕还林(草)政策经过8 a的实施取得了显著成效。项目实施区生态环境得到明显改善,农业综合生产能力得到很大的提高,农民通过退耕补助得以直接增收,为形成面对农户的生态补偿制度探索了经验。然而政策实施过程中仍然存在着诸如退耕地块分布和林分结构不合理,草畜业发展滞后,牧草资源利用率不高,退耕政策不够灵活,补偿标准缺乏弹性等问题。建议在以后退耕政策中注重加强规划指导,合理确定退耕范围,在生态补偿制度框架下优化退耕补助标准,通过深化土地产权改革,促进退耕土地合理流转和规模化经营,继续推动农业后续产业发展,巩固退耕成果。

Changes in biodiversity and vegetation composition in the central Swiss Alps during the transition from pristine forest to first farming

Aim: We investigate the response of vegetation composition and plant diversity to increasing land clearance, burning and agriculture at the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition (c. 6400–5000 bc) when first farming was introduced. Location: The Valais, a dry alpine valley in Switzerland. Methods: We combine high-resolution pollen, microscopic charcoal and sedimentological data to reconstruct past vegetation, fire and land use. Pollen evenness, rarefaction-based and accumulation-based palynological richness analyses were used to reconstruct past trends in plant diversity. Results: Our results show that from c. 5500 cal. yr bc, slash-and-burn activities created a more open landscape for agriculture, at the expense of Pinus and Betula forests. Land clearance by slash-and-burn promoted diverse grassland ecosystems, while on the long term it reduced woodland and forest diversity, affecting important tree species such as Ulmus and Tilia. Main conclusions: Understanding the resilience of Alpine ecosystems to past disturbance variability is relevant for future nature conservation plans. Our study suggests that forecasted land abandonment in the Alps will lead to pre-Neolithic conditions, with significant biodiversity losses in abandoned grassland ecosystems. Thus, management measures for biodiversity, such as ecological compensation areas, are needed in agricultural landscapes with a millennial history of human impact, such as the non-boreal European lowlands. Our study supports the hypothesis that species coexistence is maximized at an intermediate level of disturbances. For instance, species richness decreased when fire exceeded the quasi-natural variability observed during the Mesolithic times. Under a more natural disturbance regime, rather closed Pinus sylvestris and mixed oak forests would prevail.

Delaying mowing and leaving uncut refuges boosts orthopterans in extensively managed meadows: Evidence drawn from field-scale experimentation

Semi-natural grasslands are widely recognized for their high ecological value. They often count among the most species-rich habitats, especially in traditional cultural landscapes. Maintaining and/or restoring them is a top priority, but nevertheless represents a real conservation challenge, especially regarding their invertebrate assemblages. The main goal of this study was to experimentally investigate the influence of four different mowing regimes on orthopteran communities and populations: (1) control meadow (C-meadow): mowing regime according to the Swiss regulations for extensively managed meadows declared as ecological compensation areas, i.e. first cut not before 15 June; (2) first cut not before 15 July (delayed treatment, D-meadow); (3) first cut not before 15 June and second cut not earlier than 8 weeks from the first cut (8W-meadow); (4) refuges left uncut on 10–20% of the meadow area (R-meadow). Data were collected two years after the introduction of these mowing treatments. Orthopteran densities from spring to early summer were five times higher in D-meadows, compared to C-meadows. In R-meadows, densities were, on average, twice as high as in C-meadows, while mean species richness was 23% higher in R-meadows than in C-meadows. Provided that farmers were given the appropriate financial incentives, the D- and R-meadow regimes could be relatively easy to implement within agri-environment schemes. Such meadows could deliver substantial benefits for functional biodiversity, including sustenance to many secondary consumers dependent on field invertebrates as staple food.

Compensation for environmental services and intergovernmental fiscal transfers : the case of India

This paper studies mechanisms to compensate local government for the public provision of environmental services using the theory of optimal fiscal transfers in India. Especially, we analyzed the role of intergovernmental fiscal transfers in achieving the environmental goal. Simply assigning the functions at appropriate levels does not ensure optimal provision of environmental services. Optimality in resource allocation could be achieved by combining the assignment system with an appropriate compensation mechanism. Intergovernmental fiscal transfers would be a suitable mechanism for compensating the local governments and help in internalizing the spillover effects of providing environmental public goods. Illustrations are also provided for India.

The X Chromosome of Hemipteran Insects: Conservation, Dosage Compensation and Sex-Biased Expression

Insects of the order Hemiptera (true bugs) use a wide range of mechanisms of sex determination, including genetic sex determination, paternal genome elimination, and haplodiploidy. Genetic sex determination, the prevalent mode, is generally controlled by a pair of XY sex chromosomes or by an XX/XO system, but different configurations that include additional sex chromosomes are also present. Although this diversity of sex determining systems has been extensively studied at the cytogenetic level, only the X chromosome of the model pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum has been analyzed at the genomic level, and little is known about X chromosome biology in the rest of the order. In this study, we take advantage of published DNA- and RNA-seq data from three additional Hemiptera species to perform a comparative analysis of the gene content and expression of the X chromosome throughout this clade. We find that, despite showing evidence of dosage compensation, the X chromosomes of these species show female-biased expression, and a deficit of male-biased genes, in direct contrast to the pea aphid X. We further detect an excess of shared gene content between these very distant species, suggesting that despite the diversity of sex determining systems, the same chromosomal element is used as the X throughout a large portion of the order.

