An Introduction to Genetic Statistics.

In an age of accelerating biodiversity loss, this timely and critical volume summarizes recent advances in biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research and explores the economics of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The book starts by summarizing the development of the basic science and provides a meta-analysis that quantitatively tests several biodiversity and ecosystem functioning hypotheses. It then describes the natural science foundations of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning research including: quantifying functional diversity, the development of the field into a predictive science, the effects of stability and complexity, methods to quantify mechanisms by which diversity affects functioning, the importance of trophic structure, microbial ecology, and spatial dynamics. Finally, the book takes research on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning further than it has ever gone into the human dimension, describing the most pressing environmental challenges that face humanity and the effects of diversity on: climate change mitigation, restoration of degraded habitats, managed ecosystems, pollination, disease, and biological invasions.However, what makes this volume truly unique are the chapters that consider the economic perspective. These include a synthesis of the economics of ecosystem services and biodiversity, and the options open to policy-makers to address the failure of markets to account for the loss of ecosystem services; an examination of the challenges of valuing ecosystem services and, hence, to understanding the human consequences of decisions that neglect these services; and an examination of the ways in which economists are currently incorporating biodiversity and ecosystem functioning research into decision models for the conservation and management of biodiversity. A final section describes new advances in ecoinformatics that will help transform this field into a globally predictive science, and summarizes the advancements and future directions of the field. The ultimate conclusion is that biodiversity is an essential element of any strategy for sustainable development.

Biodiversity, Ecosystem Functioning, and Human Wellbeing: An Ecological and Economic Perspective

http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/rome2007/docs/Utilizing%20and%20conserving%20agrobiodiversity%20in%20agricultural%20landscapes.pdf

Utilizing and conserving agrobiodiversity in agricultural landscapes

Undernutrition and micronutrient malnutrition remain problems of significant magnitude in large parts of the developing world. Improved nutrition requires not only better access to food for poor population segments, but also higher dietary quality and diversity. Because many of the poor and undernourished people are smallholder farmers, diversifying production on these smallholder farms is widely perceived as a useful approach to improve dietary diversity. However, empirical evidence on the link between production and consumption diversity is scarce. Here, this issue is addressed with household-level data from Indonesia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Malawi. Regression models show that on-farm production diversity is positively associated with dietary diversity in some situations, but not in all. When production diversity is already high, the association is not significant or even turns negative, because of foregone income benefits from specialization. Analysis of other factors reveals that market access has positive effects on dietary diversity, which are larger than those of increased production diversity. Market transactions also tend to reduce the role of farm diversity for household nutrition. These results suggest that increasing on-farm diversity is not always the most effective way to improve dietary diversity in smallholder households and should not be considered a goal in itself. Additional research is needed to better understand how agriculture and food systems can be made more nutrition-sensitive in particular situations.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/34/10657.full.pdf

Production diversity and dietary diversity in smallholder farm households

The concept of ecosystem services has shifted our paradigm of how nature matters to human societies. Instead of viewing the preservation of nature as something for which we have to sacrifice our well-being, we now perceive the environment as natural capital, one of society's important assets. But ecosystem services are becoming increasingly scarce. In order to stop this trend, the challenge is to provoke society to acknowledge the value of natural capital. Ecosystem services valuation (ESV) is the method to tackle such a challenge. ESV is the process of assessing the contributions of ecosystem services to sustainable scale, fair distribution, and efficient allocation. It is a tool that (1) provides for comparisons of natural capital to physical and human capital in regard to their contributions to human welfare; (2) monitors the quantity and quality of natural capital over time with respect to its contribution to human welfare; and (3) provides for evaluation of projects that will affect natural capital stocks. This review covers: (1) what has been done in ESV research in the last 50 years; (2) how it has been used in ecosystem management; and (3) prospects for the future. Our survey of the literature has shown that over time, there has been movement toward a more transdisciplinary approach to ESV research which is more consistent with the nature of the problems being addressed. On the other hand, the contribution of ESV to ecosystem management has not been as significant as hoped nor as clearly defined. Conclusions drawn from the review are as follows: first, ESV researchers will have to transcend disciplinary boundaries and synthesize tools, skills, and methodologies from various disciplines; second, ESV research has to become more problem-driven rather than tool-driven because ultimately the success of ESV will be judged on how well it facilitates real-world decision making and the conservation of natural capital.

/pdf/valuing-ecosystem-services-theory-practice-and-the-need-for-697tvn92du.pdf

Valuing ecosystem services: Theory, practice, and the need for a transdisciplinary synthesis

The ability to meet the world’s growing food demand dramatically improved with the release of modern semidwarf or “green revolution” wheat varieties in the early 1960s. Despite initial and subsequent success in improving yield potential and yield stability, maintaining disease resistance, and improving other plant characteristics, the green revolution has provoked criticism and debate. A major issue in this debate concerns the effect of scientific plant breeding technology on crop genetic diversity, which is believed to have important implications for global and national food security and producer welfare.

The Contribution of Genetic Resources and Diversity to Wheat Production in the Punjab of Pakistan

This study makes use of data on wheat production in the Punjab of Pakistan from 1979 to 1985 to 1) examine patterns of varietal diversity in farmers' fields both at the regional and district levels and 2) identify how and in what ways genetic resources have contributed to wheat productivity and yield stability-important considerations to farmers and national authorities where wheat is a staple food crop. Five indicators are used to describe the system of wheat genetic resource use and diversity in farmers' fields. The contribution of farmers' previous selections is expressed as the number of different landraces appearing in the pedigree of a cultivar . The contribution of scientific breeding efforts is expressed as the number of parental combination appearing in a cultivar's pedigree. The diversity of wheat varieties in a geographical area, as related to productivity, is captured by measures of area concentration (diversity in space) and age of varieties (diversity in time). Finally, the relative dissimilarity of cultivars grown in a geographical area is measured using a distance indicator constructed from genealogical information. Disaggregated analysis at the district level demonstrates how diversity patterns are influenced by the production environment and by possible differences in the availability of suitable varieties. The study finds no indication that modern plant breeding technologies have reduced diversity among the wheats grown in the districts of the Punjab of Pakistan during the study period, although brief. Analysis of the genealogical background of the varieties grown by farmers reveals patterns of greater use of genetic resources and dissimilarity of parentage. For some factors related to genetic resource use and diversity, there are large differences between production environments (specifically, irrigated and rainfed areas) and individual districts, which suggest that efforts to increase genetic diversity in farmers' fields will require policy instruments tailored to the individual circumstances of each production environment. Econometric results suggest that greater genealogical dissimilarity and higher rates of varietal replacement are likely to have positive payoffs relative to aggregate yield stability, while in areas where production constraints inhibit farmers' ability to exploit the yield potential of their varieties, better production management is likely to have greater yield enhancing effects than the varietal attributes related to diversity.

http://impact.cgiar.org/sites/default/files//pdf/261.pdf

Jason G. Hartell

Papers

The Contribution of Genetic Resources and Diversity to Wheat Production in the Punjab of Pakistan

The contribution of genetic resources and diversity to wheat productivity: A case from the Punjab of Pakistan