5,851 research outputs found
Blanket mire restoration and its impact on ecosystem services
No full textIntroduction Blanket mire is a rare resource representing less than 3% (120 000 km2) of global peatlands (Tallis 1997). The largest concentration of blanket mire occurs in the uplands of the UK and Ireland (approximately 20% of global blanket mire (Tallis 1998)). The global rarity of blanket mire and concerns over its current condition in the UK (see Box 9.1) have led to it being included in protective legislation (European Commission 1992) and in national conservation strategies (JNCC and DEFRA 2012). Blanket mire condition in the UK has been impacted by multiple pressures, including drainage, afforestation, atmospheric pollution and burning. The most intensely impacted areas are severely eroded, with large areas of bare peat and erosion gully networks (Evans and Warburton 2007), with artificial drainage additionally affecting over 1.5 million hectares of blanket mire (Parry et al. 2014). Although the extent of erosion of blanket mire in the UK and Ireland is not widely replicated elsewhere in the world, analogous peat erosion has been reported from North and South America, Asia and Australia (Evans and Warburton 2007). For example, increasing levels of erosion of sloping mires in Tibet (Joosten and Schumann 2007; Chapter 13) demonstrate that the requirement to manage upland peat is not just a UK concern. The focus of this chapter is therefore on the ecosystem service benefits of blanket mire restoration in the uplands of the UK and Ireland, as an exemplar for peatland restoration which may become more widely applicable. The chapter is in three sections. The first summarises the main ecosystem services of blanket mire; the second describes the main drivers for the condition of blanket mire in the UK; and the third outlines the impact that blanket mire restoration has on ecosystem services. Readers are also directed to the review by Parry et al. (2014), which provides further details on blanket mire degradation, the restoration techniques employed in the UK and the response of ecosystem service features to restoration practices. Ecosystem services from blanket mire systems Blanket mires contribute a range of ecosystem services, briefly summarised below following the proposed Common International Standard for Ecosystem Services (Haines-Young and Potschin 2013; see Table 1.1 in Chapter 1).</p
Peatland restoration and ecosystem services: an introduction
No full textSetting the scene In September 1997, the airports of Singapore and Kuala Lumpur shut down for several days. Fires from drained peatlands in Indonesia, over 1000 km away, were emitting vast clouds of smoke causing haze and poor visibility across large parts of South East Asia in the extremely dry El Niño year. Schools and businesses had to close, and people were admitted to hospitals with acute breathing problems. The amount of CO2 emitted from these fires was equivalent to 13-40% of annual global emissions from fossil fuels (Page et al. 2002). Economic losses due to the 1997-1998 wildfires exceeded several billion US dollars (ADB 1999). In the hot August of 2010, people in Moscow were advised to stay at home, keep their windows closed and wear gauze masks to avoid inhaling ash particles when walking on the streets. Again the cause was fires, this time raging across nearly 2000 km2 of degraded peatlands in Russia. Carbon monoxide levels in the capital reached six times the maximum acceptable levels and death rates doubled due to heat and smog (Barriopedro et al. 2011). These fires, resulting from peatland drainage and degradation that made them vulnerable to fire, dramatically highlight the huge liability that peatlands pose once degraded, especially in a changing climate. In sharp contrast, there is now wide recognition of the importance to human well-being of ecosystem services delivered by the peatland environment, not least the wildlife that underpins those ecosystem services. While peatlands cover not even 3% of the world’s surface, they hold two times more carbon than the entire global forest biomass pool, and represent more than 30% of the total global soil carbon store (see Chapter 4). As long-term carbon sinks, they provide crucial global climate-regulating services. If not safeguarded, however, the release of this carbon could further exacerbate climate change. The range of peatland ecosystem services is far greater than simply their role in the carbon cycle. Pivotal peatland ecosystem services further include, for example, the provision of high-quality drinking water derived from peatland catchments. Peatlands also play a role in flood-water regulation, especially in lowland or coastal settings.</p
Peatland restoration and ecosystem services: nature-based solutions for societal goals
