| 1. |
- Baey, Charlotte, et al.
(författare)
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A model to account for data dependency when estimating floral cover in different land use types over a season
- 2017
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Ingår i: Environmental and Ecological Statistics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1352-8505 .- 1573-3009. ; 24:4, s. 505-527
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We propose a model to consider data dependencies and assess spatial and temporal variability in land use specific floral coverage across landscapes. Data dependence arising from repeated measurements across the flowering season is taken into account using hierarchical Archimedean copulas, where the correlation is assumed to be stronger within seasonal periods than between periods. For each seasonal period, a bounded probability distribution is assigned to capture spatial variability in floral cover. The model uses a Bayesian approach and can assess land-use-specific floral covers by integrating experts judgments and field data. The model is applied to assess floral covers in four land use types in southern Sweden, where seasonal variability is captured by dividing the season into two periods according to winter oilseed rape flowering. Floral cover is updated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling based on data from 16 landscapes and 2 years, with repeated measures available from each of the two seasonal periods. Our results indicate that considering data dependence improved the estimation of floral cover based on data observed during a season. Different copula families specifying multivariate probability distributions were tested, and no family had a consistently higher performance in the four tested land use types. Uncertainty in both mode and variability of floral cover was higher when data dependence were accounted for. Posterior modes of floral covers in semi-natural grassland were higher than in field edges, but both expert’s best guesses were higher than these estimates. This confirms previous findings in expert elicitation processes that experts may fail to discriminate extreme values on a bounded range. Floral cover in flower strips were estimated to be smaller/higher than semi-natural grasslands early/late in the season. The mode of floral cover in oil seed rape was estimated to be close to 100%, and higher than estimates provided by expert judgment. Floral covers for different land use classes are key parameters when quantifying floral resources at a landscape level whose assessments rely on both expert judgment and field measurements.
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| 2. |
- Blanke, Jan Hendrik, et al.
(författare)
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Assessing the impact of changes in land-use intensity and climate on simulated trade-offs between crop yield and nitrogen leaching
- 2017
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Ingår i: Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-8809. ; 239, s. 385-398
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this study, a global vegetation model (LPJ-GUESS) is forced with spatial information (Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics (NUTS) 2 level) of land-use intensity change in the form of nitrogen (N) fertilization derived from a model chain which informed the Common Agricultural Policy Regionalized Impact (CAPRI) model. We analysed the combined role of climate change and land-use intensity change for trade-offs between agricultural yield and N leaching in the European Union under two plausible scenarios up until 2040. Furthermore, we assessed both driver importance and uncertainty in future trends based on an alternative land-use intensity dataset derived from an integrated assessment model. LPJ-GUESS simulated an increase in wheat and maize yield but also N leaching for most regions when driven by changes in land-use intensity and climate under RCP 8.5. Under RCP 4.5, N leaching is reduced in 53% of the regions while there is a trade-off in crop productivity. The most important factors influencing yield were CO2 (wheat) and climate (maize), but N application almost equaled these in importance. For N leaching, N application was the most important factor, followed by climate. Therefore, using a constant N application dataset in the absence of future projections has a substantial effect on simulated ecosystem responses, especially for maize yield and N leaching. This study is a first assessment of future N leaching and yield responses based on projections of climate and land-use intensity. It further highlights the importance of accounting for changes in future N applications and land-use intensity in general when evaluating environmental impacts over long time periods.
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| 3. |
- Blanke, Jan, et al.
