Browsing by Subject "Ecosystem"
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- ItemOpen AccessAn operational model for mainstreaming ecosystem services for implementation(2008) Cowling, R M; Egoh, B; Knight, A T; O\'Farrell, PJ; Reyers, B; Rouget, M; Roux, D J; Welz, A; Wilhelm-Rechman, AResearch on ecosystem services has grown markedly in recent years. However, few studies are embedded in a social process designed to ensure effective management of ecosystem services. Most research has focused only on biophysical and valuation assessments of putative services. As a mission-oriented discipline, ecosystem service research should be user-inspired and user-useful, which will require that researchers respond to stakeholder needs from the outset and collaborate with them in strategy development and implementation. Here we provide a pragmatic operational model for achieving the safeguarding of ecosystem services. The model comprises three phases: assessment, planning, and management. Outcomes of social, biophysical, and valuation assessments are used to identify opportunities and constraints for implementation. The latter then are transformed into user-friendly products to identify, with stakeholders, strategic objectives for implementation (the planning phase). The management phase undertakes and coordinates actions that achieve the protection of ecosystem services and ensure the flow of these services to beneficiaries. This outcome is achieved via mainstreaming, or incorporating the safeguarding of ecosystem services into the policies and practices of sectors that deal with land- and water-use planning. Management needs to be adaptive and should be institutionalized in a suite of learning organizations that are representative of the sectors that are concerned with decision-making and planning. By following the phases of our operational model, projects for safeguarding ecosystem services are likely to empower stakeholders to implement effective on-the-ground management that will achieve resilience of the corresponding social-ecological systems.
- ItemOpen AccessDiversification into novel habitats in the Africa clade of Dioscorea (Dioscoreaceae): erect habit and elephant’s foot tubers(2016) Maurin, Olivier; Muasya, A Muthama; Catalan, Pilar; Shongwe, Eugene Z; Viruel, Juan; Wilkin, Paul; van der Bank, MichelleAbstract Background Dioscorea is a widely distributed and highly diversified genus in tropical regions where it is represented by ten main clades, one of which diversified exclusively in Africa. In southern Africa it is characterised by a distinct group of species with a pachycaul or “elephant’s foot” structure that is partially to fully exposed above the substrate. In contrast to African representatives of the genus from other clades, occurring mainly in forest or woodland, the pachycaul taxa and their southern African relatives occur in diverse habitats ranging from woodland to open vegetation. Here we investigate patterns of diversification in the African clade, time of transition from forest to more open habitat, and morphological traits associated with each habitat and evaluate if such transitions have led to modification of reproductive organs and mode of dispersal. Results The Africa clade originated in the Oligocene and comprises four subclades. The Dioscorea buchananii subclade (southeastern tropical Africa and South Africa) is sister to the East African subclade, which is respectively sister to the recently evolved sister South African (e. g., Cape and Pachycaul) subclades. The Cape and Pachycaul subclades diversified in the east of the Cape Peninsula in the mid Miocene, in an area with complex geomorphology and climate, where the fynbos, thicket, succulent karoo and forest biomes meet. Conclusions Diversification out of forest is associated with major shifts in morphology of the perennial tuber (specifically an increase in size and orientation which presumably led them to become pachycaul) and rotation of stem (from twining to non-twining). The iconic elephant's foot morphology, observed in grasslands and thicket biomes, where its corky bark may offer protection against fire and herbivory, evolved since mid Miocene. A shift in pollination trait is observed within the forest, but entry into open habitat does not show association with reproductive morphology, except in the seed wing, which has switched from winged all round the seed margin to just at the base or at the apex of it, or has been even replaced by an elaiosome.
- ItemOpen AccessHippopotami in a liminal space: a multi-species ethnography of Lake Tanganyika in Bujumbura(2022) Maksudi, Bakenga; Solomon, Nikiwe; Matose, FrankThis thesis explores how human encroachment has significantly altered Lake Tanganyika's freshwater ecosystem and riparian zone in Bujumbura, the capital city of Burundi, which affects the daily life and interactions between humans and hippopotami (hippo). Societal development agendas have favoured economic growth and infrastructural development with little regard for the well-being of multi-species communities. The study contrasts the ideas that drive economy-based approaches to development and environmental management with the many engagements with the lake, and how this in turn affects human-hippo relations on Lake Tanganyika's riparian zone. Environmental protection and management discourses are frequently portrayed as a unified, single, objectivist practice, however, their contextual enactment differs from discipline to discipline and across municipal interventions and service delivery. The study investigates how the current settlement developments affect human-hippo relations. Specific research questions include, what are the intersecting human-hippo interactions that exist in Bujumbura's lakeshore neighbourhoods? What impacts do these interactions have on people and hippos? What interventions can help restore the degraded environment and foster kinship? I respond to these questions by engaging with current debates in environmental humanities, cultural, and environmental anthropology on human-multi-species entanglements. Both grounded theory and multi-species ethnography approaches were used as data collection and analytic tools in this study. I trace nutrient and energy flows to foreground the interdependencies between the “human world” and “natural world”, a separation that is no longer viable in the time of the Anthropocene. Triangulated data sets are used to narrate stories and critically discuss the current environmental challenges using ecocentric, and actor-network theory as the conceptual frameworks. Although population growth is considered a key factor in environmental degradation, I argue that the deterioration of the environment, particularly the coastal landscape, may be attributed to improper and unclear land-water management. The findings of this study indicate that land acquisition on the riparian zone for settlement development in the Gisyo and Kibenga is associated with power and affluence by some members of society. Potential land-water insights and spatial planning approaches for a human-and-hippo-friendly riparian zone are proposed.