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1. Assessing the effects of payments for ecosystem services programs on forest structure and species biodiversity

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-020-01953-3  

   Chen, H.L. ( February 2020 , Biodiversity and conservation)

   Globally, biodiversity has declined at an unprecedented rate, challenging the viability of ecosystems, species, and ecological functions and their corresponding services. Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs have been established and implemented worldwide to combat the degradation or loss of essential ecosystems and ecosystem services with-out sacrificing the well-being of people. With an overarching goal of reducing soil ero-sion, China’s Grain-to-Green program (GTGP) converts cropland to forest or grassland. As one of the largest PES programs in the world, GTGP has great potential to offer biodi-versity conservation co-benefits. To consider how GTGP may influence biodiversity, we measured forest structure and plant and wildlife species diversity at both GTGP forest and natural forest sites in Fangjingshan National Nature Reserve, China. We also evaluated the relationship between canopy cover and biodiversity measures to test whether forest cover, the most commonly measured and reported ecological metric of PES programs, might act as a good proxy for other biodiversity related parameters. We found that forest cover and species diversity increased after GTGP implementation as understory and overstory plant cover, and understory and midstory plant diversity at GTGP sites were similar to natural forest. Our results suggest that GTGP may also have been associated with increased habitat for protected and vulnerable wildlife species including Elliot’s pheasant (Syrmaticus elli-oti), hog badger (Arctonyx collaris), and wild boar (Sus scrofa). Nevertheless, we identi-fied key differences between GTGP forest and natural forest, particularly variation in forest types and heterogeneity of overstory vegetation. As a result, plant overstory diversity and wildlife species richness at GTGP forest were significantly lower than at natural forest. Our findings suggest, while forest cover may be a good proxy for some metrics of forest struc-ture, it does not serve as a robust proxy for many biodiversity parameters. These findings highlight the need for and importance of robust and representative indicators or proxy vari-ables for measuring ecological effects of PES programs on compositional and structural diversity. We demonstrate that PES may lead to biodiversity co-benefits, but changes in program implementation could improve the return on investment of PES programs to sup-port conservation of biodiversity. 

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2. Reframing the payments for ecosystem services framework in a coupled human and natural systems context: strengthening the integration between ecological and human dimensions

   https://doi.org/10.1080/20964129.2017.1335931  

   Lewison, Rebecca L. ; An, Li ; Chen, Xiaodong ( July 2017 , Ecosystem Health and Sustainability)

   Introduction:As challenges to biodiversity mount, land-use policies have been implemented to balance human needs and the integrity of ecological systems. One such program, Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), incentivizes resource users to protect ecosystem services and has been implemented around the world to reduce soil erosion, create or improve wildlife habitats, and improve water quality and other environmental goals. The PES policy, at its core, is a concept that aims to capture the reciprocal relationships between human systems and ecological function and process. As such, PES epistemologically embodies a coupled human and natural systems approach.

   Outcomes:Yet, despite this conceptual alignment, the on-the-ground implementation or evaluation of PES typically does not adopt this coupled approach and PES programs have little integration between socioeconomic, sociocultural, human demographic, and ecological elements. To advance the evolution of PES, we consider what and how socioeconomic and ecological factors have been incorporated into PES program implementation and evaluation. We also present a conceptual model to articulate how PES research can capture the reciprocal relationships among socioeconomics, demography, and ecology and discuss the quantitative modeling approaches that can support this conceptual development, i.e., structural equation and agent-based modeling, and latent trajectory models.

   Conclusions:By strengthening the conceptual framework for PES within a coupled human and natural systems approach and identifyinganalytical approaches that can be used to quantify and characterize these complex cross-disciplinary relationships, we aim to support the evolution and advancement of PES, in service of more meaningful and positive outcomes for human well-being and ecological sustainability.

    

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3. Using payment for ecosystem services to meet national reforestation commitments: impacts of 20+ years of forestry incentives in Guatemala

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acf602  

   Patrick, Evan ; Butsic, Van ; Potts, Matthew D. ( September 2023 , Environmental Research Letters)

