集成生态系统服务与生物多样性的系统保护规划

生物多样性和生态系统服务的保护与可持续管理是当今世界面临的重大挑战之一,但如何判识与优化集成生态系统服务与生物多样性保护对象的保护优先区网络,相关研究还很有限。针对“三江并流”区,选取珍稀濒危与特有动植物物种和自然植被类型作为生物多样性保护对象,以调节服务(碳存储、固碳和土壤保持)、文化服务(自然游憩)和供给服务(水源供给)为生态系统服务保护对象。应用系统保护规划方法,首先判识出单一生物多样性和生态系统服务保护优先区;然后,分析这些保护优先区间的相关关系,并选择与生物多样性正相关的生态系统服务类型,判识集成生态系统服务与生物多样性的保护优先区;最后,评估了集成生态系统服务与生物多样性保护优先区在六类已建保护地中的保护状况。结果表明：(1)“三江并流”区多情景规划得到的生物多样性与生态系统服务保护优先区之间均呈正相关关系;(2)与分别针对生态系统服务和生物多样性的规划情景相比,集成生态系统服务与生物多样性保护优先区能够同时对两类保护对象提供最高的保护覆盖率;(3)集成生态系统服务和生物多样性保护优先区占研究区总面积的48.9%,其已建保护地覆盖率为32.5%,说明现有保护地体系仍存在保护...     

Inside Money,Procyclical Leverage,and Banking Catastrophes

We explore a model of the interaction between banks and outside investors in which the ability of banks to issue inside money (short-term liabilities believed to be convertible into currency at par) can generate a collapse in asset prices and widespread bank insolvency. The banks and investors share a common belief about the future value of certain long-term assets, but they have different objective functions; changes to this common belief result in portfolio adjustments and trade. Positive belief shocks induce banks to buy risky assets from investors, and the banks finance those purchases by issuing new short-term liabilities. Negative belief shocks induce banks to sell assets in order to reduce their chance of insolvency to a tolerably low level, and they supply more assets at lower prices, which can result in multiple market-clearing prices. A sufficiently severe negative shock causes the set of equilibrium prices to contract (in a manner given by a cusp catastrophe), causing prices to plummet discontinuously and banks to become insolvent. Successive positive and negative shocks of equal magnitude do not cancel; rather, a banking catastrophe can occur even if beliefs simply return to their initial state. Capital requirements can prevent crises by curtailing the expansion of balance sheets when beliefs become more optimistic, but they can also force larger price declines. Emergency asset price supports can be understood as attempts by a central bank to coordinate expectations on an equilibrium with solvency.     

Biodiversity as insurance: from concept to measurement and application

Biological insurance theory predicts that, in a variable environment, aggregate ecosystem properties will vary less in more diverse communities because declines in the performance or abundance of some species or phenotypes will be offset, at least partly, by smoother declines or increases in others. During the past two decades, ecology has accumulated strong evidence for the stabilising effect of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning. As biological insurance is reaching the stage of a mature theory, it is critical to revisit and clarify its conceptual foundations to guide future developments, applications and measurements. In this review, we first clarify the connections between the insurance and portfolio concepts that have been used in ecology and the economic concepts that inspired them. Doing so points to gaps and mismatches between ecology and economics that could be filled profitably by new theoretical developments and new management applications. Second, we discuss some fundamental issues in biological insurance theory that have remained unnoticed so far and that emerge from some of its recent applications. In particular, we draw a clear distinction between the two effects embedded in biological insurance theory, i.e. the effects of biodiversity on the mean and variability of ecosystem properties. This distinction allows explicit consideration of trade-offs between the mean and stability of ecosystem processes and services. We also review applications of biological insurance theory in ecosystem management. Finally, we provide a synthetic conceptual framework that unifies the various approaches across disciplines, and we suggest new ways in which biological insurance theory could be extended to address new issues in ecology and ecosystem management. Exciting future challenges include linking the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning and stability, incorporating multiple functions and feedbacks, developing new approaches to partition biodiversity effects across scales, extending biological insurance theory to complex interaction networks, and developing new applications to biodiversity and ecosystem management.     