(författare)
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Implications of accounting for management intensity on carbon and nitrogen balances of European grasslands
- 2018
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Ingår i: PLoS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 13:8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- European managed grasslands are amongst the most productive in the world. Besides temperature and the amount and timing of precipitation, grass production is also highly controlled by applications of nitrogen fertilizers and land management to sustain a high productivity. Since management characteristics of pastures vary greatly across Europe, land-use intensity and their projections are critical input variables in earth system modeling when examining and predicting the effects of increasingly intensified agricultural and livestock systems on the environment. In this study, we aim to improve the representation of pastures in the dynamic global vegetation model LPJ-GUESS. This is done by incorporating daily carbon allocation for grasses as a foundation to further implement daily land management routines and land-use intensity data into the model to discriminate between intensively and extensively used regions. We further compare our new simulations with leaf area index observations, reported regional grassland productivity, and simulations conducted with the vegetation model ORCHIDEE-GM. Additionally, we analyze the implications of including pasture fertilization and daily management compared to the standard version of LPJ-GUESS. Our results demonstrate that grassland productivity cannot be adequately captured without including land-use intensity data in form of nitrogen applications. Using this type of information improved spatial patterns of grassland productivity significantly compared to standard LPJ-GUESS. In general, simulations for net primary productivity, net ecosystem carbon balance and nitrogen leaching were considerably increased in the extended version. Finally, the adapted version of LPJ-GUESS, driven with projections of climate and land-use intensity, simulated an increase in potential grassland productivity until 2050 for several agro-climatic regions, most notably for the Mediterranean North, the Mediterranean South, the Atlantic Central and the Atlantic South.
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| 4. |
- Dänhardt, Juliana, et al.
(författare)
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Mot en evidensbaserad CAP
- 2016
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- EU:s gemensamma jordbrukspolitik (CAP) är ett av de viktigaste styrmedlen för svenskt jordbruk, både när det gäller ekonomiska resurser och med avseende på hur stora arealer mark som påverkas. I den nuvarande CAP finns medel avsatta för miljöåtgärder såväl inom pelare 1 genom de så kallade förgröningsåtgärderna, som genom Landsbygdsprogrammet (pelare 2) via miljöstöden. Därmed skulle det kunna finnas stora möjligheter att genom CAP:s olika kanaler påverka biologisk mångfald och ekosystemtjänster i jordbrukslandskapet. För att utveckla välfungerande och kostnadseffektiva styrmedel krävs att dessa byggs på en vetenskaplig kunskapsbas, att man utvärderar om stöden uppnår sina syften och att man undersöker hur ersättningarnas effekt skulle kunna förbättras med en alternativ utformning. En generell slutsats från vår forskning är att den vetenskapliga underbyggnaden av CAP uppvisar brister och att en utvärdering och utveckling av stöden borde byggas in som en organisk del av CAP. Vi föreslår att ett sådant utvärderingssystem, inklusive insamling av ett tillräckligt dataunderlag med lämpliga metoder, integreras i CAP och täcker hela programperioden.
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| 5. |
- Grönholdt Palm, Julia, et al.
(författare)
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Strategies to deal with information of different reliability exemplified by the use of QSARs to fill the algae data gaps in LCIAs of plastic additives
- 2015
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Ingår i: SETAC Europe 25th Annual Meeting.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Data gaps are problematic when screening fordangerous substances or in impact assessments where several chemicals are considered for evaluation. Lacking testing information can be replaced by non-testing information such as Quantitative Structure Activity Relationships (QSARs), but even though this latter information comes with lower reliability, this is seldom taken into account in theforthcoming assessments. The difficulty to meet standards for best information calls for strategies to handle data gaps which take varying reliability in information into account. Using safety factors when reliability is low can be problematic since this result in more conservative evaluations of substances for which information is of lowreliability and an unknown level of risk aversion in the assessment. An alternative is to reflect lower reliability using probability distributions representing the expected error in the information and propagate this uncertainty in the forthcoming assessments using Monte Carlo analysis.It is even possible to let the error to expect from QSARs depend to what extent a substance falls inside the models domain of applicability.QSARs cannot fill all gaps in data. Default values can be used instead of leaving substances out of assessments, but if so, these should reflect lowreliability as well. We demonstrate the practical implications of four strategies to handle varying reliability in information on algal toxicity in a Life Cycle Impact Assessment on 159 plastic additives of concernusing emissions from societal plastic materials in Sweden. A review concluded that a small amount of these substances had toxicity data for algae Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata. A QSAR was constructed which provided non-testing algal information of substances inside and on theborder of the models domain of applicability evaluated by PmodXPS.Substances with neither testing nor non-testing information were assigned default values. Screening based on characterization factors resulted in different rankings of substances when changing the level of cautiousness. The different strategies to handle varying reliability ininformation do more or less open up for quantifying uncertainty in Life Cycle Impact Assessments.
