▶ Addresses a wide range of timely environment, economic and energy topics ▶ A forum to review, analyze and stimulate the development, testing and implementation of mitigation and adaptation strategies at regional, national and global scales ▶ Contributes to real-time policy analysis and development as national and international policies and agreements are discussed and promulgated ▶ 94% of authors who answered a survey reported that they would definitely publish or probably publish in the journal again

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change

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Remote sensing of the environment

Remote sensing for agricultural applications: A meta-review

The results of the Forest Resources Assessment 2000 carried out by FAO are synthetically presented and discussed. The world forest coverage is estimated equal to 38.6 million km 2 . The comparison of the estimates from the period 1990-2000 with those from the period 1980-1990 points out a certain general deceleration of the rate of net deforestation, that currently involves around 9 million hectares every year. However, the annua1 loss of tropical forests is still very large, while temperate and borea1 forests are in expansion. Overall, FRA2000 produced a relevant effort to compensate the existing technical, institutional and financial constraints and shortcomings for monitoring the world forest resources. The need to increase the quality and the frequency of forest surveys, both at national and international levels, s t a stands as a major issue to cope with.

http://ojs.aisf.it/index.php/ifm/article/download/774/738

Valutazione delle risorse forestali a livello globale

We reviewed the literature on leadership in linked social-ecological systems and combined it with the literature on institutional entrepreneurship in complex adaptive systems to develop a new theory of transformative agency in linked social- ecological systems. Although there is evidence of the importance of strategic agency in introducing innovation and transforming approaches to management and governance of such systems, there is no coherent theory to explain the wide diversity of strategies identified. Using Holling's adaptive cycle as a model of phases present in innovation and transformation of resilient social- ecological systems, overlaid by Dorado's model of opportunity context (opaque, hazy, transparent) in complex adaptive systems, we propose a more coherent theory of strategic agency, which links particular strategies, on the part of transformative agents, to phases of system change.

/pdf/a-theory-of-transformative-agency-in-linked-social-136jl6wy98.pdf

A Theory of Transformative Agency in Linked Social-Ecological Systems

A watershed-based land prioritization model for water supply protection

Forestry practices that are applied to buffer regions can be used as a strategy to improve water quality and flow regime in urbanizing watersheds. This study evaluates watershed-wide impacts of buffering urban forestry practices. Watershed simulation modeling is used to study the effectiveness of best management practices (BMPs) scenarios representing riparian and street buffers on water quality, quantity, and open space in rural, suburban, and urbanized environments. Results indicate that the watershed health can be improved through location-specific application of urban forestry practices. The proportion of urban forest cover reduced sediment and nutrient loading, decreased stormwater runoff, and increased groundwater recharge in urbanizing watersheds. Reduction in variability of watershed processes indicate that forest BMPs make the watershed more adaptive to handling adverse conditions, such as large storms, nonpoint source pollution, flooding, and high winds. Watersheds that are starting to get urbanized responded well to the BMP scenarios compared to more urbanized subbasins. General strategies include a focus on increasing pervious cover of the watershed with a higher priority in riparian and street buffers. Specific tree species and practical issues in forest buffering are also discussed. Policies like financial incentives and encouraging voluntary participation can be used to improve urban watersheds.

Watershed-Scale Impacts of Forest Buffers on Water Quality and Runoff in Urbanizing Environment

Impact of climate change on ecohydrologic processes of Mediterranean watersheds are significant and require quick action toward improving adaptation and management of fragile system. Increase in water shortages and land use can alter the water balance and ecological health of the watershed systems. Intensification of land use, increase in water abstraction, and decline in water quality can be enhanced by changes in temperature and precipitation regimes. Ecohydrologic changes from climatic impacts alter runoff, evapotranspiration, surface storage, and soil moisture that directly affect biota and habitat of the region. This paper reviews expected impacts of climatic change on the ecohydrology of watershed systems of the Mediterranean and identifies adaptation strategies to increase the resilience of the systems. A spatial assessment of changes in temperature and precipitation estimates from a multimodel ensemble is used to identify potential climatic impacts on watershed systems. This is augmented with literature on ecohydrologic impacts in watershed systems of the region. Hydrologic implications are discussed through the lens of geographic distribution and upstream-downstream dynamics in watershed systems. Specific implications of climatic change studied are on runoff, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, lake levels, water quality, habitat, species distribution, biodiversity, and economic status of countries. It is observed that climatic change can have significant impacts on the ecohydrologic processes in the Mediterranean watersheds. Vulnerability varied depending on the geography, landscape characteristics, and human activities in a watershed. Increasing the resilience of watershed systems can be an effective strategy to adapt to climatic impacts. Several strategies are identified that can increase the resilience of the watersheds to climatic and land use change stress. Understanding the ecohydrologic processes is vital to development of effective long-term strategies to improve the resilience of watersheds. There is need for further research into ecohydrologic dynamics at multiple scales, improved resolution of climatic predictions to local scales, and implications of disruptions on regional economies.

Timothy O. Randhir

Papers

A watershed-based land prioritization model for water supply protection

Watershed-Scale Impacts of Forest Buffers on Water Quality and Runoff in Urbanizing Environment

Climatic change impacts on the ecohydrology of Mediterranean watersheds

Watershed ecosystem modeling of land-use impacts on water quality

Impacts of tropical forest cover on water quality in agricultural watersheds in southeastern Brazil