Catastrophe Risk Analysis: A Financial Perspective

This article examines how catastrophe events affect risk analysis from a financial perspective. Data from different industries such as Advanced Sustainable Performance Indices, gold, energy, real estate, and insurance were collected and analyzed. The performance of these funds was compared by using various financial ratios. Then we tested the stock selecting and market timing abilities. We also assessed whether a particular catastrophe event has affected stock prices by analysis of two event studies, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States and the collapse through bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. We examined how an asset portfolio performs under catastrophic events and under the situation of adding Advanced Sustainable Performance Indices into an investor's portfolio basket. We found that the 9/11 terrorist attacks affected the Dow Jones Real Estate Index's prices a lot. Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy filing had a positive impact on the CBOE Gold Index, and had a large impact on the Fidelity US Bond Index. The ASPI Index in our optimization problem gave us better diversification. From our analysis, we conclude that portfolio diversification is a good way to hedge against catastrophic risk.     

生态资产核算与生态系统服务评估:概念交汇与重点方向

面向“山水林田湖草”统一管理的现实目标,对生态资产的准确刻画加深了资源管理者和使用者对生态系统服务的认识,是生态系统服务理论从学术研讨向决策实践过渡的重要桥梁。然而,当前的生态资产核算结果仍存在着较大的不确定性,使其决策支持作用受到质疑。基于对生态资产研究近今进展的总结,生态资产实际核算一般取自然资本与生态系统服务的交集分别作为存量和流量。如若将生态资产作为干部离任审计依据,则须把握先实物量后价值量的原则。在当前国际研究中,生态资产已经成为区域景观管理和农户生计决策的重要绩效评估与情景优选工具。完善生态系统服务评估模型、明晰生态系统服务供需关系、规范生态资产价值核算方法、提升生态资产决策支持能力4项内容应引起未来生态资产研究的重点关注。     

Systematics,the scientific basis for inventories of biodiversity

A taxonomic inventory strategy is proposed for the planetary exploration of biological diversity. Such inventories result in comprehensive collections, our only insurance against bio-ignorance; meet needs for basic taxonomic and phylogenetic research; make full use of limited taxonomic resources; and provide credible, verifiable data associated with museum and herbarium specimens. Decisive efforts to meet the biodiversity crisis need not compromise advances in taxonomic theory and practice in the interest of expediency. Inventories provide data for understanding the origin and history of diversification of life on Earth, while gathering scientific evidence to inform decisions related to conservation and resource management.     

Ecosystem service benefits of contrasting conservation strategies in a human-dominated region

The hope among policy-makers and scientists alike is that conservation strategies designed to protect biodiversity also provide direct benefits to people by protecting other vital ecosystem services. The few studies that have examined the delivery of ecosystem services by existing conservation efforts have concentrated on large, ‘wilderness’-style biodiversity reserves. However, such reserves are not realistic options for densely populated regions. Here, we provide the first analyses that compare representation of biodiversity and three other ecosystem services across several contrasting conservation strategies in a human-dominated landscape (England). We show that small protected areas and protected landscapes (restrictive zoning) deliver high carbon storage and biodiversity, while existing incentive payment (agri-environment) schemes target areas that offer little advantage over other parts of England in terms of biodiversity, carbon storage and agricultural production. A fourth ecosystem service—recreation—is under-represented by all three strategies. Our findings are encouraging as they illustrate that restrictive zoning can play a major role in protecting natural capital assets in densely populated regions. However, trade-offs exist even among the four ecosystem services we considered, suggesting that a portfolio of conservation and sustainability investments will be needed to deliver both biodiversity and the other ecosystem services demanded by society.     