   International environmental initiatives, such as the Bonn Challenge and the UN Decade on Restoration, have prompted countries to put the management and restoration of forest landscapes at the center of their land use and climate policies. To support these goals, many governments are promoting forest landscape restoration and management through financial forestry incentives, a form of payment for ecosystem services. Since 1996, Guatemala has implemented a series of forestry incentives that promote active forest landscape restoration and management on private and communal lands. These programs have been widely hailed as a success with nearly 600 000 ha enrolled since 1998. However, there has been no systematic assessment of the effectiveness of these programs on preserving and restoring Guatemalan forests. This study evaluates the impacts of over 16 000 individual PES projects funded through two incentive programs using a synthetic control counterfactual. Overall, a program for smallholders resulted in lower rates of forest loss, while a program for industrial timber owners led to greater gains in forest cover. Across policies, we found dramatically higher forest cover increases from restoration projects (15% forest cover increase) compared to plantation and agroforestry projects (3%–6% increase in forest cover). Projects that protected natural forest also showed a 6% reduction in forest loss. We found forest cover increases to be under 10% of total enrolled area, although positive local spillovers suggest this is an underestimate. Restoration projects show the most promise at promoting forest landscape restoration, but these benefits need to be weighed against priorities like resilience and rural development, which may be better served by other projects.

    

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4. Ancient Lowland Maya neighborhoods: Average Nearest Neighbor analysis and kernel density models, environments, and urban scale

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275916  

   Thompson, Amy E. ; Walden, John P. ; Chase, Adrian S. ; Hutson, Scott R. ; Marken, Damien B. ; Cap, Bernadette ; Fries, Eric C. ; Guzman Piedrasanta, M. Rodrigo ; Hare, Timothy S. ; Horn, Sherman W. ; et al ( November 2022 , PLOS ONE)

   Hart, John P. (Ed.)

   Many humans live in large, complex political centers, composed of multi-scalar communities including neighborhoods and districts. Both today and in the past, neighborhoods form a fundamental part of cities and are defined by their spatial, architectural, and material elements. Neighborhoods existed in ancient centers of various scales, and multiple methods have been employed to identify ancient neighborhoods in archaeological contexts. However, the use of different methods for neighborhood identification within the same spatiotemporal setting results in challenges for comparisons within and between ancient societies. Here, we focus on using a single method—combining Average Nearest Neighbor (ANN) and Kernel Density (KD) analyses of household groups—to identify potential neighborhoods based on clusters of households at 23 ancient centers across the Maya Lowlands. While a one-size-fits all model does not work for neighborhood identification everywhere, the ANN/KD method provides quantifiable data on the clustering of ancient households, which can be linked to environmental zones and urban scale. We found that centers in river valleys exhibited greater household clustering compared to centers in upland and escarpment environments. Settlement patterns on flat plains were more dispersed, with little discrete spatial clustering of households. Furthermore, we categorized the ancient Maya centers into discrete urban scales, finding that larger centers had greater variation in household spacing compared to medium-sized and smaller centers. Many larger political centers possess heterogeneity in household clustering between their civic-ceremonial cores, immediate hinterlands, and far peripheries. Smaller centers exhibit greater household clustering compared to larger ones. This paper quantitatively assesses household clustering among nearly two dozen centers across the Maya Lowlands, linking environment and urban scale to settlement patterns. The findings are applicable to ancient societies and modern cities alike; understanding how humans form multi-scalar social groupings, such as neighborhoods, is fundamental to human experience and social organization. 

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5. Do LED lightbulbs save natural gas? Interpreting simultaneous cross-energy program impacts using electricity and natural gas billing data

   https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/abddc7  

   Adekanye, Oluwatobi G. ; Davis, Alex ; Azevedo, Inês L. ( February 2021 , Environmental Research Communications)

   Local and state governments have made significant advances in creating, implementing, and evaluating energy efficiency programs in the buildings sector. Evaluations commonly use ex-post statistical models to complement ex-ante engineering estimates when determining program impacts. A critical assumption of data-driven evaluations is that reductions would not occur in the absence of the program. This assumption is difficult to test, particularly if other unobserved changes to the building’s energy profile coincide with the program’s adoption. We provide a method to detect a class of unobserved simultaneous cross-energy changes in a building’s energy profile by examining the treatment effects of electricity-only programs on natural gas use and vice versa. We apply the method to a panel of residential energy efficiency implementations with monthly electricity and gas data from 2010 to 2016 in the City of Palo Alto, California. Using difference-in-differences and event history analyses, we find evidence of significant gas reductions estimated for some electricity-only programs, suggesting that households implemented unobserved changes at the same time as those programs. Our results highlight how data-driven analyses may not adequately estimate program impacts, and the value of simultaneous electricity and natural gas measurements for detecting and interpreting unobserved changes to energy use at the household level. Lastly, we present evidence that energy savings from non-monetary interventions can exceed those which offer financial rewards for energy efficiency.

    

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