Global Food Demand Scenarios for the 21st Century

Long-term food demand scenarios are an important tool for studying global food security and for analysing the environmental impacts of agriculture. We provide a simple and transparent method to create scenarios for future plant-based and animal-based calorie demand, using time-dependent regression models between calorie demand and income. The scenarios can be customized to a specific storyline by using different input data for gross domestic product (GDP) and population projections and by assuming different functional forms of the regressions. Our results confirm that total calorie demand increases with income, but we also found a non-income related positive time-trend. The share of animal-based calories is estimated to rise strongly with income for low-income groups. For high income groups, two ambiguous relations between income and the share of animal-based products are consistent with historical data: First, a positive relation with a strong negative time-trend and second a negative relation with a slight negative time-trend. The fits of our regressions are highly significant and our results compare well to other food demand estimates. The method is exemplarily used to construct four food demand scenarios until the year 2100 based on the storylines of the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES). We find in all scenarios a strong increase of global food demand until 2050 with an increasing share of animal-based products, especially in developing countries.     

21世纪的菌根学

进入21世纪第1个10年,菌根学(mycorrhizology)研究进入菌根学发展史上第2个辉煌时期。文中总结了21世纪首个10年期间菌根学研究的特点,预测了今后40年(21世纪上半叶)的发展趋势。这对于推动菌根学进一步研究及其菌根生物技术应用具有深刻的现实意义。     

Biotic and Human Vulnerability to Projected Changes in Ocean Biogeochemistry over the 21st Century

Ongoing greenhouse gas emissions can modify climate processes and induce shifts in ocean temperature, pH, oxygen concentration, and productivity, which in turn could alter biological and social systems. Here, we provide a synoptic global assessment of the simultaneous changes in future ocean biogeochemical variables over marine biota and their broader implications for people. We analyzed modern Earth System Models forced by greenhouse gas concentration pathways until 2100 and showed that the entire world''s ocean surface will be simultaneously impacted by varying intensities of ocean warming, acidification, oxygen depletion, or shortfalls in productivity. In contrast, only a small fraction of the world''s ocean surface, mostly in polar regions, will experience increased oxygenation and productivity, while almost nowhere will there be ocean cooling or pH elevation. We compiled the global distribution of 32 marine habitats and biodiversity hotspots and found that they would all experience simultaneous exposure to changes in multiple biogeochemical variables. This superposition highlights the high risk for synergistic ecosystem responses, the suite of physiological adaptations needed to cope with future climate change, and the potential for reorganization of global biodiversity patterns. If co-occurring biogeochemical changes influence the delivery of ocean goods and services, then they could also have a considerable effect on human welfare. Approximately 470 to 870 million of the poorest people in the world rely heavily on the ocean for food, jobs, and revenues and live in countries that will be most affected by simultaneous changes in ocean biogeochemistry. These results highlight the high risk of degradation of marine ecosystems and associated human hardship expected in a future following current trends in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.     

面向21世纪的中国生态学

面向２１世纪的中国生态学陈涛（中国科学院沈阳应用生态研究所,１１００１５）ＥｃｏｌｏｇｙＴｏｗａｒｄｓ２１ｓｔＣｅｎｔｕｒｙｉｎＣｈｉｎａ．ＣｈｅｎＴａｏ（ＩｎｓｔｉｔｕｔｅｏｆＡｐｐｌｉｅｄＥｃｏｌｏｇｙ,ＣｈｉｎｅｓｅＡｃａｄｅｍｙｏｆＳｃｉｅｎ...     

Agrochemical Research and Development in the 21(st) Century: Bloom or Bust

Economic, environmental, and political issues arising in the last two decades have changed agricultural practice worldwide. While the agrochemical market has diminished, time and cost of R & D and regulatory restrictions have increased, thereby reducing profit margins dramatically. This has led to a change of strategy from screening whole organisms to screening diverse compounds, with high-throughput screening processes similar to those used in drug discovery. For large-scale high-throughput screening to efficiently facilitate storage, retrieval, preparation and tracking of compounds, the sample management process needs to be highly automated. The introduction of modern automated technology will help to address the problems faced by the agrochemical industry.     

