Increasing the understanding and use of natural archives of ecosystem services, resilience and thresholds to improve policy, science and practice
- Authors: Pearson, Stuart , Lynch, Jasmyn , Plant, Roel , Cork, Steve , Taffs, Kathryn , Dodson, John , Maynard, Simone , Gergis, Joelle , Gell, Peter , Thackway, Richard , Sealie, Lynne , Donaldson, Jim
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Holocene Vol. 25, no. 2 (2015), p. 366-378
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Despite the great potential of palaeo-environmental information to strengthen natural resource policy, science and practical outcomes naturally occurring archives of palaeo-environmental and ecosystem service information have not been fully recognised or utilised to inform the development of environmental policy. In this paper, we describe how Australian palaeo-environmental science is improving environmental understanding through local studies and regional syntheses that inform us about past conditions, extreme conditions and altered ecosystem states. Australian innovations in ecosystem services research and palaeo-environmental science contribute in five important contexts: discussions about environmental understanding and management objectives, improving access to information, improved knowledge about the dynamics of ecosystem services, increasing understanding of environmental processes and resource availability, and engaging interdisciplinary approaches to manage ecosystem services. Knowledge of the past is an important starting point for setting present and future resource management objectives, anticipating consequences of trade-offs, sharing risk and evaluating and monitoring the ongoing availability of ecosystem services. Palaeo-environmental information helps reframe discussions about desirable futures and collaborative efforts between scientists, planners, managers and communities. However, further steps are needed to translate the ecosystem services concept into ecosystem services policy and tangible management objectives and actions that are useful, feasible and encompass the range of benefits to people from ecosystems. We argue that increased incorporation of palaeo-environmental information into policy and decision-making is needed for evidence-based adaptive management to enhance sustainability of ecosystem functions and reduce long-term risks.
Estimating visual quality, a component of culturally-associated ecosystem services in palaeo-lake environments
- Authors: Chhetri, Prem , Kattel, Giri , Dong, Xuhui , Yang, Xiangdong , Min, Xu
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Symposium on Australia-China Wetland Network Research Partnership; Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGLAS) Nanjing, China; 23rd-28th December 2014 p. 23-26
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Evaluation of visual quality is essentially a multi-dimensional and multi-sensory experience of landscape assessment. Visual quality refers to the character, condition and quality of lakes/wetlands. It involves perceiving, preferring and valuing the visual quality by the public. Visual quality is an outcome of the perceptual, cognitive and emotional processes in response to visual stimuli of a lake environment. Visual quality therefore is dependent upon the perceptual and structural aspects of perceived scenes of wetlands. Visual assessment, an evaluating process of gaining non-material or intangible benefits by people from ecosystems, through spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, self-reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experiences, has now become one of significant research areas under cultural components of ecosystem services. Public perception in such studies is composed from both the objective and subjective elements of human–landscape interactions. However, it is still a matter of debate whether subjective–objective realities are dichotomous or supplementary to enhancing the quality of human experiences in natural settings. In fact, much research considers them as inseparable and integral parts of landscape perception, despite the tendency for disintegrating landscapes into their constituent components. There is a fundamental theoretical divergence of opinions over the question whether a landscape has an intrinsic or ‘objective’ beauty, which may be in some ways measurable or comparable, or whether beauty is a value that can be only attributed subjectively to an area or a specific landscape.