Seminar Two
The second seminar in the FRESH series was held at St William’s College, York on 14th and 15th April, hosted by Jessica Wigand and Dave Raffaelli of Environment, University of York. 25 people attended. This second seminar dealt with understanding how new and developing approaches and tools can be used to evaluate and monitor the sustainable management and use of ecosystem goods and services, specifically their potential for uptake by the practitioner and policy communities. The seminar also built on questions and issues which arose from Seminar One (Nottingham), including the closer involvement of early career researchers in the programme. A copy of the programme can be found here.
The seminar was opened by Jessica Wiegand who set the scene for the next two days, reminding the group that they should keep the following questions in mind when considering presentations and in open discussions:
- Are the tools currently under development fit-for-purpose for monitoring ecosystem service delivery?
- What additional tools/dimensions need to be considered?
- Is the research community reaching to, and interacting with, the stakeholder community effectively?
Jessica then introduced three presentations by end-users describing the characteristics and qualities of the kinds of tools they would need in order to manage ecosystems for services. Richard Bradbury (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) described the RSPB’s developing ecosystem approach for managing its nature reserves and Aletta Bonn (Moors for the Future) the kinds of issues that could be dealt with using this approach within the uplands of Northern England. The perspective of Defra, the UK government agency responsible for rolling out the ecosystem approach in England, was provided by Robert Bradbourne.
There then followed an initial open discussion on end-user requirements and expectations and clarification of what directions might be profitable and useful.
The afternoon session continued with perspectives from the early career researchers involved with FRESH on how their own research related to the issues with which the FRESH series concerned itself. Jessica Wiegand (Environment, University of York) talked about her work on developing ecosystem health approaches (HEHI and MEHTA) for contrasting catchments in Scotland in Canada. Jon Tollervy (SWIMMER, University of Liverpool) described his work on developing modelling approaches. Stephen Dangerfield’s (CEM, University of Nottingham) presentation focussed on the application of approaches to the Parrott Catchment and Luz-Maria Lozada (CSERGE, University of East Anglia) described her work on taking a landscape scale approach to agri-environmental stewardship using a social capital perspective.
The first day concluded with an open meeting of the FRESH steering group. The second day was largely given over to presentations by researchers working on the development of appropriate tools and dimensions thereof, with much open discussion about their utility and potential in different contexts. Dave Raffaelli (Director of UKPopNet, University of York) described approaches that integrated human and ecological dimensions of ecosystems and the potential of large-scale field experiments for exploring the trade-offs in service provision which are a consequence of land management decisions. RUBICODE, a novel approach for ecosystem services provision which is being developed under a European initiative, was presented by Richard Harrington (Rothhampstead Research Institute). The utility of formal modelling approaches developed within SWIMMER for regulatory agencies for capturing the effects on service provision of environmental change and human impact was described by Ed Maltby (Director of SWIMMER, University of Liverpool). Finally, Jason Pole (University of Warwick) presented some preliminary findings from a Defra-funded project that aimed to evaluate the potential of the ecosystems approach for managing agricultural systems in the face of climate change.
