Test Exam Flashcards
Provide six ecosystem services that can be supplied by a peatland ecosystem, including at least one regulating, one provisioning and one cultural service. Also indicate how three of these services could be impacted given human behaviour
Climate regulation (Carbon sequestration) - regulation, water purification - provisioning of freshwater ( water filtration), water regulation, increasingly tourism, recreation for cultural, provision of paleo archives. Peat drainage could lead to peat subsidence releasing a lot of CO2 (drained peatland contribute some 10% of global CO2 emissions), drained peatlands sometimes lead to peat fires which of course affects their water purification service as well as tourism
Current climate change has already led to changes in the provision of ecosystem services, such as pollination. What would you suggest to increase the resilience of pollinator communities in the context of climate change?
Increasing the amount of semi-natural habitats in agricultural landscapes. “The positive effects of higher amounts of semi-natural areas are twofold: they directly increase the richness and abundance of pollinators while simultaneously making them more resilient against other threats, such as global climate warming.”
Give two examples of direct drivers and two examples of indirect drivers of environmental change and give two arguments to explain why knowledge of the drivers is important for environmental management.
Examples of direct drivers: (pressures in DPSIR) - land-use/land cover change - climate change - change in agro-ecological conditions - invasive alien species Examples of indirect drivers: (drivers in DPSIR) - demographic - economic - socio-political - scientific and technological - cultural and religious
The knowledge of drivers is important for environmental management to understand the system better; assess, value or map the services, changes and threats; involve stakeholders more effectively.
What are the strong and weak points of spatial modelling and mapping regulating ES? Give examples when you would and would not recommend the use of the InVEST model.
Strong points: heuristic ( hands-on/ practical approach to problem solve and self-discovery); a useful tool for communication with stakeholders
Weak points: sometimes the model is too simplified, or complex LULC types are forced into limited LULC classes.
For flood mitigation inVESt model is not appropriate as it uses annual inputs for precipitation, but for modelling nutrient retention or carbon sequestration it is a nice tool to use for visualisation and understanding of, for example, how changing different LULC types affects the provision of the regulating services.
Name and explain two factors that make spatially modelling cultural ecosystem services a challenge?
- intangibility and incommensurability -> there is often no common measure for the cultural ES
(differences between people’s socio-cultural backgrounds and the cultural value they perceive from the cultural ES) - it is also a challenge to assign cultural services to specific ecosystem elements
Name three requirements for Payment for Environmental Services and explain briefly what they are.
- Additionallity - meaning that service providers ought to recieve the payment only if the effort they put to support the ES is detectable.
- No leakage - meaning that enhancing ES in one location does not cause increase in the pressure of conversion or deterioration in another location
- Permanence - means that there is not only a short term but also a long-term positive effect on the ES.
Land use intensification and land abandonment, are two main drivers of current changes in European agroecosystems. Please name one financing mechanism that could help preventing such changes? Explain briefly how it works.
Payment for ecosystem services could be an appropriate financial mechanism to prevent land intensification and land abandonment. PES would then work as an incentive to farmers/landowners in exchange for managing their land to provide the ES. PES is an approach to nature conservation, where beneficiaries of ecosystem services reward or compensate those whose lands provide these services with subsidies or market payments.
In the Netherlands more provisioning and regulating services are included than cultural services, both for the physical and the monetary account, propose a cultural service that could be important to include for the Netherlands (other than hiking and nature related overnight stays). What would be the indicator, and how could you measure this?
There is a debate on whether biodiversity could be considered an ES. If we think of the activities like bird-watching: it is a recreational activity made possible through the existence of various bird species. Humans benefit from biodiversity and we can attach an existence and bequest value to it. For different species condition indicators could be different depending on their habitats and food requirements. Species distribution could be used to measure changes in biodiversity. This could be done using citizen science ( like birdwatching).
In the lectures, it was discussed that CBA analysis is helpful in environmental management, and some techniques were presented. Please explain how CBA can be used in environmental management, mention and describe at least three different applications
CBA can be used to
- enhance decision making in terms of economic efficiency and sustainability perspective;
- to explain the benefits of environmental policies, which helps agencies to justify their decisions not only in terms of benefits to the environment but also fiscal accountability and public support.
- to compare costs and benefits of a specific investment option or of different investment options
Imagine that you were to value the timber provisioning service of a forest. How would you value this service based on a welfare based valuation approach?
I would use a stated preference method like CVM to try to determine people’s willingness to pay for the timber provisioning service.
Please describe three criteria that you would use to distinguish between a company engaging in greenwashing versus in genuine environmental management.
- Are we solving a problem: is there a problem? Will the measures help?
- Is this the best solution for the most urgent problem?
- What is the intend of the measure?
Mention and explain the four core accounts of the SEEA system
1) Ecosystem extent - describes the covers of ecosystems. the types and extents of different land covers/ land uses.
2) Ecosystem condition - describes the state of an ecosystem
3) Ecosystem services supply and use accounts - describes the specific ecosystem services
4) Monetary ecosystem assets - deals with the inflows and outflows of ecosystem assets
Give two reasons why is dealing with the inherent uncertainties in integrated environmental assessments important? (Shortly motivate these two reasons)
1) because you need to convince not only scientific peers but also other users of the information/ stakeholders.
2) these stakeholders/users of the information would have to deal with complex societal problems where ideally they would reach consensus and acceptance. It is important to already deal with inherent uncertainties in the assessment to prevent other users of the information using the uncertainties as an excuse not to act.
Environmental policies often explicitly consider uncertainties through the Precautionary Principle. How is this principle formulated?
“…Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation. “ ( UN, 1992)
What is the difference between accuracy and precision?
Accuracy reflects how close a measurement is to a known or accepted value, while precision reflects how reproducible measurements are.