Fast Carbon Footprinting for Large Product Portfolios

Publicly Available Specification 2050‐2011 (PAS 2050), the Green House Gas Product Protocol (GHGPP) standard and forthcoming guideline 14067 from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have helped to propel carbon footprinting from a subdiscipline of life cycle assessment (LCA) to the mainstream. However, application of carbon footprinting to large portfolios of many distinct products and services is immensely resource intensive. Even if achieved, it often fails to inform company‐wide carbon reduction strategies because footprint data are disjointed or don't cover the whole portfolio. We introduce a novel approach to generate standard‐compliant product carbon footprints (CFs) for companies with large portfolios at a fraction of previously required time and expertise. The approach was developed and validated on an LCA dataset covering 1,137 individual products from a global packaged consumer goods company. Three novel techniques work in concert in a single approach that enables practitioners to calculate thousands of footprints virtually simultaneously: (i) a uniform data structure enables footprinting all products and services by looping the same algorithm; (ii) concurrent uncertainty analysis guides practitioners to gradually improve the accuracy of only those data that materially impact the results; and (iii) a predictive model generates estimated emission factors (EFs) for materials, thereby eliminating the manual mapping of a product or service's inventory to EF databases. These autogenerated EFs enable non‐LCA experts to calculate approximate CFs and alleviate resource constraints for companies embarking on large‐scale product carbon footprinting. We discuss implementation roadmaps for companies, including further road‐testing required to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach for other product portfolios, limitations, and future improvements of the fast footprinting methodology.     

Profitability of Contrarian Strategies in the Chinese Stock Market

This paper reexamines the profitability of loser, winner and contrarian portfolios in the Chinese stock market using monthly data of all stocks traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange covering the period from January 1997 to December 2012. We find evidence of short-term and long-term contrarian profitability in the whole sample period when the estimation and holding horizons are 1 month or longer than 12 months and the annualized return of contrarian portfolios increases with the estimation and holding horizons. We perform subperiod analysis and find that the long-term contrarian effect is significant in both bullish and bearish states, while the short-term contrarian effect disappears in bullish states. We compare the performance of contrarian portfolios based on different grouping manners in the estimation period and unveil that decile grouping outperforms quintile grouping and tertile grouping, which is more evident and robust in the long run. Generally, loser portfolios and winner portfolios have positive returns and loser portfolios perform much better than winner portfolios. Both loser and winner portfolios in bullish states perform better than those in the whole sample period. In contrast, loser and winner portfolios have smaller returns in bearish states, in which loser portfolio returns are significant only in the long term and winner portfolio returns become insignificant. These results are robust to the one-month skipping between the estimation and holding periods and for the two stock exchanges. Our findings show that the Chinese stock market is not efficient in the weak form. These findings also have obvious practical implications for financial practitioners.     

Enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem services in quarry restoration – challenges,strategies, and practice

Although covering less than 1% of the land surface, extraction activities have long‐lasting impacts on local ecosystems, inevitably damaging biological diversity and depleting ecosystem services. Many extractive companies are now aware of their impacts and, while pressured by society, demand concrete solutions from researchers to reverse the effects of exploitation and restore biodiversity and ecosystems services. In this article, we compile and synthesize the contributions of the latest available research on quarry restoration. We depict and discuss some of the most pressing issues regarding (1) the challenges of restoring quarries; (2) the opportunities for biodiversity and ecosystem services delivery; and (3) outline further research addressing current gaps. We conclude that quarries pose different abiotic and biotic constraints that act interdependently, hampering the attainment of effective restoration if considered solely. Such constraints need to be addressed holistically to lastly encourage the self‐sustainability of the system by reinstating ecological processes. However, a restored site does not have to specifically mimic the pristine situation, as under certain conditions alternative approaches may uphold valuable natural assets contributing to the conservation of rare, restricted, or protected species and habitats.     

Entropy-Based Financial Asset Pricing

We investigate entropy as a financial risk measure. Entropy explains the equity premium of securities and portfolios in a simpler way and, at the same time, with higher explanatory power than the beta parameter of the capital asset pricing model. For asset pricing we define the continuous entropy as an alternative measure of risk. Our results show that entropy decreases in the function of the number of securities involved in a portfolio in a similar way to the standard deviation, and that efficient portfolios are situated on a hyperbola in the expected return – entropy system. For empirical investigation we use daily returns of 150 randomly selected securities for a period of 27 years. Our regression results show that entropy has a higher explanatory power for the expected return than the capital asset pricing model beta. Furthermore we show the time varying behavior of the beta along with entropy.     