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| 6. |
- Holmes, Mark, et al.
(författare)
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Marine protected areas modulate habitat suitability of the invasive round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) in the Baltic Sea
- 2019
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Ingår i: Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science. - : Elsevier BV. - 0272-7714. ; 229
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Biological invasions are one of the leading causes of biodiversity loss worldwide. Given that eradication of invasive species is not usually a practical option, conservationists may attempt to limit their impacts through the designation and management of protected areas. Here, we investigate the effect of marine protected areas on the habitat suitability of an invasive species, the round goby (Neogobius melanostomus). By modelling its environmental niche space in the Baltic Sea, we demonstrated that gobies prefer shallow, warmer waters, sheltered from significant wave action. They are more likely to be found near areas of intense shipping, this being their primary method of long-distance dispersal. Comparison of the goby's occurrences inside/outside protected areas indicated that suitable habitats within protected areas are more resistant to the round goby's invasion compared to adjacent unprotected areas, however the opposite is true for suboptimal habitats. This has important ecosystem management implications with marine conservation areas providing mitigation measures to control the spread of round goby in its optimal habitats in the Baltic Sea environment. Being subjected to reduced human impacts, native species within protected areas may be more numerous and diverse, helping to resist invasive species incursion.
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| 7. |
- Holmquist, Hanna, 1982, et al.
(författare)
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The potential to use QSAR to populate ecotoxicity characterisation factors for simplified LCIA and chemical prioritisation
- 2018
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Ingår i: International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1614-7502 .- 0948-3349. ; 23:11, s. 2208-2216
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: Today’s chemical society use and emit an enormous number of different, potentially ecotoxic, chemicals to the environment. The vast majority of substances do not have characterisation factors describing their ecotoxicity potential. A first stage, high throughput, screening tool is needed for prioritisation of which substances need further measures. Methods: USEtox characterisation factors were calculated in this work based on data generated by quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models to expand substance coverage where characterisation factors were missing. Existing QSAR models for physico-chemical data and ecotoxicity were used, and to further fill data gaps, an algae QSAR model was developed. The existing USEtox characterisation factors were used as reference to evaluate the impact from the use of QSARs to generate input data to USEtox, with focus on ecotoxicity data. An inventory of chemicals that make up the Swedish societal stock of plastic additives, and their associated predicted emissions, was used as a case study to rank chemicals according to their ecotoxicity potential. Results and discussion: For the 210 chemicals in the inventory, only 41 had characterisation factors in the USEtox database. With the use of QSAR generated substance data, an additional 89 characterisation factors could be calculated, substantially improving substance coverage in the ranking. The choice of QSAR model was shown to be important for the reliability of the results, but also with the best correlated model results, the discrepancies between characterisation factors based on estimated data and experimental data were very large. Conclusions: The use of QSAR estimated data as basis for calculation of characterisation factors, and the further use of those factors for ranking based on ecotoxicity potential, was assessed as a feasible way to gather substance data for large datasets. However, further research and development of the guidance on how to make use of estimated data is needed to achieve improvement of the accuracy of the results.
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| 8. |
- Häussler, Johanna, et al.
