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- Biurrun, Idoia, et al.
(författare)
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Benchmarking plant diversity of Palaearctic grasslands and other open habitats
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Vegetation Science. - Oxford : John Wiley & Sons. - 1100-9233 .- 1654-1103. ; 32:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Journal of Vegetation Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Association for Vegetation Science.Aims: Understanding fine-grain diversity patterns across large spatial extents is fundamental for macroecological research and biodiversity conservation. Using the GrassPlot database, we provide benchmarks of fine-grain richness values of Palaearctic open habitats for vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and complete vegetation (i.e., the sum of the former three groups). Location: Palaearctic biogeographic realm. Methods: We used 126,524 plots of eight standard grain sizes from the GrassPlot database: 0.0001, 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1, 10, 100 and 1,000 m2 and calculated the mean richness and standard deviations, as well as maximum, minimum, median, and first and third quartiles for each combination of grain size, taxonomic group, biome, region, vegetation type and phytosociological class. Results: Patterns of plant diversity in vegetation types and biomes differ across grain sizes and taxonomic groups. Overall, secondary (mostly semi-natural) grasslands and natural grasslands are the richest vegetation type. The open-access file ”GrassPlot Diversity Benchmarks” and the web tool “GrassPlot Diversity Explorer” are now available online (https://edgg.org/databases/GrasslandDiversityExplorer) and provide more insights into species richness patterns in the Palaearctic open habitats. Conclusions: The GrassPlot Diversity Benchmarks provide high-quality data on species richness in open habitat types across the Palaearctic. These benchmark data can be used in vegetation ecology, macroecology, biodiversity conservation and data quality checking. While the amount of data in the underlying GrassPlot database and their spatial coverage are smaller than in other extensive vegetation-plot databases, species recordings in GrassPlot are on average more complete, making it a valuable complementary data source in macroecology. © 2021 The Authors.
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| 2. |
- Hansson, Anna M., 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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Barriers and drivers for sustainable business model innovation based on a radical farmland change scenario
- 2023
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Ingår i: Environment, Development and Sustainability. - Dordrecht : Springer. - 1387-585X .- 1573-2975. ; 25:8, s. 8083-8106
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The agricultural sector has a critical role in creating social and environmental value of natural resources in addition to its traditional role of creating economic value by supplying food to the ever-increasing world population. In fulfilling this dual role, the agricultural sector often faces competing pressures: to operate financially profitable businesses and to create, maintain, and benefit from ecosystem services (ES) in their operations. This paper analyses these pressures in an examination of drivers and barriers to the initiation of the business model innovation process for sustainability (BMIpfS) as perceived by ten agricultural business managers who operate farms in southern Sweden. The paper explores the interplay between managerial cognition and business decisions as revealed in semi-structured interviews. The new ES in focus connect to radical land-use change, paludiculture, as used in the rewetting of farmland intended to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that drained peat soil causes. The paper contributes to the literature by identifying drivers and barriers that moderates the initiation of the BMIpfS. Although the managers acknowledge the importance of long-term, sustainable social, and environmental value creation, they have grave doubts about the profitability of activities associated with the preservation of peat soils and connected ES. These managers would benefit from taking a more proactive, long-term approach to business model changes for sustainability and from acquiring more knowledge about market demand for sustainability-oriented ES. Successful facilitation and implementation of knowledge transfer and government subsidies that support ES could improve the turning of profits based on sustainable value creation.