Ecological processes: A key element in strategies for nature conservation

Summary A common approach to nature conservation is to identify and protect natural ‘assets’ such as ecosystems and threatened species. While such actions are essential, protection of assets will not be effective unless the ecological processes that sustain them are maintained. Here, we consider the role of ecological processes and the complementary perspective for conservation arising from an emphasis on process. Many kinds of ecological processes sustain biodiversity: including climatic processes, primary productivity, hydrological processes, formation of biophysical habitats, interactions between species, movements of organisms and natural disturbance regimes. Anthropogenic threats to conservation exert their influence by modifying or disrupting these processes. Such threats extend across tenures, they frequently occur offsite, they commonly induce non‐linear responses, changes may be irreversible and the full consequences may not be experienced for lengthy periods. While many managers acknowledge these considerations in principle, there is much scope for greater recognition of ecological processes in nature conservation and greater emphasis on long time‐frames and large spatial scales in conservation planning. Practical measures that promote ecological processes include: monitoring to determine the trajectory and rate of processes; incorporating surrogates for processes in conservation and restoration projects; specific interventions to manipulate and restore processes; and planning for the ecological future before options are foreclosed. The long‐term conservation of biodiversity and the well‐being of human society depend upon both the protection of natural assets and maintaining the integrity of the ecological processes that sustain them.     

Robust Portfolio Optimization Using Pseudodistances

The presence of outliers in financial asset returns is a frequently occurring phenomenon which may lead to unreliable mean-variance optimized portfolios. This fact is due to the unbounded influence that outliers can have on the mean returns and covariance estimators that are inputs in the optimization procedure. In this paper we present robust estimators of mean and covariance matrix obtained by minimizing an empirical version of a pseudodistance between the assumed model and the true model underlying the data. We prove and discuss theoretical properties of these estimators, such as affine equivariance, B-robustness, asymptotic normality and asymptotic relative efficiency. These estimators can be easily used in place of the classical estimators, thereby providing robust optimized portfolios. A Monte Carlo simulation study and applications to real data show the advantages of the proposed approach. We study both in-sample and out-of-sample performance of the proposed robust portfolios comparing them with some other portfolios known in literature.     

Cryptic species as a window into the paradigm shift of the species concept

The species concept is the cornerstone of biodiversity science, and any paradigm shift in the delimitation of species affects many research fields. Many biologists now are embracing a new “species” paradigm as separately evolving populations using different delimitation criteria. Individual criteria can emerge during different periods of speciation; some may never evolve. As such, a paradigm shift in the species concept relates to this inherent heterogeneity in the speciation process and species category—which is fundamentally overlooked in biodiversity research. Cryptic species fall within this paradigm shift: they are continuously being reported from diverse animal phyla but are poorly considered in current tests of ecological and evolutionary theory. The aim of this review is to integrate cryptic species in biodiversity science. In the first section, we address that the absence of morphological diversification is an evolutionary phenomenon, a “process” counterpart to the long‐studied mechanisms of morphological diversification. In the next section regarding taxonomy, we show that molecular delimitation of cryptic species is heavily biased towards distance‐based methods. We also stress the importance of formally naming of cryptic species for better integration into research fields that use species as units of analysis. Finally, we show that incorporating cryptic species leads to novel insights regarding biodiversity patterns and processes, including large‐scale biodiversity assessments, geographic variation in species distribution and species coexistence. It is time for incorporating multicriteria species approaches aiming to understand speciation across space and taxa, thus allowing integration into biodiversity conservation while accommodating for species uncertainty.     

Investigation on Law and Economics Based on Complex Network and Time Series Analysis

The research focuses on the cooperative relationship and the strategy tendency among three mutually interactive parties in financing: small enterprises, commercial banks and micro-credit companies. Complex network theory and time series analysis were applied to figure out the quantitative evidence. Moreover, this paper built up a fundamental model describing the particular interaction among them through evolutionary game. Combining the results of data analysis and current situation, it is justifiable to put forward reasonable legislative recommendations for regulations on lending activities among small enterprises, commercial banks and micro-credit companies. The approach in this research provides a framework for constructing mathematical models and applying econometrics and evolutionary game in the issue of corporation financing.     