(författare)
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Pollinator population size and pollination ecosystem service responses to enhancing floral and nesting resources
- 2017
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Ingår i: Ecology and Evolution. - : Wiley. - 2045-7758. ; 7:6, s. 1898-1908
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Modeling pollination ecosystem services requires a spatially explicit, process-based approach because they depend on both the behavioral responses of pollinators to the amount and spatial arrangement of habitat and on the within- and between-season dynamics of pollinator populations in response to land use. We describe a novel pollinator model predicting flower visitation rates by wild central-place foragers (e.g., nesting bees) in spatially explicit landscapes. The model goes beyond existing approaches by: (1) integrating preferential use of more rewarding floral and nesting resources; (2) considering population growth over time; (3) allowing different dispersal distances for workers and reproductives; (4) providing visitation rates for use in crop pollination models. We use the model to estimate the effect of establishing grassy field margins offering nesting resources and a low quantity of flower resources, and/or late-flowering flower strips offering no nesting resources but abundant flowers, on bumble bee populations and visitation rates to flowers in landscapes that differ in amounts of linear seminatural habitats and early mass-flowering crops. Flower strips were three times more effective in increasing pollinator populations and visitation rates than field margins, and this effect increased over time. Late-blooming flower strips increased early-season visitation rates, but decreased visitation rates in other late-season flowers. Increases in population size over time in response to flower strips and amounts of linear seminatural habitats reduced this apparent competition for pollinators. Our spatially explicit, process-based model generates emergent patterns reflecting empirical observations, such that adding flower resources may have contrasting short- and long-term effects due to apparent competition for pollinators and pollinator population size increase. It allows exploring these effects and comparing effect sizes in ways not possible with other existing models. Future applications include species comparisons, analysis of the sensitivity of predictions to life-history traits, as well as large-scale management intervention and policy assessment.
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| 9. |
- Knaggård, Åsa, et al.
(författare)
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Researchers’ approaches to stakeholders: Interaction or transfer of knowledge?
- 2019
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Ingår i: Environmental Science and Policy. - : Elsevier BV. - 1462-9011 .- 1873-6416. ; 97, s. 25-35
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Stakeholder interaction is important for enabling environmental research to support the societal transition to sustainability. We argue that it is crucial to take researchers’ approaches to and perceptions of stakeholder interaction into account, to enable more clarity in discussions about interaction, as well as more systematic interaction approaches. Through a survey and focus group interviews with environmental researchers at three Swedish universities, we investigate the effects of two models of stakeholder interaction, as well as high and low levels within each. The ‘transfer model’ implies that interaction is understood as communication and should be separated from research. The ‘interaction model’ implies that interaction happens throughout the research process. Our study shows some significant differences between researchers in the two models, but also between high and low levels of stakeholder interaction regardless of model. The result indicates that the transfer model needs to be considered in studies and practice of stakeholder interaction, but also that the low levels of the interaction model consists of a number of different types of approaches. The major difference between the two models was about how large researchers understood the benefits and risks with stakeholder interaction to be. Transfer researchers saw interaction as a threat to the integrity of research, whereas interaction researchers saw it as enabling research. © 2019 The Authors
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| 10. |
- Sahlin, Ullrika, et al.
(författare)
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A note on EFSA’s ongoing efforts to increase transparency of uncertainty in scientific opinions
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Risk Research. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1366-9877 .- 1466-4461. ; , s. 1-8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This is a comment on Lofstedt and Bouder’s paper, which explores the prospects of evidence based uncertainty analysis in Europe, focusing on the ongoing development on uncertainty analysis at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). We very much welcome a discussion on the need to develop better treatment and communication of uncertainty in risk analysis, as we believe that such discussion is long overdue. Lofstedt and Bouder raise many relevant points, in particular the call for evidence based uncertainty analysis. However, there is need to distinguish different types of communication in the discussion and facilitate – not diminish – the description and communication of uncertainty between risk assessors and decision-makers. We find that EFSA has taken steps toward a novel approach to guide their scientific experts and risk assessors in uncertainty analysis based on a modern and scientific view on uncertainty.
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