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| 3. |
- Hansson, Anna M., 1984-
(författare)
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Get it off the ground – Facilitating water-related environmental measures to support agricultural managers in business model innovation processes for sustainability
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Agricultural businesses, which currently maintain, manage, create, and capture economic value from natural resources on farmland, play an important role in creating sustainable economic, environmental, and social value through maintaining and utilising a variety of ecosystem services in addition to traditional food production. This thesis focuses on ecosystem services that derive from water-related environmental measures (WREMs). This focus is motivated by a growing awareness of WREMs in the agricultural landscape, and of their connection to climate effects and water quantity and quality issues, which have substantial societal impact. Even though many agricultural business managers have a genuine interest in sustainability concerns, they tend to favour food production at the cost of providing other ecosystem services. Part of the explanation is that ecosystem services’ ability to provide social and environmental value for the public good often lacks full-cost accounting and clear market demand. This results in uncertainties among agricultural business managers about how to capture economic value from WREMs and associated ecosystem services, leading to their benefits and value being only partly known or only indirectly connected to the main agricultural production, and therefore not included in current business models to any great extent.Business models can be developed to enable value capture from WREMs through the business model innovation process for sustainability (BMIpfS). The BMIpfS identifies changes of current activities and adapts existing business models to support sustainable development and produce positive (or reduce negative) environmental effects on society, while producing long-term prosperity for businesses and their stakeholders. Due to the wide range of activities and stakeholders, the BMIpfS is complex and needs to be incentivised and facilitated. To provide sufficient facilitation for the BMIpfS initiation, underlying barriers and drivers for business managers’ value intention (their business motives) for the BMIpfS need to be explored. Facilitation based on the value intention of business managers can ease the process and be used to support identification of value not yet captured in business models, as well as provide expertise to identify marketable sustainable products and services beyond existing markets. Facilitation can be managed through government-affiliated intermediaries who are in a favourable position to assess local conditions, identify needs and resources, and develop partnerships with stakeholders that align with current agri-environmental programmes. To facilitate sustainable business commitments in agriculture, a better understanding is needed of how government-affiliated intermediaries can support implementation of WREMs and promote the BMIpfS initiation by aligning agricultural business managers’ value intention with societal sustainability goals. Consequently, the overarching aim of this thesis is to explore how the facilitation of WREMs can support the BMIpfS through an improved understanding of (i) the value intention of agricultural business managers and (ii) how government-affiliated intermediaries can facilitate the process initiation.This thesis builds on four sequential studies, all conducted within external research projects. The first two are qualitative interview studies that build on each other to inductively explore agricultural business mangers’ incentives for taking on more long-term and high-effort WREMs and committing to value capture of sustainability-related measures. They identify barriers and drivers as part of the agricultural business managers’ value intention and analyse its connection to the BMIpfS initiation. The third study is quantitative and was conducted through a survey that more deductively explores how opportunities for sustainable value creation and business model innovation through WREMs can be facilitated to align with the managers’ value intention that emerged in the first two studies. Finally, the fourth study is a qualitative interview study that takes an evaluative approach to further clarify how the facilitation of WREMs can be structured and organised to promote BMIpfS initiation in agriculture. The results of this research show that business change incentives for sustainability activities are part of pre-initiation conditions of the BMIpfS through the value intention of business managers. The value intention is clarified as business managers’ (i) identification as producers of value, (ii) difficulties identifying uncaptured sustainability value, and (iii) prioritisation of profitability and practical benefits. Adding value intention to a pre-initiation process phase contributes to the BMIpfS literature by providing a better understanding of how to support the BMIpfS initiation and promote more long-term and high-effort sustainability commitments, and value creating and capturing activities, among business managers. The results also show how WREM commitments and initiation of the BMIpfS can be facilitated through government-affiliated intermediaries. The government-affiliated intermediation is explained as comprising structures and activities to promote: (i) WREMs that include synergy between environmental and business aspects from a long-term perspective on value creating and capturing activities; (ii) flexible approaches adapted to business managers’ needs, that promote autonomy, trust, and sense of control; and (iii) structured collaboration and networks for knowledge exchange between stakeholders on different societal levels. With the value intention of business managers as a foundation, these results complement previous research on government-affiliated intermediaries and show how they can be structured to facilitate sustainable agricultural business activities and promote the BMIpfS initiation in line with societal sustainability targets. To integrate its results, this thesis develops a framework that advances the understanding of how to facilitate business model innovation towards sustainability and capture a wider range of value from ecosystem services. Through facilitation, innovation of business models towards sustainability can be promoted to realise currently uncaptured value that could benefit business revenues and societal goals. In this way, agriculture could continue to provide the world’s population with food, in line with the goals of sustainable development, but with an expanded approach so that food production becomes a basis on which to build business activities that also improve the conditions for several other goals, such as protection of ecosystems and water resources.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Pedersen, Eja, et al.
(författare)
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Living in the Vicinity of Wind Turbines - A Grounded Theory Study
- 2007
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Ingår i: Qualitative Research in Psychology. - Philadelphia, PA : Routledge. - 1478-0887 .- 1478-0895. ; 4:1-2, s. 49-63
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Little is known of wind turbines' impact on people living in their vicinity. The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of how people perceive and are affected by wind turbines in their living environment. In-depth interviews with 15 informants, strategically chosen to form a heterogeneous group, were analyzed using the constant comparative method of grounded theory. The informants were to different extents affected by the swishing noise, flickering light, and constant movement of the turbines' rotor blades. Some informants perceived the exposures as outside their territory while others perceived them as intrusion into privacy; a divergence partly determined by the informants' personal values about the living environment. The feeling of intrusion was associated with feeling a lack of control, subjected to injustice, a lack of influence, and not being believed. Informants used various coping strategies, such as rebuilding their houses or complaining, but mainly tried to ignore exposures from the wind turbines. The findings can help us to better understand the severe reactions wind turbines sometimes evoke and contribute to the knowledge base used when planning for new wind farms.
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