Protected areas for the 21st century: working to provide benefits to society

Since the first national park was created at Yellowstone in the USA in 1872, over 8500 protected areas have been established worldwide. Virtually all countries have seen the wisdom of protecting areas of outstanding importance to society, and such sites now cover over 5% of Earth's land surface. However, many of these protected areas exist only on paper, not on the ground. Most are suffering from a combination of threats, including pollution, over-exploitation, encroachment, poaching, and many others. In a period of growing demands on resources and shrinking government budgets, new approaches are required to ensure that protected areas can continue to make their contributions to society. First and foremost, protected areas must be designed and managed in order to provide tangible and intangible benefits to society. This will involve integrating protected areas into larger planning and management frameworks, linking protected areas to biodiversity and climate change, promoting greater financial support for protected areas, and expanding international cooperation in the finance, development and management of protected areas.     

The fight against epizootics in the 21st Century

The fight against epizootics is today better organized. The tools, methods and strategies used work well and are constantly being improved, which is necessary since disease epidemiology is evolving extremely fast, dominated by a growing complexity associated to global changes and the emergence of new pathologies. The foundation of the strategy is still based on a permanent epidemiological surveillance and the immediate use of appropriate measures. Among the essential prerequisites there is the existence of effective veterinary services, for which support programmes have been developed, notably by the OIE, which is also responsible for the definition of the norms applicable in animal health. Three examples of control programmes against major epidemics are discussed here: Rinderpest (declared eradicated worldwide in 2011), Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (H5N1), and Foot and Mouth Disease.     

A Global Analysis of Deforestation in Moist Tropical Forest Protected Areas

Protected areas (PAs) have been established to conserve tropical forests, but their effectiveness at reducing deforestation is uncertain. To explore this issue, we combined high resolution data of global forest loss over the period 2000–2012 with data on PAs. For each PA we quantified forest loss within the PA, in buffer zones 1, 5, 10 and 15 km outside the PA boundary as well as a 1 km buffer within the PA boundary. We analysed 3376 tropical and subtropical moist forest PAs in 56 countries over 4 continents. We found that 73% of PAs experienced substantial deforestation pressure, with >0.1% a⁻¹ forest loss in the outer 1 km buffer. Forest loss within PAs was greatest in Asia (0.25% a⁻¹) compared to Africa (0.1% a⁻¹), the Neotropics (0.1% a⁻¹) and Australasia (Australia and Papua New Guinea; 0.03% a⁻¹). We defined performance (P) of a PA as the ratio of forest loss in the inner 1 km buffer compared to the loss that would have occurred in the absence of the PA, calculated as the loss in the outer 1 km buffer corrected for any difference in deforestation pressure between the two buffers. To remove the potential bias due to terrain, we analysed a subset of PAs (n = 1804) where slope and elevation in inner and outer 1 km buffers were similar (within 1° and 100 m, respectively). We found 41% of PAs in this subset reduced forest loss in the inner buffer by at least 25% compared to the expected inner buffer forest loss (P<0.75). Median performance (P˜) of subset reserves was 0.87, meaning a reduction in forest loss within the PA of 13%. We found PAs were most effective in Australasia (P˜=0.16), moderately successful in the Neotropics (P˜=0.72) and Africa (P˜=0.83), but ineffective in Asia (P˜=1). We found many countries have PAs that give little or no protection to forest loss, particularly in parts of Asia, west Africa and central America. Across the tropics, the median effectiveness of PAs at the national level improved with gross domestic product per capita. Whilst tropical and subtropical moist forest PAs do reduce forest loss, widely varying performance suggests substantial opportunities for improved protection, particularly in Asia.