Noise, predation risk compensation and vigilance in the chaffinch Fringilla coelebs

Background noise should in theory hinder detection of auditory cues associated with approaching danger. We tested whether foraging chaffinches Fringilla coelebs responded to background noise by increasing vigilance, and examined whether this was explained by predation risk compensation or by a novel stimulus hypothesis. The former predicts that only inter-scan interval should be modified in the presence of background noise, not vigilance levels generally. This is because noise hampers auditory cue detection and increases perceived predation risk primarily when in the head-down position, and also because previous tests have shown that only interscan interval is correlated with predator detection ability in this system. Chaffinches only modified interscan interval supporting this hypothesis. At the same time they made significantly fewer pecks when feeding during the background noise treatment and so the increased vigilance led to a reduction in intake rate, suggesting that compensating for the increased predation risk could indirectly lead to a fitness cost. Finally, the novel stimulus hypothesis predicts that chaffinches should habituate to the noise, which did not occur within a trial or over 5 subsequent trials. We conclude that auditory cues may be an important component of the trade-off between vigilance and feeding, and discuss possible implications for anti-predation theory and ecological processes

Compensation and Rewards for Environmental Services (CRES) and efficient design of contracts in developing countries. Behavioral insights from a natural field experiment

The use of economic incentives for biodiversity (mostly Compensation and Reward for Environmental Services including Payment for ES) has been widely supported in the past decades and became the main innovative policy tools for biodiversity conservation worldwide. These policy tools are often based on the insight that rational actors perfectly weigh the costs and benefits of adopting certain behaviors and well-crafted economic incentives and disincentives will lead to socially desirable development scenarios. This rationalist mode of thought has provided interesting insights and results, but it also misestimates the context by which ‘real individuals’ come to decisions, and the multitude of factors influencing development sequences. In this study, our goal is to examine how these policies can take advantage of some unintended behavioral reactions that might in return impact, either positively or negatively, general policy performances. We test the effect of income's origin (‘Low effort’ based money vs. ‘High effort’ based money) on spending decisions (Necessity vs. Superior goods) and subsequent pro social preferences (Future pro-environmental behavior) within Madagascar rural areas, using a natural field experiment. Our results show that money obtained under low effort leads to different consumption patterns than money obtained under high efforts: superior goods are more salient in the case of low effort money. In parallel, money obtained under low effort leads to subsequent higher pro social behavior. Compensation and rewards policies for ecosystem services may mobilize knowledge on behavioral biases to improve their design and foster positive spillovers on their development goals.

Biomass and Stored Carbohydrate Compensation after Above-Ground Biomass Removal in a Perennial Herb: Does Environmental Productivity Play a Role?

Many plant species are able to tolerate severe disturbance leading to removal of a substantial portion of the body by resprouting from intact or fragmented organs. Resprouting enables plants to compensate for biomass loss and complete their life cycles. The degree of disturbance tolerance, and hence the ecological advantage of damage tolerance (in contrast to alternative strategies), has been reported to be affected by environmental productivity. In our study, we examined the influence of soil nutrients (as an indicator of environmental productivity) on biomass and stored carbohydrate compensation after removal of aboveground parts in the perennial resprouter Plantago lanceolata. Specifically, we tested and compared the effects of nutrient availability on biomass and carbon storage in damaged and undamaged individuals. Damaged plants of P. lanceolata compensated neither in terms of biomass nor overall carbon storage. However, whereas in the nutrient-poor environment, root total non-structural carbohydrate concentrations (TNC) were similar for damaged and undamaged plants, in the nutrient-rich environment, damaged plants had remarkably higher TNC than undamaged plants. Based on TNC allocation patterns, we conclude that tolerance to disturbance is promoted in more productive environments, where higher photosynthetic efficiency allows for successful replenishment of carbohydrates. Although plants under nutrient-rich conditions did not compensate in terms of biomass or seed production, they entered winter with higher content of carbohydrates, which might result in better performance in the next growing season. This otherwise overlooked compensation mechanism might be responsible for inconsistent results reported from other studies.

Ecological-economic modeling for biodiversity management: Potential, pitfalls, and prospects

Ecologists and economists both use models to help develop strategies for biodiversity management. The practical use of disciplinary models, however, can be limited because ecological models tend not to address the socioeconomic dimension of biodiversity management, whereas economic models tend to neglect the ecological dimension. Given these shortcomings of disciplinary models, there is a necessity to combine ecological and economic knowledge into ecological-economic models. It is insufficient if scientists work separately in their own disciplines and combine their knowledge only when it comes to formulating management recommendations. Such an approach does not capture feedback loops between the ecological and the socioeconomic systems. Furthermore, each discipline poses the management problem in its own way and comes up with its own most appropriate solution. These disciplinary solutions, however are likely to be so different that a combined solution considering aspects of both disciplines cannot be found. Preconditions for a successful model-based integration of ecology and economics include (1) an in-depth knowledge of the two disciplines, (2) the adequate identification and framing of the problem to be investigated, and (3) a common understanding between economists and ecologists of modeling and scale. To further advance ecological-economic modeling the development of common benchmarks, quality controls, and refereeing standards for ecological-economic models is desirable.

Clipping noise compensation for OFDMA systems

This paper presents an efficient low-complexity clipping noise compensation scheme for PAR reduced orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems. Conventional clipping noise compensation schemes proposed for OFDM systems are decision directed schemes which use demodulated data symbols. Thus these schemes fail to deliver expected performance in OFDMA systems where multiple users share a single OFDM symbol and a specific user may only know his/her own modulation scheme. The proposed clipping noise estimation and compensation scheme does not require the knowledge of the demodulated symbols of the other users, making it very promising for OFDMA systems. It uses the equalized output and the reserved tones to reconstruct the signal by compensating the clipping noise. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can significantly improve the system performance.