Arapaima co-management through the lens of the Protected Areas Assets Framework

An extensive network of Protected Areas (PA) has been established across the Brazilian Amazon, but this PA system still suffers from a shortage of funding resources and environmental managers. New conservation strategies that successfully align social aspirations with biodiversity conservation are therefore imperative. Although approaches exist that demonstrate the value of biodiversity conservation for society and the local/national economy, these do not always manage to capture intrinsic values or local perspectives on natural resource conservation, and this can generate limitations in the use of these approaches as conservation tools. Here, we assessed the case of arapaima (Arapaima spp.) co-management, a well-consolidated community-based conservation initiative, through the lens of the Protected Areas Asset Framework (PAAF) to investigate the material and immaterial value of PA assets. Arapaima was clearly recognized as a key biophysical natural asset by local communities, with a significant role in terms of food, cultural, economic and conservation importance, in addition to its status as an iconic and emblematic species. This study reinforces the potential of the PAAF to identify the diverse range of values associated with PAs. Our results also encourage wider support to strengthen collaborative sustainable natural resource management programmes such as arapaima co-management, which is achieving remarkable social and ecological outcomes in rural Amazonia.     

Portfolio theory and how parent birds manage investment risk

Investment theory is founded on the premise that higher returns are generally associated with greater risk, and that portfolio diversification reduces risk. Here I examine parental investment decisions in birds from this perspective, using data from a model system, a 16‐year study of breeding red‐winged blackbirds Agelaius phoeniceus. Like many altricial birds, blackbirds structure their brood into core (first‐hatched) and marginal (later‐hatched) elements that differ in risk profile. I measured risk in two ways: as the coefficient of variation in growth and survival of core and marginal offspring from a given brood structure; and using financial beta derived from the capital asset pricing model of modern portfolio theory. Financial beta correlates changes in asset value with changes in the value of a broader market, defined here as individual reproductive success vs. population reproductive success. Both measures of risk increased with larger core (but not marginal) brood size; and variation in growth and survival was significantly greater during ecologically adverse conditions. Core offspring showed low beta values relative to marginal progeny. The most common brood structures in the population exhibited the highest beta values for both core and marginal offspring: many parent blackbirds embraced rather than avoided risk. But they did so prudently with an investment strategy that resembled a financial instrument, the call option. A call option is a contingent claim on the future value of the asset, and is exercised only if asset value increases beyond a point fixed in advance. Otherwise the option lapses and the investor loses only the initial option price. Parents created high risk marginal progeny that were forfeited during ecological adversity (the option lapses) but raised otherwise (the option called); at the same time parents maintained a constant investment and return in low risk core progeny that varied little with changes in brood size or ecological conditions.     

What are the policy priorities for sustaining ecological processes? A case study from Victoria,Australia

Summary Developments in ecological theory indicate that ecological processes have major implications for sustaining biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services. Consequently, conservation actions that focus solely on particular species, vegetation communities, habitats or sites (‘assets’) are unlikely to be effective over the long term unless the ecological processes that support them continue to function. Efforts to sustain biodiversity must embrace both ‘assets’ and ‘process‐oriented’ approaches. Existing knowledge about ecological processes, incomplete though it is, has not been adequately considered in government decision making. It is, therefore, necessary to consider how to build consideration of ecological processes into legislative and institutional frameworks, policy and planning processes, and on‐ground environmental management. Drawing on insights from interviews, a facilitated workshop, and a literature review, this paper identifies a suite of policy priorities and associated reforms which should assist in ensuring that ecological processes are given more attention in policy‐making processes. It is concluded that a multi‐pronged approach is required, because there are no ‘silver bullets’ for sustaining ecological processes.     

Unifying ecology and macroevolution with individual‐based theory

A contemporary goal in both ecology and evolutionary biology is to develop theory that transcends the boundary between the two disciplines, to understand phenomena that cannot be explained by either field in isolation. This is challenging because macroevolution typically uses lineage‐based models, whereas ecology often focuses on individual organisms. Here, we develop a new parsimonious individual‐based theory by adding mild selection to the neutral theory of biodiversity. We show that this model generates realistic phylogenies showing a slowdown in diversification and also improves on the ecological predictions of neutral theory by explaining the occurrence of very common species. Moreover, we find the distribution of individual fitness changes over time, with average fitness increasing at a pace that depends positively on community size. Consequently, large communities tend to produce fitter species than smaller communities. These findings have broad implications beyond biodiversity theory, potentially impacting, for example, invasion biology and paleontology.