No full text‘Peatland conservation is a prime example of a nature-based solution to climate change but we urgently need to switch from aspiration to action to secure the benefits that peatlands provide’. Julia Marton Lefèvre, former Director-General, IUCN Introduction The chapters of this book provide a compelling account of the crucial role of peatlands for human well-being and the role restoration can play in providing nature-based solutions to societal goals. Across the world, natural peatlands provide important ecosystem services, with a special role in climate regulation, water regulation, provision of cultural services, such as historical archives and recreation opportunities, and hosting important habitats for wildlife. In contrast, damaged peatlands on only 0.3% of the earth’s land surface contribute disproportionally to global GHG emissions, producing probably up to 50% of the total global land bound and 5% of the total global annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Degraded peatlands therefore pose a high risk and, ultimately, a high cost to society. At the heart of peatland degradation is the unsustainable exploitation of peatland resources, mainly to maximise provisioning services for agricultural and forestry produce (Chapters 2 and 9-14). There are still perverse incentives and economic drivers in place fostering short-term profits (Chapters 2, 15 and 19), while neglecting consequences for global natural capital and sustainable livelihoods. The speed of degradation is alarming, especially in the tropics. Natural peatland habitats in Indonesia have shrunk to just 32% of the original peatland area, with most of those losses occurring in the last two decades as peatlands are drained and logged and converted to oil palm or pulpwood plantations. These plantations often cannot be sustained for more than one or a few production cycles, because subsidence eventually makes drainage of the low-lying peat soils impossible (Chapter 14). In temperate Europe, the majority of the peatlands has already been degraded by land use and land-use change over the past 150 years (Chapters 2, 10, 12). In Canada, recent technological advances and a desire for energy independence have meant that tar sand extraction will destroy peatlands to a significant extent. Also in Europe some of the remaining peatlands remain under current threat from the energy industry.</p
Do dolphins benefit from nonlinear mathematics when processing their sonar returns?
No full textAn interview with author Tim Leighton about the paper
Opportunities for linking young surveyors across professional surveying member organisations and FIG
No full textTim Di Muzio on 'Sabotage'
No full textIn a series of essays published in 2013 and 2014 on capitaspower.com, political economist Tim Di Muzio explored the concept of ‘sabotage’ as it applies to capitalist power. I recently rediscovered these essays and was so impressed by them that I have reposted them here as a single piece.
About the author: Tim Di Muzio is a researcher at the University of Wollongong. He is the author of numerous books, including Debt as power, Carbon capitalism, and The 1% and the Rest of us
1996-1997 Tim Gautreaux
No full textTim Gautreaux is the author of three novels and two earlier short story collections. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and GQ. After teaching for thirty years at Southeastern Louisiana University, he now lives, with his wife, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. (Photo credit: Randy Bergeron)https://egrove.olemiss.edu/grisham_res/1023/thumbnail.jp
First person - Tim Petzold
No full textFirst Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Tim Petzold is first author on ‘ Connexin 41.8 governs timely haematopoietic stem and progenitor cell specification’, published in BiO. Tim conducted the research described in this article while a PhD student in Julien Bertrand's lab at the Department of Pathology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Switzerland. He is now a postdoc in the lab of Holger Gerhardt at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association, Berlin, Germany, investigating developmental biology – previously his focus was on how blood stem cells develop and now it has shifted to how the vascular system develops
Tim Seibles, 40th Annual ODU Literary Festival
No full textTim Seibles is the author of several poetry collections including Hurdy-Gurdy, Hammerlock, Buffalo Head Solos, and Fast Animal, which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award. In 2013 he received both the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award for poetry and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Misericordia University for his literary accomplishments. His latest collection, One Turn Around the Sun, has just been released. Tim is the current Poet Laureate of Virginia and is a Professor of English at Old Dominion University where he teaches literature as well as classes in the MFA in writing program
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